E.1. Reviewing document handling in Liferay

When Liferay first started working with documents, it was out of a necessity to have a way to store files in a file system type of structure on the Web. These files would be displayed in a Document Library portlet that gave users the ability to upload and share documents. Early versions of Liferay had only the Liferay repository as a design goal, so the initial API reflects this design.

Later, as more features were added to the API, it grew. The concept of hooks was added first. These allowed developers to change the back end of the Document Library to point to different file-storage repositories. They predated Hook plugins, still exist in Liferay 6.0, and have been renamed to Stores in Liferay 6.1 to avoid confusion with Hook plugins. For this reason, if you’re on 6.0, you have to be careful sometimes to clearly state what kind of hook you’re talking about if you’re in a heavy technical conversation with a fellow Liferay developer.