Field Guide
Liferay DXP 7.4 Field Guide
A concept-by-concept guide to building, extending and operating enterprise solutions on Liferay DXP.
How to use it. Follow a route from Learning paths, work through the labs, or jump to a concept below. Each page links to deeper material in the Knowledge Hub.
Platform foundations
- The Liferay platform map
Follow a request from the virtual instance to the page, service, database, and index. - Workspace, Blade, and local setup
Set up a target-aligned development workspace and build reproducible artifacts. - Choose an extension point
Decide between configuration, Objects, fragments, client extensions, public APIs, and OSGi.
OSGi & Java
- OSGi bundles and Declarative Services
Understand package wiring, service registration, component activation, and Gogo triage. - Service Builder and persistence
Model custom Java entities, transactions, service boundaries, and schema upgrades. - MVC portlets and REST Builder
Separate native widgets, server-rendered commands, and generated REST contracts.
Objects & workflow
- Liferay Objects and data modeling
Design definitions, fields, relationships, storage, and records that survive real integrations. - Object rules, actions, and permissions
Separate validation, authorization, and side effects across UI, APIs, and integrations. - Workflow and approval design
Model a human decision with roles, transitions, notifications, and predictable failure states. - Form fragments and Data Sets
Turn a data model into a page form and a configurable listing with supported components.
Client extensions & APIs
- Headless REST, GraphQL, and API Explorer
Read the real OpenAPI contract, query supported fields, and build for upgrades. - OAuth 2.0 and API authorization
Match grants to callers and debug identity, token scope, and resource permissions separately. - Batch, ERCs, and data migration
Promote configurations and move records with explicit ordering, reconciliation, and retries. - Client extension architecture
Package frontend, configuration, batch, and microservice extensions and understand their runtime boundaries. - Custom elements and frontend integration
Mount an interactive widget with a stable HTML contract and scoped behavior. - Microservice extensions and webhooks
Integrate a remote service with explicit identity, retry semantics, and failure recovery. - Liferay as an MCP server
Connect an AI client to supported Liferay tools with instance-scoped access and auditable permissions.
Sites, CMS & commerce
- Sites, pages, fragments, and design
Compose an editorial experience with layouts, reusable sections, and controlled styling. - Classic CMS, headless CMS, and DAM
Choose a content architecture and plan governance for structures, files, and translations. - Publications, staging, and content delivery
Distinguish editorial approval, coordinated change sets, and environment promotion. - Search, indexing, and relevance
Diagnose visibility, query behavior, and tuning before making search changes. - Commerce, personalization, and analytics
Connect catalog and account context to buying experiences, measurement, and experiments. - AI Hub, Data Platform, and newer experiences
Place recent product capabilities in the architecture and evaluate their boundaries.
Security & operations
- Identity, roles, and access boundaries
Design role scopes, single sign-on, and tests that catch cross-account data exposure. - Deployments, configuration, and operations
Plan hosting boundaries, runtime dependencies, observability, and recovery. - Upgrades, Jakarta, and compatibility
Rehearse the platform and application upgrade as one coordinated change. - Testing and troubleshooting runbook
Turn symptoms into targeted checks across the application, API, runtime, and index.
Learning paths Hands-on labs Glossary Liferay 7.4 release watch Sources & scope