Configuring the Web Clipping portlet to use an HTTP Proxy

Today, I was setting up an internal (intranet) deployment of WebCenter and one of the things I needed to display was the company share price, pulled from the Internet.  In order to do this, I used the built in Web Clipping portlet.  However, it needs to be configured to use an HTTP proxy so that it can access content on the Internet.

This is done by adding some settings to the provider.xml configuration file used by the portlet.  This configuration file is stored under the domain directory.  In my case, it is located here:

C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\base_domain\servers\
WLS_Portlet\tmp\_WL_user\portalTools_11.1.1.2.0\vuzpes\war\WEB-INF\
providers\webClipping\provider.xml

Note that the directory in bold and underlined is an automatically generated name.  Yours will probably have a different name.  It gets created when you add the web clipping portlet to a page.  You will want to do that first, if you have not already, so that the configuration file we need will be created.

If you open up this file, and scroll down about 30 or so lines, you will find that there is a long commented section that explains all of the proxy settings.  Following this, there is a sample set of proxy settings, as shown below:

 <!-- proxy information: Fill the following up if you have a proxy
                          server between the provider and external sites.
  <proxyInfo class="oracle.portal.provider.v2.ProxyInformation">
    <httpProxyHost>yourproxy.yourdomain.com</httpProxyHost>
    <httpProxyPort>80</httpProxyPort>
    <dontProxyFor>.yourdomain.com</dontProxyFor>
  </proxyInfo>
  -->

Note that these are also commented out in the file.  You will need to update them with your proxy server settings, and also uncomment them.  There are several other settings that allow you to use a variety of different type of proxies, including those that require a user sign on.  For a basic HTTP proxy, you will just need to set the two items shown in bold in the sample above.

Once you have updated this file, you should restart for WLS_Portlet managed server.  Then your web clipping portlet will be able to access the Internet through your HTTP proxy.