Where do I place my templates for Blog-related mail notifications in Liferay 7.0? - liferay-7

Question

The documentation states that I can configure the liferay server to use my own templates for the email messages. Specifically, if I add these properties to a portal-ext-env.properties in $CATALINA_BASE/conf/liferay:
blogs.email.entry.added.enabled=true
blogs.email.entry.added.subject=${resource:com/liferay/portlet/blogs/dependencies/email_entry_added_subject.tmpl}
blogs.email.entry.added.body=${resource:com/liferay/portlet/blogs/dependencies/email_entry_added_body.tmpl}
Liferay will supposedly use the templates in the specified paths (com/liferay/portlet/blogs/dependencies/email_entry_added_subject.tmpl and com/liferay/portlet/blogs/dependencies/email_entry_added_body.tmpl). The thing is, it's not very clear what these paths are relative to. Are these files relative to $CATALINA_BASE? For example, would the above configuration result in Liferay looking up $CATALINA_BASE/com/liferay/portlet/blogs/dependencies/email_entry_added_body.tmpl for creating the body of an email message? If this is not the case, where does Liferay lookup templates for Blog-related email messages?

Answer 1

After some digging, I've found that you place the templates in the $CATALINA_BASE/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes folder. Paths that you reference in the properties (e.g. blogs.email.entry.added.body=${resource:com/liferay/portlet/blogs/dependencies/email_entry_added_body.tmpl}) are relative to the aforementioned classes folder.
So, if I wanted Liferay to use a template file in the ff. relative path: org/foo/my_email_entry_added_body.tmpl, I would do two things:
Place the file in $CATALINA_BASE/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/org/foo/my_email_entry_added_body.tmpl.
Add the following line to $CATALINA_BASE/portal-ext-env.properties: blogs.email.entry.added.body=${resource:org/foo/my_email_entry_added_body.tmpl}.
I consulted my co-worker and got a better understanding of why this is. The architecture of a Liferay application is such that it comes bundled with a Tomcat server. According to the documentation, WEB-INF/classes is a directory that a web app deployed to a Tomcat server looks up for classes and resources:
A class loader is created for each web application that is deployed in a single Tomcat instance. All unpacked classes and resources in the /WEB-INF/classes directory of your web application, plus classes and resources in JAR files under the /WEB-INF/lib directory of your web application, are made visible to this web application, but not to other ones.
Specifically, this folder is high in priorty in the web app's classpath.
When you see Liferay code similar to ${resource:path/to/foo}, it's looking up resources in its classpath. One of the paths in that classpath is WEB-INF/classes. Hence, if path/to/foo is placed in WEB-INF/classes, Liferay will find path/to/foo there.