What Is the Difference Between View Mode and Edit Mode of Portlets?

The modes of a portlet are typically related to the types of operations a user can perform on the portlet. A view mode is where users are allowed to do read only operations, whereas in edit mode user can add/update the data in the portlet.  

Each portlet mode has a method which handles it:

• doView() 
• doEdit() 
• doHelp() 

These methods will contain mainly our "traffic directing" logic, which are responsible to decide what view the user wants to see. 

Once the view has been determined, we will forward on to methods which actually implement that view.
For standard portlet view modes have two views: 

• The default view which shows the list of items. 
• The form, where users will mainly do the add and edit action. 
• In this where end user can edit the particular item, is called edit mode of portlet.