Portlet Preference of liferay 5.2.3

Load user specific preference:

com.liferay.portal.model.Layout layout = ((com.liferay.portal.theme.ThemeDisplay)themeDisplay).getLayout();
javax.portlet.PortletPreferences portletSetup = com.liferay.portlet.PortletPreferencesFactoryUtil
.getLayoutPortletSetup(layout, "portlet_id");


try {
portletSetup.setValue("key", "value");
portletSetup.getValue("key", "default value");
} catch (ReadOnlyException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
}

here themeDisplay is user specific themeDispaly as a result it load user specific preference.

Load global preference:

javax.portlet.PortletPreferences portletSetup = actionRequest.getPreferences();


try {
portletSetup.setValue("key", "value");
portletSetup.getValue("key", "default value");
} catch (ReadOnlyException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
}

here actionRequest may be javax.portlet.RenderRequest or javax.portlet.ActionRequest or javax.portlet.PortletRequest

You need to set the following properties in liferay-portlet.xml or in case of overridden in ext liferay-portlet-ext.xml, if want to set company wise/ global preference for portlet:

<preferences-company-wide>true</preferences-company-wide>
<preferences-unique-per-layout>false</preferences-unique-per-layout>