[CONF] Apache Labs > MagmaBeansView

[confluence]

MagmaBeansView Page edited by Simone Gianni Magma offers a number of annotations to define the view of a bean. Using annotations for view settings offer great speed during developement and prototyping, offering automatic list, display and input form generation, while a number of alternative and integrative technologies can be used to customize the view later. Also, annotations have well known limitations, which can then be addressed using more advanced techniques. View principles Since a bean is composed of properties and actions, the view describes how these elements are to be displayed in an input form, in an output view or on a list. There is an order in which this elements are displayed; Magma supports both raw ordering and relative ordering, which consist in relating elements with others with "before" and "after". Elements can be placed on one or more layers, so that it's be possible to display customly reduced views in different situations. Also, since plain forms with all fields one after the other are boring, some elements can be placed on the side of another element. Defining view on a bean The @MagView annotation is used to control how an element (property or action) is displayed. Ordering The main display property is the order, which can be indicated verbatim using a number. public class User { private String name; private String surname; private Date birthday; @MagView(order=1) public String getName() { return name; } @MagView(order=2) public String getSurname() { return surnname; } @MagView(order=3) public Date getBirthday() { return birthday; } } Given this way, the output will be something like : Name : John Surname : Smith Birthday : 5/5/1975 The other way is giving ordering rules using "before" or "after", for example : @MagView(order=1) public String getName() { return name; } @MagView(after="name") public String getSurname() { return surnname; } @MagView(after="surname") public Date getBirthday() { return birthday; } Will produce the same result, but is more flexible when it comes to extending a bean using ITD. Note that at least one element must still have an order TODO : should be possible to avoid this restriction. Side by side Another attribute of the @View annotation can be used to place elements side by side. For example : @MagView(order=1) public String getName() { return name; } @MagView(zone=Right,of="name") public String getSurname() { return surnname; } @MagView(after="name") public Date getBirthday() { return birthday; } In this case output will be : Name : John Surname : Smith Birthday: 5/5/1975     Layers TODO Quite often a bean needs to be visualized with a reduced number of fields. Since this is a common scenario, it can be configured in annotations directly. Such common cases are : Displaying a list or a table of beans Displaying a summary of a bean Displaying some fields only on an administration form and not every time that bean is displayed. Each element in the bean can be placed in one or more layers. Magma defines two layers, all and default. The layer all always contains all elements, while the layer default contains all element not explicitly excluded using "defaultLayer=false". Moreover, some view components define some specific layers : list elements on this layer will be used when composing a list or a table @MagView(order=1, layers={"list","summary"}) public String getName() { return name; } @MagView(zone=Right,of="name", layers={"list","summary"}) public String getSurname() { return surnname; } @MagView(after="name") public Date getBirthday() { return birthday; } @MagView(after="birthday", layers="summary") public String getEmail() { return email; } // ... other getters and setters @MagView(after="whatever", defaultLayer=false) public Date getActivationDate() { return activationDate; } In this example, only name and surname will be used when composing a list. When we want to display a summary of such a User bean, we will use : public htmlProducer doSummary(User user) { return Bean(user, "summary"); } And obtain : Name : John Surname : Smith Email: johnsm...@...     If we don't specify "summary" when sending in output the bean, we will obtain elements on the default layer : all elements excluding "activationDate" which is marked with defaultLayer=false. Different settings on different layers If you need to change the view settings between different view, for example display elements in a different order when in a list, you can use the @MagViews annotation : @MagViews({ @MagView(order=1, layers="summary"), @MagView(order=2, layers="list") }) public String getName() { return name; } @MagViews({ @MagView(zone=Right,of="name", layers="summary"), @MagView(order=1, layers="list") }) public String getSurname() { return surnname; } Runtime customization of view TODO View components TODO Change Notification Preferences View Online | View Change | Add Comment --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: commits-unsubscr...@labs.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: commits-h...@labs.apache.org