Re: Summer of Code

[Alexander Kazachonak]

My idea to provide working UI with one line of code from entire data model and then refine it in small steps. And model is not static there, but is constantly being updated. Seems that Rumba framework and hbm2seam are not about that. Faces Freeway looks interesting. My english demands more. Jacob, I don't fully understand your sentence "I've been thinking though with JEE 5 and the EJB 3 adoption, that you couldn't produce something similar to your proposal that works off of pure EJB 3 metadata define the pages." As I understood you were proposing to work using only ejb3 metadata. And using EntityManager directly to persist data. It is easier and makes sense. But more interesting task is to extract data straight from the business layer. Data can come not only from RDBMS, but from web-services or other place. I've been thinking that we can provide access to data model for UI through general interface like extended Maps and Lists. Add to them methods for sorting, validation, extracting metadata about associations. We can use these maps and lists for CRUD templates, but how do maps and lists know about business layer. In business layer interface there usually may be several contracts of woking with data. We annotate this layer's methods with annotations describing what classes to use to deal with data using this method. Then our maps and lists can use this information and will know that we shouldn't use Item object's property comments to extract comments, but use commentsService method getComments(Item item, int start, int count) for paging and such. Are there any interested in mentoring this if I will provide more concrete details? All this is to be discussed.

Mario Ivankovits wrote:

Hi! I developed Faces Freeway to archive this dynamic generation: http://facesfreeway.l3x.net/sample.html The samples are not up to date, much more can be done already. For those wanting to browse the source code: http://facesfreeway.l3x.net/xref/index.html It extracts metadata from your entites and generates the jsf tree dynamically. All this is pluggable and extensible. I'll update the samples, just I need to find the time :-( Ciao, Mario > I've been chatting with Gavin about this for some time-- the code generation vs. dynamic generation for scaffolding. I believe the tooling coming from seam/hbm is all code generation where I would think there would be advantages to having component sets that dynamically determine validators and converters based on metadata. Higher level components could be constructed to actually compose the CRUD pages as a droppable component. > > >> Please check out hbm2seam ( Hibernate Tools suite ) before a lot of hard work >> is poured into this. There may be a large duplication of effort. The last I >> checked, this was in alpha. >> >> Dennis Byrne >> >> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2006 11:57 AM >>> To: dev@myfaces.apache.org >>> Subject: RE: Summer of Code >>> >>> JSF *really* needs this agility with CRUD scaffolding. I've been thinking >>> >> though with JEE 5 and the EJB 3 adoption, that you couldn't produce something >> similar to your proposal that works off of pure EJB 3 metadata define the >> pages. Something like: >> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> This way, you could have your EJB 3 annotated model and without doing any >>> >> model wiring, these components would work by Class type to handle >> persistence/UI concerns directly without hand-holding. >> >>> As for templating with Facelets, Rick Hightower published something similar >>> >> at IBM: >> >>> http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-facelets/index.html >>> >>> He says he has another article on the topic coming out soon. >>> >>> Overall, the need you are describing is obviously there. I wish JBoss >>> >> would've pursued this route more actively with Seam's UI library. >> >>> -- Jacob >>> >>> >>> >>>> Hello. It is not a comlete proposal, but I rather want to know your opinion >>>> on the project i'm working on. It is not straight myfaces codebase related, >>>> but you seem as most appropriate mentor. I planned to work on it before I >>>> knew that there is SoC. But may be you will convince me of its uselessness. >>>> >>>> Recently I have been writing application using jsf. The application is >>>> mostly CRUD. I think that there is much glue code that can be eliminated. >>>> All that identical CRUD backing beans, forms, dataTables, navigation rules. >>>> It is all powerful, but it should be possible to eliminate it until you >>>> >> need >> >>>> something not very trivial. This is the principle which the Ruby on Rails >>>> growing popularity came from. >>>> >>>> There arises a need to define rules of generating it all based on >>>> information about a data model. Code generation tools are insufficient. >>>> Imagine, you have generated all the beans and views, than provided some >>>> changes to some of them and than you want to add small change to the >>>> template or, say, add a field to the domain object. Now you are left on >>>> >> your >> >>>> own to manually change it everywhere it is used. >>>> >>>> I propose to extend facelets templating abilities to be able to encapsulate >>>> all that routine tasks into templates. See: >>>> 1)