Adobe Flex components as MyFaces JSF components
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Key: TOMAHAWK-1250
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TOMAHAWK-1250
Project: MyFaces Tomahawk
Issue Type: New Feature
Environment: Have tested using os [windows xp], browsers [firefox 2.0,
opera 9.25, ie 6.0], and app server [tomcat 5.5.23].
Reporter: Ji Kim
I wished to contribute set of components to give users capability in creating
Adobe Flex components as MyFaces JSF components. So users would create the
components as normal JSF components and the contribution will create the
necessary SWF files and etcetera and link the values of the components back to
the managed beans using JSON+Javascript and etcetera.
The components require Adobe Flex SDK to be extracted to C:\Program
Files\flexSDK or /usr/local/bin/flexSDK.
Optionally users can modify the mxmlConstants.xml or can pass the directory as
a JVM parameter mxmlc_bin
Requires ANT during compile time, so have modified the sandbox's POM with the
dependency.
Have tested using FireFox 2.0, Opera 9.25, and IE 6.0 browsers with TomCat 5.5.
Also have used Sun's JDK for Adobe Flex SDK [JAVA_HOME].
The basic design is as follows [will implement it better later] :
(1) All Flex components must be nested within <s:mxmlApplication /> tag as
it is the top component and this tag must be outside the <h:form /> component
[due to IE's
use of objects].
(2) There exists replaceMapping XMLs which will tell how to pick the fields
from the components [i.e. by attributes of the UIComponent or by method call
for that object].
(3) There exists templates [users can modify it if they wish to have some
default capability to all similar component] which will be used per component
to create preMxml
files. In a nutshell, it is nothing but a simple file that contains
tokens which will be replaced by component values using the replaceMapping XML
and ANT's Replace
Task.
(4) Necessary source files will be created to their respective directory
[i.e. ActionScript file[s] that is/are needed by the system and XML file[s]
that is/are needed by the
ActionScript files[s] and should be defined within mxmlConstants.xml]
(5) After all the components' preMxml within <s:mxmlApplication /> have
been created, MXML file and SWF file will be created using ANT by the
MXMLApplication class.
<s:mxmlScript /> will give capability in writing ActionScript
contents as the body content of the Tag by extending UIComponentBodyTagBase.
Similar flexibility is given to
other Tags by extending MXMLUIComponentBodyTagBase; however it should
be used sparingly and should be used mainly for components that extend
MXMLUISimpleBase component. One additional thing to note is that
mxmlPackageName attribute for <s:mxmlApplication /> tag will be used to name
the mxml file and
the swf file.
(6) Also <s:mxmlApplication /> will create JSON objects which will be
rendered onto the page for initial values of the Flex components. The reason
for this is because
<s:mxmlApplication /> has various modes :
debugMode => meaning preMxml, Mxml, and SWF files would
be created in each run as well as JSON objects
simplySWF => meaning Mxml which has been modified by
the user exists, so create only SWF files and JSON objects [users can use this
to modify the mxml
file and create a swf file]
productionEnv => meaning SWF file already exists, so nothing
to do here but create JSON objects [this is the default value to ensure that
users do not run the
components in either of the
two other modes in an environment that is higher than dev]. One thing to note
is that all directories of
WebContent/swf/* should be
copied to their corresponding directory within the Workspace during the move to
higher env [since the
system uses
servContext.getRealPath(new String()) as the root directory of preMxml, Mxml,
and swf directory and TomCat for example flushes it
out to their cache directory
under metadata].
For large components such as DataGrid, am planning to write it as a
service in retrieving and setting the values
(7) Uses dojo during the onLoad time to connect all the Form's onsubmit event
with a pageUnload function.
Also each Flex/Flash app will communicate back to the page when it has
finished setting up on its side [such as setting callBack methods and
etcetera], JSON will be
passed to the apps to set the initial values with the check interval
set to 500 milliseconds. So the values will be decoded [for example htmlText
allows XML tags and
etcetera, so on the Java side there will be encoding and decoding on
the Flex/Flash side] and set to the component's values.
(8) During the form's onsubmit action, pageUnload will return false and make
a call to Flex/Flash app to return the component's values to the page. When
returned, nodes
will be appended to the form that was in the process of submission and
will submit the page
On the Flex/Flash side, there will be an ActionScript which will use
E4X [love it] to look up within an XML file the property/attributes that the
component must return as
JSON objects to the page, so that the page can create the elements with
their attributes as child nodes of the form element.
Will write this better later and will plan on making the code much cleaner and
better during free time, but wanted to see if this is something that could be
considered as a contribution within the group. Thanks!!!
Oh yes, one note regarding preMxml files. In order to keep everything simple
and debugging easy, a simple method was chosen to create the preMxml files for
each component. Namely the file with mxmlPackageName_[Major Num][Minor
Num].pre_mxml will be created per component within directory named
WebContent/preMxml/[mxmlPackageName]/. So for instance, MxmlApplication will
have Major Num and Minor Num set to 0 and the first child of MxmlApplication
will have [1,0] set with it's sibling set to [1,1] and etcetera. Due to how
it's written, there maybe an issue such that when depth equals a certain value
and the components within that depth has 3 digits.
For example,
001121 this can mean
(1) major level 1 with minor level 121 {meaning there exists at
least 120 components within the swf}
(2) major level 2 with minor level 1 {meaning this is a child
of [1,1] and the second sibling with depth two}
Since issues with this kind of scenario will occur when (1) doesn't
exist [meaning sibling 120 exists and 121 is placeholder] and (2) exists
[meaning [2,1] exists], this will
be very rare. Also if someone has over 100+ components within a single
swf file, I think it should be reconsidered and rewritten.
I will possibly considering writing more regarding it later during my free
time. Thanks!!!
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