Re: [Shale] subview component XML composition extension

[David Geary]

Ah, okay, I see. This capability, which essentially lets you plug 
component attributes (including managed bean properties) into 
components at runtime, is more fine-grained than Tiles and is certainly 
JSF-specific. In fact, a while back, I had a client ask for something 
like this: they wanted to use the same "tile" for different managed 
beans, selected at runtime.

This reminds me of something I've been thinking about for some time: 
Tapestry-like HTML views that dovetail with XML component definitions 
(see Hans' Bergsten's article about dumping JSP with JSF at 
onjava.com). In that case an HTML view references components in a 
component definition file. If you could select a component definition 
file at runtime for a view, I believe you'd have analagous 
functionality to what Gary is proposing here.

david
Le Mar 13, 2005, à 11:09 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit :
David Geary Wrote:
Perhaps, but assuming we want the same functionality that Tiles
currently provides, such as XML tile definitions, tile inheritance,
role-based tiles, controllers, etc., you're going to have to reinvent
it unless you leverage Tiles somehow. You can have layout components,
certainly, but that would just be the tip of the Tiles iceberg.
I would argue that the point of the xml subview component would be to 
provide something that tiles could not.  For another example, a 
dataTable that defines first and last name.  Notice the EL for the 
value attribute of the dataTable #{managed-bean-name.persons}.  The 
managed-bean-name will be replaced with the id attribute of the 
subview component in the JSP this allows a definition to be used 
against more than one managed bean/ view controller.  In the next 
displayElement definition, a couple columns are added to the 
personTable component.  The only way to do this with JSP and tiles is 
to create two JSP's and use tiles to pull in a different fragment.

JSP Tag
<sh:xsubview id="personTable" elementId="personTable" />
<sh:xsubview id="employeeTable" elementId="employeeTable"  />
XML view definition
 <displayElement elementId="personTable" extends="dataTable">
     <attributes>
        <set name="value" useValueLateBinding="true" 
value="#{managed-bean-name.persons}"/>
        <set name="var"   value="e"/>
        <set name="rows"  value="5"/>
        <set name="first"  value="1"/>
        <set name="border" value="1"/>
        <set name="cellpadding" value="3"/>
     </attributes>

     <element renderId="1" elementId="firstNameColumn"/>
     <element renderId="2" elementId="lastNameColumn"/>
 </displayElement>
 <displayElement elementId="employeeTable" extends="personTable">
     <element renderId="0" elementId="ssnColumn"/>
     <element renderId="3" elementId="birthDateColumn"/>
 </displayElement>
I would advocate a layer of Shale components/renderers/variable
resolvers/whatever that integrate with Tiles. Perhaps we could make
layout components an option instead of layout JSP pages, as is the
default for Tiles, although I bet most people would prefer the latter.
I don't see the two options being mutually exclusive.
Gary
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