Hi Kevin,
On 07/04/2011 15:13, Kevin Meyer wrote:
One question that was raised was: how does Isis HTML-based viewers handle
1) auto-completion / suggestions in fields and
2) altering remaining content based on prior content values?
For (1), this smacks of Ajax? [1]
It's definitely do-able. Indeed, Naked Objects MVC has this working,
with a contribution from one of their users [2]
For (2), the UI should disable certain remaining fields if, for example,
a prior field is set to "false" (checkbox cleared). I realise that this
means shunting some "isDisabled"-type checks into script in the UI, and
not relying on the metamodel(?) / framework..
This is trickier, and will depend on the viewer design.
At the moment, the Wicket viewer renders objects either in edit mode or
in view mode. But for the interaction design you're describing here
implies is something half-way between the two ... that the object is
always implicitly in an edit mode and tabbing out of a field will submit
a change immediately.
That could work, but only for simple-ish objects. Managing the
interaction between different properties that have dependencies between
them (eg from/to date) could be difficult in the general case if there
isn't a "batch update" mechanism (which is what the edit mode basically
provides).
I suggested that in this case, the information would have to be captured
over multiple "pages", as the business logic is exercised...?
Dan - sounds like your "process wizard" (?) as referenced in your
book...
Yes, the best approach might be to write a "process object" (as I
described it; another term that is used and I think is becoming more
popular is "view model object") which could be used for this instead.
This would allow one to do the careful analysis to ensure that
intra-property dependencies are properly thought through (eg by
carefully tracking the implied state of the object and rendering
properties appropriately with respect to its state).
In principle the Wicket viewer could support this, because it allows
different pages to be used for different objects. I daresay Rob's
Scimpi viewer could support this too.
Dan
[2] http://forum.nakedobjects.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3331
<http://forum.nakedobjects.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3331>
[1] http://www.wicket-library.com/wicket-examples/ajax/choice?1
