----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 7:11
PM
Subject: [OS-webwork] WebWork2 newbie
biting off more than I can chew...
Hi Gang!
I'm still fairly new to WW2 and am using it for a
contract project I'm working on. What I'm trying to do is pretty complex so
I'm hoping to verify whether or not the framework has the built-in
capability to support what I'm trying to do. If so, any pointers in the
right direction would be greatly appreciated. I'll try to explain what I
need to accomplish as clearly as possible without putting it in the
application's context (sorry, I'm under NDA).
Description of process:
A dynamically generated web page is being
submitted. This page contains groups of fields that are represented by
different Java classes (All derived from the same Abstract base class). When
my WW Action is called, my Action's execute() method will load the instance
of the object that represents the form being submitted and it contains a
List of AbstractBaseClass containing the classes that were represented on
the form. I'm using Hibernate as my persistence layer and will have all the
info I'll need to retrieve the form instance from the DB in a hidden field
in the form being submitted.
The 2 challenges, based on the above process,
that I'm facing are as follows:
1) I'm used to extending ActionSupport and having
WW2 "automagically" set all my attributes for me. This won't work since the
attributes which need to be set will be the attributes contained in the List
collection that will be retrieved from the DB via Hibernate. My thought on
this is that each class contained in the List will have it's own
implementation of a "getFormFields" method which would extract the field
values from the request, and then I'd iterate through the list calling
"getFormFields" on each object in the list - I'm assuming WW2 can't do
anything automatically for me at this level. If that's not the case, I'd
love to hear and better ways to implement this. If that's the only way to do
what I need, which WW2 is the best class to extend for this
purpose?
2) Validation - rather than using a validation
interceptor, I'd still like to be able to use the Validation framework with
a separate validation.xml file for each of the classes that could possibly
be contained in the above mentioned list. However, I'm pretty sure the
validationStack won't work for me here since the form being validated has a
non-static structure. Once "getFormFields" from step #1 has been called,
then I'd call something like "doValidate()" which would use XWork's
validation framework to validate that populated object using it's
class-specific validation rules.
I figure #1 is possible, worst case, by passing
around the request object and extracting what I need from it. Unfortunately,
I'm not so sure about #2. I'm going to take a look at
com.opensymphony.xwork.validator.ValidationInterceptor when I get a chance
to see how it's working it magic but I thought I'd fire this off in case
anyone's done something similar.
Thanks in advance!
Peter
