Using JXPath is exactly what XMLForms (http://www.xmlforms.org) does to allow the form model to be anything from a DOM to a JavaBean or even a DynaBean. XMLForms came out of Cocoon, but I believe they still use something simliar. In stxx (http://stxx.sf.net), a Struts extension, I have been experimenting using XML as the data model for a form. It is particuarly useful as it allows forms to be simultaneously exposed via Struts and SOAP.
Don On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Craig R. McClanahan wrote: > Quoting Mete Kural <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > >I am thinking of fliping sides on FormBean as interface, I am now > > >leaning against formbeans being an interface. FormBean is a concept > > >(properties that map to form elements), plus this idea of XML as a > > >FormBean. It could be a List or String or anything. > > > > XML as a FormBean! That got my attention... > > > > Say we want to populate customer information where a user can edit it like in > > an Excel spreadsheet. If the Action accesses a web service and receives a > > SOAP response and some XML objects in the SOAP response, sometimes it is too > > much processing to convert XML to Java objects if it is a lot of XML (for > > example: If the web service returns a list of 50 customers with detailed > > info). In such cases it may make more sense to do an XSLT transformation over > > the XML objects and render the form. Any suggestions on how this could be > > done in Struts 2.0? > > > > The key to this, IMHO, is the expression language used to bind a reference to a > field (say, in a JSP page) to some underlying data object representing the > field's value. > > One very simple approach would be to teach BeanUtils and PropertyUtils how to > treat the "." operator differently when the base object is an Element (from the > DOM API) ... it would find a child element with an element name equal to the > "property name". This would deal directly with any XML document totally based > on elements (as opposed to attributes), in a very simple (and mostly backwards > compatible) way, so it could therefore even be implemented in Struts 1.2.x. > > A more comprehensive (but tied to XML) approach would be to support the use of > XPath for referencing elements and attributes in a DOM ... but ideally have a > way to access "trees of JavaBeans" using the same search expressions. Tools > like commons-jxpath make that pretty easy to do as well. > > If you can have pluggability in your binding expressions, you can adapt to > pretty much any internal data representation. (That's one of the key reasons, > for example, that JavaServer Faces supports pluggable VariableResolver and > PropertyResolver implementations). > > > Thanks, > > Mete > > > > Craig > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
