> My thinking is that spanning multiple grid columns would also be tricky with
> the current implementation. Is there any plan to allow the TableView to
> contain components instead of just data in the future?
TableView isn't meant to contain other components (it extends Component rather
than Container). For that, you'd want to use TablePane.
> 3. Assigning values and display text to drop lists and radio buttons. Let's
> say I create a ButtonList. I then create a GetQuery to retrieve some JSON
> from my application server, which is automatically placed into an ArrayList
> of HashMaps by the JSON serializer. So, let's assume that I'm querying a
> product database, and I'm getting back an array of hashmaps that look like
> {productID:33443435, productName:'Widget Number 1', productDescription:'Blah
> blah blah'}, how do I put this into my ButtonList so that the user sees the
> product name in the drop list, but when it is serialized and sent back to the
> server, the id is what is actually sent? When I simply
> setListData(myArrayofHashMaps), the drop list actually displays the results
> of the toString() method of each hash map, which is not what is desired. It
> almost seems like the ButtonList.setListData() method will only accept a one
> dimensional array of strings.
>
> It sounds like what you need is a custom renderer for your ListButton that is
> capable of rendering your hashmaps by displaying the product name. In my
> Pivot apps, I've written a custom "MapRenderer" that takes a JSON path
> property and renders maps by getting the value associated with that key. The
> list button's "data renderer" will render the selected item when the dropdown
> is collapsed, and the "item renderer" will render each item in the dropdown
> when it's expanded.
>
> I think I understand what you're saying here, but I'm not quite sure I
> understand how the whole rendering system works well enough yet to make this
> happen, but I will attempt this tomorrow and see if I can get it working. I
> think I may have previously confused myself by assuming that Pivot was
> converting my Map to a ListItem, and since the ListItem only had a text and
> icon property, there was no place to store a separate value property. Based
> on what you said, now I realize (I think) that a ListItem is one of any
> object type you can put in a ButtonList, there just happens to already be a
> renderer for it. If you choose to use some other Object type, then the
> default renderer will simply use that Object's toString() method to render
> each option (which is of course exactly what I saw with my List of Maps). I
> think it's becoming more clear now, but correct me if I'm getting even
> farther off base...
Basically, renderers are treated like "rubber stamps". They don't actually
exist in the component hierarchy - they are used "behind the scenes" by the
skin when the skin is called to paint(). The skin first paints itself, then
calls the renderer's paint() method to draw the content.
The best way to learn about how renderers work is probably to look at the code
in org.apache.pivot.wtk.content, but please let us know if you have any
additional questions.
Greg
