Advice in edit form design for JSF - jsf

I have a complex Bean object that I want to update. Because it is too much complex, it can't be edited in the DataTable (inplace editing). Let's say that my page have this structure:
-> Input Form
-> DataTable for Listing
So I save the object using the Input Form and it appears inside the DataTable. This part is easy. Now, I need to edit the object inside the DataTable. Since the object is too much complex, it is not viable to edit in-place. So I must pick the row data and put it in a form to be able to sumbit it.
My problem is, I haven't come to a way of editing the data that I would like.
I've done it in multiple ways.
I've created a page only for the edit. I call the page passing the object's ID in the URL.
I copied the Input Form inside a Dialog. While this is great for editing, using a dialog had led me into problems (complex validations patterns, dialogs inside dialogs, etc).
I put the row data back into the Input Form and use Primefaces-Extensions spotlight component to ensure that the user will only work within the form. I've added a button to cancel edition also.
I didn't like any of them, although the third is the best of them, to me. But I'm also out of ideas of how to design data editing. Do you guys have some edit designs that you would like to share?
Thanks in advance.

Related

Command Not Handled Exception

I'm new to Domino Designer. I'm trying to modify an existing application which is running on a remote server. I create a blank xPage and view in browser and it works. I add a label and view in browser and it works. I add a combo box and setup a data source for my xPage. The data source is in the current application and I'm using a view. I setup my combo to point to that data source and specify BindTo value. I view it in browser and I get Error 500 "HTTP Web Server: Command Not Handled Exception" I can open the view that I've used and see all the data in the view. I can even add, edit, and delete from the view.
Ideas... Thnxs in advance.
Additional Info. I've added a "View" from "Container Controls" and used the same data source and the same view and it also works in the browser.
The error being printed is:
javax.faces.el.PropertyNotFoundException: Error getting property 'CompanyName' from bean of type lotus.domino.local.View
com.sun.faces.el.PropertyResolverImpl.getValue(PropertyResolverImpl.java:119)
com.ibm.xsp.el.PropertyResolverImpl.getValue(PropertyResolverImpl.java:144)
com.sun.faces.el.impl.ArraySuffix.evaluate(ArraySuffix.java:182)
com.sun.faces.el.impl.ComplexValue.evaluate(ComplexValue.java:163)
com.sun.faces.el.impl.ExpressionEvaluatorImpl.evaluate(ExpressionEvaluatorImpl.j‌​ava:257)
com.sun.faces.el.ValueBindingImpl.getValue(ValueBindingImpl.java:150) ....
This was already answered in the comments, but I want to write a better answer.
The problem in this case is that a view data source is being used for editing a document. Directly, this is not a possibility, though there are a few great ways to get around this. The first way, and my favorite, is to use an inline form. I think the Extension Library Demo database offers a few great examples of how to go about doing this. One way is to use a tooltip dialog. Another way is an inline form. A repeater is used and for every row in the view, a hidden panel can be made which contains the document data source and all field which are required to be changeable. By clicking on a button or link, the panel is made visible. This is my favorite variant because it is simple, quick, and generally looks great.
Another way to go about this is to have a view data source only, but use scripts to retrieve the document and set the values in the background and then save and release. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve.
My main recommendation is to look at the ExtLib demo and take a look at what they are doing there.

Opening different xpages forms from a view panel

I have an Xpages application that pulls data from another .nsf file. I have a view panel linked to a view in that db. The view has documents with several different forms in it. I want to be able to open each document in it's own form(xpage).
How do I write a computed At Runtime, open selected document using: statement that will select the correct Xpage to present the document.
If you use the Data View component instead of a View Panel, you can compute the pageName attribute, referencing the var attribute to return a different value for each row based on the document that row represents. The flexibility of the Data View component also makes it easier to make your app look more like a modern web application and less like an Excel spreadsheet. As an additional bonus, the mobile theme invokes a renderer that makes each Data View instance look like a native mobile list, so using Data Views instead of View Panels simplifies mobile development.
You have 2 options:
use "use xpage associated with form" and edit the form's property
use a SSJS formula to compute the Form. You provide a variable name in the view control var to access a view row as XSPViewEntry. If the Form is in a view column even one you don't display you use .getColumnValue otherwise getDocument.getItemValueString
Does that work for you?
Maybe this mothed can help you: Unable to get document page name for
Hope this helps
Mark
I had a similar problem today. I use only one form but 3 different xpages for associated with this form. I have 3 different document types in the view. I used rowData the get the type of the document.
try{
var v=rowData.getColumnValue("form");
if(v.indexOf("x")> -1){var page ="x.xsp"}
else if(v.indexOf("y") > -1){var page = "y.xsp"}
else{var page = "z.xsp"}
}catch(e){
var page = "x.xsp"
}
So to your view you can create a column with the value of the form and you can use it.
I have used the extension library Dynamic View control which has an event you can code to get a handle to the NotesViewEntry which was selected. See the demo database page Domino_DynamicView.xsp and the Custom Event Handler tab for an example.
Note, in 8.5.3 (I have not upgraded yet) if you add or edit the eventHandler for onColumnClick it will be added to the XPages source as an xe:eventHandler. It needs to be an xp:eventHandler to work. The way to do it is to copy the code in the source from the exiting event and delete it. Recreate the event and update the code. Then go back into the source and change the tags within the eventHandler to xp:.

Have to push button twice to get partial refresh to work

Background: Xpage with multiple data sources. Each row of tabbed table contains an edit panel bound to a different data source than the main page. Each page contains a table to enter new documents. These documents are children of the main document. There is a view control that shows the user created documents immediately. The button in the table saves the document in addition to adding some control fields. It does a partial refresh of the editPanel.
Recently I added validation to the fields in the entry table. I use a function, and prevent updating from anything but the button. I am using Tommy Valand's method from this blog post: http://dontpanic82.blogspot.com/2010/03/xpages-making-validation-behave.html. If I don't use Tommy's method, then the validators fire when switching tabs, and are useless.
All of this works sort of, but I am experiencing the following issues.
1) I have to push the button twice to get the partial refresh to fire. Not only that, but the validation messages to not fire until the button is pushed twice. The first part was still an issue prior to adding the validation.
2) The table values do not clear after the refresh does happen. This used to work prior to adding the validation. The only way to get the values to clear now, is to do a full refresh (F5).
I really just need partial refresh to behave like it should. Any help is greatly appreciated.
I am answering my own question because I think that I might have found out why the partial refresh was acting so flaky. Here is what I did that solved my issues: Each tab had an editPanel. If I make the edit panel do a partial refresh to itself then the buttons on that panel seems to behave as you would expect them to.
When I create a new core control panel, the default in No submission. I do not know whether this issue manifests itself only when using multiple data sources and/or tabbed tables. Hopefully this fix will be of use to someone down the road. It is worth a try if you are having issues with partial refresh working correctly.

Reusable edit form in Apache Wicket

I have a simple ContactEditPanel which contains a form and a number of textfields. Up until now I included an AjaxSubmitLink in this panel which, if the form content is valid, saves/updates the Contact instance contained in the Panel model. So far so simple. However now I'd like to remove the link in order that I may, depending on the context in which I use the ContactEditPanel, place the submit link at different levels of my overall component hierarchy. For instance in one context I'd like to use to flip between ContactEditPanel and ContactViewPanel with a bar of actions above the current view (edit | save , cancel). Another context would be to use ContactEditPanel in a standalone way (maybe part of a multi-step process) with just a save link below.
I was contemplating refactoring my ContactEditPanel to extends FormComponentPanel rather than Panel as described here but I'm not sure whether this is the right approach and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this.
Any help would be most appreciated!
Many Thanks,
A
Your using the panel like a FormComponent so extend FormComponentPanel, it will allow you to keep all the validation you write contained to the component and also allow you to reuse it as you wish.
Just think of it as you've created a new FormComponent, like a TextField or DropDownChoice.

jsf popupwindow with a datatable

I have a form which one of it's fields is a code and description, also a button for opening a popup window that contains a list of all of the available codes.
when the user double clickes a row from that table i want to set these values to the code and description. - how can this be done?
Another question, I want to create this popup and table to be initialized dynamically - by that i mean that if i have a few forms in my application, when ever i have a field which has a description i want to be able to open this popup and to see the available list for that field. (every field can be from a diffrent table). is it possible to create something like that? if so, how?
Any help will be appritiated,
Thank's In Advance.
Yes, it is possible. Even more, many component libraries have ready to use popup/dialog components, such as RichFaces with <rich:popupPanel> and PrimeFaces with <p:dialog>.
If you do not want to use a component library for some reason, you would need to create a custom component for this which generates basically an absolutely positioned HTML <div> element with a CSS overlay which get shown/hidden by JS on a particular click/action. The HTML/CSS/JS part should be relatively simple if you are familiar with those languages. The JSF part is somewhat hard if you have never created a custom component before, but it should be possible with a composite component as well, so you could also just create one with pure XHTML. The updating/refreshing can just take place by the usual <f:ajax> means.

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