I have some custom controls that I want to include in Xpages, but I don't want them to be visible to the user or to take up space on the screen, as it is throwing my alignment off. I have looked at the properties rendered, loaded, and visible, but I don't really understand them and they don't seem to do what I want, which is to include some functionality but not change the layout.
I am sure there is a way to do this, but I can't figure it out.
Loaded means it won't be added to the component tree and only affects server-side functionality. Because it's not in the component tree (the server-side map of the page) it can't be passed to the browser or processed during partial refreshes. Rendered and visible are the same and mean they're in the component tree, so server-side processing can interact with them, but no HTML is passed to the browser for them. So you can't interact with them via CSJS. If you want it passed to the browser, available for CSJS but not visible to the user, you'll need to set the style as display:none. Another option is to put that style in a theme and allocate the themeId you choose to your custom control.
Related
I am not an expert on themes but i would like to know if it is possible to accomplish that:
Once i pull a panel into a facet i am hiding the panel by disabling the output tag and setting a special css class only for the designer client.
Has somebody tried to do that automatically in themes by checking if the panel is in a facet(Maybe ask for the key: property)?
I have tried to change the panel but i dont know how to set a certain style class based on a property of the panel.
To my best knowledge: A theme styles content rendered, not attributes that define if content gets rendered or not.
You have 2 options you could use:
create your own little extension library with controls you want to use everywhere. Add one 'containerPlaceholder' (or whatever you would call it) that doesn't render any own output, but only it's children.
use a snippet you simply paste into your source code.
don't use a panel or div, but add your custom controls to the callbacks. Makes your XPage more readable (that's what I do)
Hope that helps
When using an Include Page to dynamically load a custom control onto an XPage, is there a way to pass custom property values to the custom control as part of the include?
Peter, the include page doesn't load a custom control but another XPage. Pages don't have properties. However... the page becomes part of the component tree, so you have access to its contained controls using getComponent("thecomponent").getParameterMap (Off my head, might be called slightly different)
Does that help?
I am currently on a project redesigning an existing traditional domino web application to XPages. This application contains a web form with quite a lot of helper dialog boxes. Also notifications and validation and confirmation is done through dialogboxes.
I know I can create a custom control for each dialog box and add it to the Xpage and call the show. I even managed to load it dynamically using a dynamic content control with a facet for each dialog. Since the dialog cc contains a show() in the onClientLoad. It is easy to open a dialog by switching the content of the dynamic content control.
Still, adding all these custom controls to my XPages feels inefficient and really clutters the design tab. What's your take?
I would prefer setting the content of the dialog dynamically (Like in traditional domino you would define a form for each dialog). Is that possible?
If not is it possible to load a custom control dynamically (Like using a computed subform)?
Also for confirmation boxes I need the OK button to execute different code for each confirm. What would be the best way to implement that? Add custom parameter "functionOnOk" to the "dlgConfirm" custom control and evaluate that in the submit button?
PS: I am still using panels with dojoType=dijit.DialogBox, but will change those to extlib dialog boxes. For the confirm and messageboxes I am now using client side dijit.Dialogs with mark-up in code, but I would like the markup in XPages as well.
I know there are issues with panels with dijit.Dialog, because Dojo moves the dialog in the DOM, which prevents any SSJS in the dialog running. I don't know if that's also an issue with dijit.DialogBox, but I suspect it could be. Jeremy Hodge did some code to workaround that.
However, I would strongly recommend using the Extension Library control. Client-side dijit.Dialogs are likely to be much more difficult to code and will not allow any SSJS interaction. I'm not aware of any Dojo properties not available in the Extension Library control, and the Extension Library control also allows you to open or close the dialog both in CSJS or SSJS. It also allows you to specify an area to refresh on close.
In terms of the properties, preload is there purely to speed up showing. Are you using the refreshOnShow property? This ensures the URL or content is refreshed each time the dialog is shown. The Extension Library chapter on dialogs has a table covering all the properties. You can set the URL to point to another XPage or another web page. This may allow you to use the Dynamic Content control to pass parameters to switch the content that should appear.
In terms of the code behind the OK button, if you use the Extension Library dialog, you have all the functionality you would have outside the dialog.
One major difference that I have noticed between ExtJS 3.x and 4.x is how the rendering/layout calculation is handled for components that are rendered inside of a containing element that has display:none (NOT an Ext created/monitored containing element). In 3.x, upon showing the containing element, the Ext component it contained would be properly rendered and sized to whatever dimensions i set for it.
However, in 4.x, that same component will not be displayed at all and have a zero height and width when its containing element was shown. After it was visible if I do a call to .setSize() it would then properly be displayed. Problem is, in my application there is just no way to be able to go through all the events that could cause a hidden component to be shown, and add code to make sure its layout is manually forced to be recalculated.
So my question is, is there any way to get back 3.x's behavior in this situation for all components across the board in 4.x?
What you can try to do is set up listeners on your components that delegate to the underlying DOM elements, perhaps that will solve your issue.
However my suggestion is if at all possible is to use the framework to manage the entire page layout using Viewport. You can still suck in the HTML (if you must) and render it inside containers or panels for example. Perfect use case here is Header and Footer which are generated by server side code (jsp, gsp, asp..) and then displayed in the North or South regions of the Viewport using contentEl : 'myDivId' configuration.
I want to able to create reusable user controls within my web app and i'm wondering on how to go about doing so.
Should a user controls properties be
visible to a form that's using it?
What's the best way to go about
loading the controls on the user
control from the form thats using
it? Should there be a public method
within the control that allows you
to load it from an external form or should the user
control be loaded in the page load
event
Is it okay to nest user controls within user controls?
etc...
Thanks for any advice
1) You only need to make properties visible if any page needs to read or modify information on your control. I personally like to keep my user controls as self contained as possible, and keep this to a minimum.
2) I would just rely on the built in page life cycle to render your control, but it is important to note when each of your control's events fire in relation to your pages. You may find that there are times that you need something on your control to render before something on your page does. In this case you will need to rely on the page_init in your control more than the page_load of your control.
3) You technically can nest user controls, but things will get tricky if you need to start reading and writing information (as in your first question) from any of the nested controls. Also, the page life cycle of the nested controls gets even more important. I would avoid this if you can.