Think "computed subform", but in Xpages.
On one of my custom controls, depending on a certain value, I want to either present a custom control that renders a drop-down list using a combobox or renders an input box with a type-ahead.
This is on a custom control that renders a view, with all view configuration choices handled by a document rather than design, so several different views utilize the same custom control.
For example: I have a By Status view using the custom control that has status as the first column and we use a combobox to allow the user to select which Status value to filter by. Another view is sorted by Requisition number and I want to use a type-ahead instead of the combobox.
My preference is to use the same dynamic view custom control for both and have a formula that determines which of the two (comboBox or inputText) to use. How do I compute which custom control to load?
(Credit for the dynamic view control goes to Scott Good's folks over at Teamworks Solutions.)
During it's life cycle, an XPage exists in two places. First of all a representation of the XPage's relevant components is stored on the server. Then the page goes through a lifecycle, retrieving properties from documents, checking which components should be rendered, retrieving the data for any repeating control such as a View Panel etc., and passing the relevant HTML to the browser. The browser is the second place it exists.
So you can't compute a custom control as such. All you can do is set the loaded property, and loaded needs to be based on a non-dynamic calculation such as a viewScope variable, the current XPage name, a view name stored on the XPage etc. What you would have difficulty doing would be using a different custom control based on data on that row entry.
The other option is the Dynamic Content control or Switch control from the Extension Library. Both are similar to using the loaded property, in that you're putting both custom controls on the page and choosing which to display.
From what you're describing, the loaded property should cover what you need.
Some time back I saw this question on StackOverflow where the author had used Include Page control (xp:include) to include custom controls using pageName attribute based on formula.
<xp:include>
<xp:this.pageName><![CDATA[${javascript:sessionScope.ccPageName + ".xsp";}]]> </xp:this.pageName>
</xp:include>
Similar to the technique described by Paul Withers in his answer the attribute of pageName is also computed on page load.
Related
I have a dynamiccontent control on a XPage with a facet containing a custom control which has a viewpanel in it. I also have a second facet in the dynamiccontent control containing a custom control which is connected to a document data source.
What I am trying to figure out is when the viewpanel custom control is loaded in the dynamiccontent how do I get the links in the viewpanel custom control to load the dynamiccontent facet containing the custom control connected to the document data source and display the document?
I think the Dynamic Content example in the Extension Library Demo database is self explaining. It use also a view and a document
Well I'ver always found ViewPanels to be very limiting if you want to do anything fancy. I don't think you can easily use any of the built in features. I would personally use a Repeat Control and then have a button that takes the intended document and gets the unid. You can then put that unid into a viewScope variable, change your dynamic content control to the document facet and have that custom control get the unid from viewScope to get the correct document.
I long time ago I did a rather crappy demo that showed a couple of these techniques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSLAy6U2_3A
The CSS attempt failed there but you should be able to see a repeat control and putting the unid into scope etc. It might help you a little.
I'm using the xp:include tag for displaying custom controls according business rules.
I configured my custom controls with parameters (the custom prperties) that I used through the compositeData syntax.
My question is :
How can I declare the computed xpages for passing arguments to my custom control ?
Switch control or Dynamic Content Control may be a better option to choose. The difference is Switch control loads all facets into the component tree, Dynamic Content Control only loads the current facet to be displayed. So if they're specific to different parts in the business process, Dynamic Content Control may be more suitable.
Alternatively, use different XPages for different stages in the business process. With XPages links from views can be computed to go to a specific XPage rather than a single one defined for the form.
Okay... this is a little difficult to explain but I will try my best.
In Custom Control while adding properties in Property Definition we can set "Allow multiple instances" which allows us to add multiple instances of that property when the control is embedded in XPage.
Similarly, I need to know whether it is possible to add (and remove) Editable Areas in a custom control when it is embedded in XPage? What I plan is that I would have a repeat control inside my custom control and I would be able to put the contents in each editable area in every loop of that repeat.
Is this the right way to go about or am I looking at this problem incorrectly? Any solution not involving editable areas is also welcome :)
Update 4 Apr 2013:
A use case context I am looking for is a simple carousel where contents of each screen in carousel can have different contents. These contents would be put into each (dynamically added) editable area. The contents can be very different from each other with one screen containing only text, other only image and another both image and text.
Look at the table walker example in the 26 original exercises. It does mostly what you are looking for (conceptually). You won't need multiple editable areas. Whatever is inside the repeat gets repeated.
What you want to do is to give the control a custom property "boolean editMode" so you can render that one line to be edited - if that's the UI pattern you want to follow.
You also could consider a dojo table with Ajax which allows for a familiar spreadsheet UI
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 have a radio button group that gets it's values using an #Dblookup. In addition to the name to appear in the radio button group, the document also has a field to determine if another field on the xPage should be displayed or not.
If the field is displayed then it should be required.
I can do the conditional validation just fine in SSJS using an #DbLookup to lookup the document selected in the radio button group.
But I would like to be able to do it CS so it is faster and so it looks like my other validations. Is there anyway to do this?
If a field is not rendered then the node will not exist in the DOM. Your CS javascript would need to examine the DOM and look for the node, normally by looking for a specific ID. As Xpages changes the ID's sent to the browser your validation function would either need to be computed so it would know what ID to look for or you would need to look for it in some other unique way ( like add a css class name to just that field and then do a DOM search for nodes with that class name )
Once you can determine if the field has been rendered then you can run your usual CS validation routine against the other field.
If you're using client-side validation throughout your app, setting the required property on the field should achieve what you need.
If not, it may be worth looking at the Extension Library Dojo Validation Text Box. All the Extension Library Dojo control run client-side validation, even if validation is set as server-side at application level. Bear in mind that for the Dojo Validation Text Box, just setting the required property is not enough. You need to add more specific validation.
After that, the key is to ensure the partial refresh event on your radio group is set to skip validation. I haven't tried, but I believe that should achieve what you need.