Opened new document in xpinc. How to close window or redirect to parent document? - xpages

Question

I'm XPage-ing a form in a big classic notes application, and I'm struggling to find a way to end the interaction with the form that presents a good UI. Here's my scenario:
1) Parent document (classic notes) is opened from a view
2) Button on parent document opens child document in XPiNC using notes:/// link.
3) Cancel button on child document XPage......
I've tried the following approaches:
a) Use window.close()
I've done lots of googling on this one, and various approaches don't seem to work for me. window.close() is supposed to work if you call it from a window that was opened with window.open, so I tried window.open("closeMe.xsp", "_self") to see if this would give me a window that could be closed by an xpage with window.close() in the onClientLoad client side event. No luck there. The following questions make suggestions but don't provide a solution (apart from a third party product)
How do I close my window in Xpage?
How to close xpages in notes client? I use CSJS window.close but it's not working
b) Redirect to parent document
My next idea was to redirect to the parent document - it's already open in the Notes client. However, I found that when I redirect (using facesContext.getExternalContext().redirect("Notes:///url" ) it does indeed jump to the parent document, but it leaves a blank window open in the tab where the XPage was.
My next try was to close the parent in the original calling LotusScript, then redirect to the parent in the cancel button. This works too - you get to the parent document, but then if you press the escape key or close the tab with the parent document, it leaves you with an empty window again.
Any ideas? I like the idea of being able to return to the newly-opened parent document because I could expect an embedded view to be refreshed with my new child document, but at the moment I'll take anything that works. :)
Cheers,
Brendan

Answer 1

You are stuck between a rock and a hard place. XPiNC and classic Notes don't mix that easily. But there is hope. Head over to the Composite Application Wiki. There you will find that you can open a composite instead of a document which allows you to have tabs and stuff inside a composite.
It is also the way a classic application and a XPages (publish/subscribe using the property broker) can exchange data. Make sure you read the comments too. Karsten has good further links.
I don't have a working example for what you exactly want to do, but Composite feels like the best bet you have.

Answer 2

I found a partial solution, Java is your friend. It works in a button should work in a link too. The only problem is when called from an event like onClose the current xpage looses focus and the current pages stays open. I tried to emulate send keys and it presses the ESC key. It works fine from a button in.
Button on CLick event
<xp:button value="Label" id="button1">
<xp:eventHandler event="onclick" submit="true"
refreshMode="complete">
<xp:this.action><![CDATA[#{javascript:var robot:java.awt.Robot= new java.awt.Robot;var event:java.awt.event.KeyEvent=java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
robot.keyPress(event.VK_ESCAPE);
robot.keyRelease(event.VK_ESCAPE);
enter code here}]]>
</xp:eventHandler>
</xp:button>