Seam #Name on entity classes? - components

I've first seen annotating Seam entity classes here
http://www.developer.com/java/ejb/article.php/10931_3715171_5/Introducing-JBossreg-Seam.htm
and for whatever reason I've been doing so ever since:
#Entity
#Table (name= "GADGET")
#Name("gadget")
public class GadgetBean implements Serializable {
private String mDescription = "";
private String mType = "";
...
}
However, I do not use "entity components" like this anywhere in my views. Can anyone explain the use of this and what this gains? Is it a non-practice?

If you are not using any of these entity components in your views, you should remove the #Name annotation.
Seam is great, but seam components come with overhead in the way of interceptors firing every time you access a method in that class. Since you are not accessing these attributes in your view, there is no need to make them into seam components. You are incurring the interceptor overhead every time you use a getter or setter from your entity beans.
Seam-gen, the tool used to create seam projects, can also generate entities that are reverse-engineered from your database tables. By default, the seam-gen entity generator does NOT add the #Name annotation to these classes. That should tell you something!
Hope this helps.

Related

How to have one instance of Backing Bean per Browser tab?

My environment: Java 7/JSF 2.1/PrimeFaces 6.1.
My goal: to have a certain page of my application instantiated many times, one for each browser tab, each one with a different context.
My problem: everytime I open a second browser tab requesting from the same url, but with different object id, the previous one is destroyed, so only one backing bean instance is kept alive.
How do I know that: In my backing bean I have one method annotated with #PosConstruct and other with #PreDestroy, so I can track the life cicle of the instances.
My backing bean is annotated as follows:
#ViewController
public class MyBackingBeanMB extends AbstractBackingBeanMB {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
// many fields and methods
}
The #ViewController annotation is provided by the application framework I have to use. Such an annotation is declared as:
#Named
#Controller
#Stereotype
#ViewScoped // For me, this should do the trick, but...
#Target(value={TYPE})
#Retention(value=RUNTIME)
#Inherited
public #interface ViewController {
}
Update 1:
The #Controller annotation is also provided by the framework I use and is declared as:
#InterceptorBinding
#Inherited
#Target({ TYPE, METHOD })
#Retention(RUNTIME)
public #interface Controller {
}
Any ideas of what could be wrong?
TIA.
After some digging in the Internet I found Apache DeltaSpike, which provider a new kind of managed bean scope, WindowScoped.
Managed beans annotated with #WindowScoped` operate just like I wanted, providing me with the exact behaviour I needed and it is absolutely compatible with the framework I have to use.

Can a managed bean extends a DTO

I have 2 classes (managed beans) in my business that of type X, the 2 classes merely have the same attributes except for 3 attributes, can i make a DTO contains all the attributes in the 2 beans and let them extends this DTO or i have to group the attributes in the DTO and associate it with the 2 beans so that each bean could set and get its attributes, i want to know the appropriate solution from the point of design, another question is it a correct design for the managed bean and the DTO to have a relation directly.
You could do that but it'd be error-prone, violating the MVC paradigm and simply a bad practice as far as I'm concerned.
Consider and compare two simple cases. First case is a bean extending a DTO and the second case is a bean containing a DTO.
Managed bean that extends a DTO
public class ContactDto {
private String name;
}
public class ContactBean extends ContactDto {
//has name inherited
private boolean renderedAdminPanel;
public void action { }
}
In this case who will be producing managed beans? When will they be instantiated and how? Will your DAO be tightly coupled with ContacyBean? What if you decide to give up using DTOs and use detached entities instead?
All of it increases discrepancies in your architecture and makes it at the very least less manageable.
Now let's consider the alternative approach.
Managed bean that contains a DTO
public class ContactBean {
private ContactDto contactDto;//all fields contained inside
#PostConstruct
public void init() {
//get data from your service based on injected parameter's value and assign it to your DTO
}
private boolean renderedAdminPanel;
public void action { }
}
In this case all logics is crystal clear. Also, you don't need to write 'extras', because all of your properties will be available in EL context with an additional accessor. Your object's lifecycle is predictable and well-formed.
Ultimately, a DTO is a DTO and you wouldn't like to spice it up with additional and possibly secure information, like injected current user, contexts, session variables, etc. to pass that information around. Keep it simple and in its own place.

JSF 2.1 - getting FacesContext strategy

I am developing webapp where my MVC controller is JSF 2.1. I have several methods that are based on
FacesContext.getCurrentInstance()
I use this to
put/retrieve values from Flash scope
add messages on view
get request params map
examples:
public void addInfoMessage(String title, String description){
FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().addMessage(null, new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_INFO,title, description));
}
and
public void putFlashMessage(String code, String value){
FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getFlash().put(code, value);
}
etc.
I'm just wondering where is proper place to put this methods if I use this on every single managed bean? I consider two options:
a) create class "JSFUtils", where all method are public and static
b) create super class "ManagedBean" with no declared scope and no declared #ManagedBean annotation, but with these public methods. Every managed bean should be child of these class so it will have inherited these methods.
An utility class is the recommended approach. Instead of reinventing your own, you can use an existing JSF utility library, such as OmniFaces which has Faces and Messages utility classes for the purpose.
String foo = Faces.getRequestParameter("foo");
Messages.create(summary).detail(detail).add();
Messages.addGlobalInfo(summary); // Without detail.
Faces.setFlashAttribute(key, value);
You can indeed also abstract it away as a "super bean", but this is not reusable and you would keep repeating yourself in every JSF project. Also, a class can extend from only one class. So if your bean happen to need to extend from another super class, then you're lost.
I would recommend a utility class for the purpose simply because you allow the flexibility to extend other useful classes, such as those that have some common logic that you'd like to share across other beans.
Having said that, a JSFUtils class can grow quite cluttered with time with many many methods and can become very unmanageable. It would be better to categorize the util methods and put them in separate static utility classes.

JSF Web application -DAO layer with static methods

Hi I have a question about best practices vs safe programming in building a JSF Web Applicaiton.
I have employee.xhtml page having backing Bean - EmployeeBean. All the variables that I declare in the backing bean are non static and have getter and setter methods. For example:
ArrayList <Employee> alEmployees = new ArrayList<Employee>();
int userId;
The constructor of the BackingBean loads the employees. I acheive this by calling a static method in delegate.
userId = //some value.
alEmployees = EmployeeDelegate.loadEmployees(userId);
The Delegate method calls a static method in DAO Class.
Will the static methods cause any data concurrency issues when n users are using the application at same time? I mean userId 56 seeing userId 75 list when both are using the application same time?
Is it really advisable to have static methods in Delegate and DAO layer?
Please let me know if I was not clear.
Thanks
If the EmployeeDelegate does not hold any class variables which is sensitive to changes caused by method calls and/or has influence on how methods behave, then it's safe to do so.
You however have another major problem with this approach. The delegate should be an interface so that you can easily substitute it with a different implementation. This approach suggests that the delegate is not an interface at all (since it can impossibly have static methods).

how to avoid model code duplication with JSF and JPA

I'm new to JSF and am wondering if I got things right. Let's say I have a simple CMS that makes it possible to write pages.
First, I define a JPA entity called Page:
#Entity
public class Page {
#Id
#GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
#Column
private Long id;
#Column private String title;
#Column private String content;
// getters & setters ...
}
Then I would like in a view to create Page-s. For that, it looks like I need a page bean of some sort. For now I handled things like this:
#Model
public class PageBean {
private Page page = new Page();
public String getTitle() {
return page.getTitle();
}
public void setTitle(String title) {
page.setTitle(title);
}
// rest of properties & getters & setters ...
public void save() {
// persist using EntityManager
}
}
My question is the following one: given that my JPA entity model and the model I want to use in the views are most of the time exactly the same, is there a way of avoiding to have to create a batch of getters & setters in the PageBean?
I read somewhere that you should not use a same bean as JPA entity and JSF model bean (because JSF does repeated calls to getters that may affect JPA), yet I do wonder if there is not a simpler way that would help avoiding this kind of code duplication. Especially when you've got an application with a large model and in many instances do not require anything special in the view beans, it looks like this can get quite cumbersome.
[...] given that my JPA entity model and the model I want to use in the views are most of the time exactly the same, is there a way of avoiding to have to create a batch of getters & setters in the PageBean?
I don't see the point of using a wrapper around an Entity and adding such a layer is indeed duplication. Just use the entity from your JSF page. Yes, this introduce some sort of coupling between the view and the domain but, in general, modifying the database usually means adding or removing fields on the view. In other words, I don't buy the "decoupling" argument and I've written enough extra layers, mapping code, boilerplate code, etc to favor the simple approach when possible.
I read somewhere that you should not use a same bean as JPA entity and JSF model bean (because JSF does repeated calls to getters that may affect JPA)
I'd be interested if you could provide a reference but a wrapper class (delegating calls to the entity) is not going to change anything if there is a problem somewhere.
Just in case, some additional resources:
EclipseLink/Examples/JPA/JSF Tutorial
It's not code duplication. The are no algorithms duplicated. The business logic is still in one place.
What your bean is doing is just connecting the View to the Domain model. This is good, it's part of the MVC pattern.
If you were using your JPA entity as your backing bean, you would be breaking the MVC pattern. For example, if one day instead of displaying a plain String you would need to add a Date to this String because the view requires so (i.e. interface requirements), are you going to write this view logic inside the JPA class? That does not make sense, mixing domain model and view model.
On the other hand, why the view has to know about how the domain is implemented? What if the domain values format change? (For example you save a timestamp String instead a date class in de Database for performance reasons). All you would need to do is just rewrite the method in the backing bean, it would take the timestamp and adapt it to a Date so everything would work as it was before. Just one change outside the JPA class. If you had it in the JPA class you would end up maintaining both logics in just one class (interface logic and domain logic).
What if you want to develop a new view (for example for mobile version)? Are you gonna add even more code to the JPA class? It would be better to keep the JPA as it was and create another Bean (that extends a common bean for both views) for the mobile version.
If after all this, you still want to not to write the getters and setters, you can do
#{myBean.page.title}
all you need is a getPage() inside the backing bean.

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