Hyperlinks

It's very common that users want to click on a row in the table and continue to the next page, possibly showing the item in more detail. It's possible to have this feature generated by associating one of the table columns to one of the events exiting that same page.

First of all you will need to model an event with one or more parameters (if you are not sure how to do that then re-read this previous section), make sure this event transition is going out of the page containing the table page-variable.

Second, you will need to make sure the event will be rendered as an hyperlink and not as a regular form post, you can do that by using the andromda_presentation_web_action_type=hyperlink tagged value on the transition itself.

Finally link this event to the table page-variable and specify the column in which the hyperlink is to be rendered, this is particularly important since there might be more than a single table from which to choose. In order to achieve this we will be using the andromda_presentation_web_action_tablelink=myTable.myColumn tagged value on the transition (replace myTable with the name of your table, and notice how to dot separates both fields).

If you don't specify a column name then the hyperlink will be rendered in its own column, the link will show the name of your event, rather than the cell value.

Submitting a row

Not only hyperlinks can be modeled this way, also events that work on individual rows. This is very similar to the modeling of hyperlink events, except that here the tagged value should not be set to hyperlink, but to form, like this: andromda_presentation_web_action_type=form (which is the default value if it has not been specified, so you don't actually need to set it).

Please note that it is not possible to use a hyperlink when submitting a row. It would be possible only when none of the row values are updateable, but in order to not overly complicate the usage of the bpm4struts cartridge by adding more/complex modeling constraints we prefer to simply restrict sending a row's value using the andromda_presentation_web_action_type=form tagged value.

Model an event going out of the page showing the table, add one or more parameters to this event. Every one of these parameters will now be rendered in a widget, and next to each row there will be a button to apply this action on it. Clicking the button will invoke a JavaScript function that will sumbit a form to the target action; browsers not supporting JavaScript or having JavaScript disabled will not be able to use this functionality.

Don't forget to add the tagged value, but it's not needed to specify any column this time: andromda_presentation_web_action_tablelink=myTable No need to specify a column name in this tagged value as these buttons will always be put in their own column.

Any widget is allowed, but if you still prefer to have plain text rendered instead of a widget then simply use the plaintext field type, like this:

    andromda_presentation_web_view_field_type=plaintext

If there are many events linked to the same table, and the same parameter is repeated across different events, then the hyperlink events with take priority, meaning you will never see any input widget for those parameters in an hyperlink event.

It's possible to have an image instead of an hyperlink or button, for this you'll have to use the andromda_presentation_web_action_type=image tagged value on the event transition. An entry in the resource bundle will be generated for the image, and the value will be resolved against the current contextPath (much like the struts tags taking a page attribute).

This has the advantage that the image can be i18n'ed, allowing you to display a different image per language or locale.

By default the image will be missing from the generated application, you will have to add it manually to your source directory and have it copied into the war bundle. You can use the copy-over feature to achieve this.

Submitting selected rows

In addition to the submittal of a specific row it is also possible to select a couple of rows and submit them, mind you, this mechanism works a little different than one might expect.

This feature is only able to submit one single value per row, it is not possible to submit all column values for all selected rows.

In order to achieve this we use the table link and action type tagged values as before, only this time the value is of the action type is table, like this:

    andromda_presentation_web_action_tablelink=myTable
    andromda_presentation_web_action_type=table

Let's list the things to do in order to successfully make use of this feature:

1. make sure you have a table page-variable
2. have an action with a single event parameter, make sure this parameter carries the same name as one of the table columns, it will be that column's value that will be sent when the checkbox for the row is checked
3. add the andromda_presentation_web_action_tablelink tagged value on the action transition
4. add the andromda_presentation_web_action_type=table tagged value on the action transition

In summary: this will result in the cartridge having generated code that will place a checkbox in front of each row, the checkbox carries the value of the table column with the same name as the event parameter modeled on the transition. Each such action will have a button and there's also a button to select or deselect all rows. When a checkbox is selected its corresponding value will be sent to the server when one of the action buttons is clicked.

Multibox

One very special type of widget, which is a little more complicated to understand at first, is the multibox widget. Basically it allows you to render checkboxes whose checked statuses need to be controlled by another property.

Let's say you want to render a checkbox for each row, but the value behind is not of a boolean type but a String; in that case you can setup a page-variable which holds an array or a Collection of String instances, when a value for a specific row matches at least one of the elements the checkbox will be checked.

The available column of the table in the example image below has the following tagged values:

andromda_presentation_web_view_field_tablelink=itemList
andromda_presentation_web_view_field_type=multibox
andromda_struts_view_field_multibox=availableItems

In this example the availableItems page-variable is used to match the available property against.

The 'id' hyperlink

In the id column you can see an hyperlink for each row. This has been achieved by modeling the following things:

• model an event going out of the page
• add a parameter to this event's trigger, give it the name id
• add the andromda_presentation_web_action_tablelink tag to the event, the value should be the name of the table separated from the column name using a dot, ie. itemList.id. Not specifying the column name will make put this link in a separate column on the right.
• add the andromda_presentation_web_action_type=hyperlink tag to the event, this denotes this action to be rendered as an hyperlink pointing to the target Struts action.
• add the andromda_presentation_web_view_field_type=link tagged value to the 'id' event trigger parameter. Unless you do this the field will be rendered using the default widget which will be a text-input field.

This feature is interesting when you want to see the details of a specific item in the list.

The 'publisher' hyperlink

Equivalent to the id hyperlink, except that this time we add two parameters to this event: id and publisher.

Make sure to have the hyperlink point to the publisher column, like this: andromda_presentation_web_action_tablelink=itemList.publisher.

This feature is interesting when you want to see information on a related property, in this case the homepage of the company or person that has published this item.

The 'edition', 'available' and 'buy' widgets

All these elements make up a specific event, which has been modeled like this:

• model an event going out of the page, call it buy
• for each field model a parameter, specify the appropriate widget for each of these parameters (go here if you don't remember how to do that), in this example edition is a 'select' and available is a 'multibox'
• add the andromda_presentation_web_action_tablelink tag to the event, the value should be the name of the table

If you wish to include the title parameter but you don't want to have it rendered as an input field, then simply use the andromda_presentation_web_view_field_type=plaintext tagged value on that parameter.