Oracle JDeveloper 11g Release 2 Tutorials - Using a Bean Data Control

Using a Bean Data Control

You will use wizards to quickly create an application and a project, and a blank JSF page. To create a simple bean object you will generate a starter Java class, then use the source editor to add two String properties and getter and setter methods on the properties. You will also create a service bean and add a business method that returns a list of names and their email addresses.

Purpose	Duration	Application
This tutorial shows you how to create a simple databound application using JavaBeans and Oracle ADF Faces. To see the complete application you will create, click the Download button to download a zip of the final application, and then unzip it in your JDeveloper `mywork` folder.	40 minutes

Java Code Insight, the Java-specific implementation of completion insight
Code Assist to fix common problems
Import statement assistance and sorting
Automatic doc comment templates
Customizable sorting and expansion for the Structure window
Distinctive highlighting for syntax and semantic errors
Customizable code separators

Press F1 in the source editor if you want to learn more about these features.

In the Generate Accessors dialog, select Contact. Make sure public is selected in the Scope dropdown list, then click OK.
In the source editor, add a constructor that instantiates a new object using values passed as arguments.

For example, after the generated method:

public String getEmail() { return email; }

Add the following method:

public Contact(String name, String email) {
this.name = name;
this.email = email;
}

Click Save All to save your work.

In the Application Navigator, you should see Contact.java in the acme.bean package in the Application Sources folder.

The tabs at the top of the editor window are document tabs.

Read more...

Sample code in source editor

Selecting a document tab gives that file focus, bringing it to the foreground of the window in the current editor. The tabs at the bottom of the editor window for a given file are the editor tabs. Selecting an editor tab opens the file in that editor or viewer.

Step 3: Create a Service Class

In the Application Navigator, right-click the Model project and choose New > General > Java Class, then click OK.
In the Create Java Class dialog, enter AddressBook as the class name. Accept the package name as acme.bean, and the remaining default values, then click OK.
In the source editor, add code to create a collection Java class.

For example after the first line:

package acme.bean;

Delete all the generated code and replace with the following code:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class AddressBook {
// Return all contacts
List<Contact> contacts = new ArrayList();

  public List<Contact> findAllContacts() {
    return contacts;
  }

  // Return all contacts matching name (case-insensitive)
  public List<Contact> findContactsByName(String name) {
    String namePattern = ".*" + (name != null ? name.toUpperCase() : "") + ".*";
    List<Contact> matches = new ArrayList();
    for (Contact c : contacts) {
      if (Pattern.matches(namePattern, c.getName().toUpperCase())) {
matches.add(c);
      }
    }
    return matches;
  }

  public AddressBook() {
    contacts.add(new Contact("Steve", "steve@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Charles", "cyoung@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Karl", "kheint@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Mik", "mik_meir@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Yvonne", "yvonne_yvonne@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Sung", "superstar001@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Shailyn", "spatellina@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("John", "jjb@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Ricky", "rmartz@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Shaoling", "shaoling@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Olga", "olga077@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Ron", "regert@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Juan", "jperen@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Uday", "udaykum@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Amin", "amin@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Sati", "sparek@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Kal", "kalyane.kushnane@acme.org"));
    contacts.add(new Contact("Prakash", "prakash01@acme.org"));
  }
}

Click Save All to save your work.

When you complete the steps for creating a service class, the Application Navigator should look like this:

Read more...

Application Navigator, 2 classes

Any JavaBean that publishes business objects and provides methods that manipulate business objects is defined as a business service. Examples of business services include web services, EJB session beans, or any Java class being used as an interface to some functionality. In the example, the AddressBook service class returns a collection of contact names.

Step 4: Create a Data Control for the Service Class

In the Application Navigator, right-click AddressBook.java and choose Create Data Control.

Oracle ADF data controls provide an abstraction of the business service's data model, giving the ADF binding layer access to the service layer.

Read more... When designing a user interface, you can bind page UI components to data through the ADF data controls, without writing any code.

ADF data controls provide a consistent mechanism for clients and web application controllers to access data and actions defined by these data-provider technologies:

JavaBeans, including TopLink-enabled objects
ADF Business Components
EJB session beans
Web services

If you use JavaBeans technology as your business service technology, model information will be exposed to the view and controller layers through ADF data control interfaces implemented by thin, Oracle-provided adapter classes.

In the Bean Data Control Interface Chooser dialog, click OK without selecting an option.

JDeveloper adds the data control definition file (DataControls.dcx ) to the project, and opens the file in the overview editor.

The DCX definition file identifies the Oracle ADF model layer adapter classes that facilitate the interaction between the client and the available business services.

Read more...

There is one DCX file per project and the file is created the first time you register a data control on a business service. The DCX file serves as a "table of contents" listing all the data controls in the project. Out of all the possible service classes you might have in your project, it records those that you've asked the design time to make available as data binding objects.

In the Application Navigator, expand the Data Controls panel, then expand AddressBook.

If you don't see the data control you created, click Refresh on the panel toolbar.

When expanded, the AddressBook node shows the structure of the business service.

Read more... While the AddressBook data control node itself is not an item you can use, you may select from among the displayed objects it supports.

Application Navigator, Data Controls panel

Application Navigator, Data Controls panel

The hierarchical structure of a business service is determined by:

Which business services you have registered with the data controls in your model project. The Data Controls panel displays a separate root node for each business service that you register.
A bean design time description definition file that is generated when you create the data control for the bean. The bean definition file classifies the bean's property accessors and methods into various categories.

If you expand all the nodes in the Projects panel, you should see that JDeveloper has also added the file adfm.xml. This file, which is not used at runtime, is the registry used by the Data Controls panel in JDeveloper to locate the data controls that appear in the data model project.

Application Navigator, Projects panel

Step 5: Create a JSF Page

From the main menu, choose File > New > General > Projects > Custom Project, then click OK.
Enter View as the project name. Then select ADF Faces from the Available list and shuttle it to the Selected list.

Selecting features for a project enables you to filter the choices offered by the New Gallery, so that the choices you see are targeted to the type of work you are doing.

Read more... Features are set per project. They are used only within JDeveloper to assist you as you work, and have no effect on the data in the project itself. Adding ADF Faces automatically propagates the required associated features in the Selected pane.

Click Finish.

You should see the View project in the Application Navigator.
In the Application Navigator, right-click the View project and choose New > Web Tier > JSF/Facelets > Page, then click OK.
In the Create JSF Page dialog, enter ContactList.jsf as the file name. Make sure Facelets is the selected document type.

The JSF pages you create for your application using JavaServer Faces can be Facelets documents (which have file extension .jsf) or JSP documents written in XML syntax (which have file extension .jspx).

Read more...

You can create both types of JSF pages with the Create JSF Page dialog, opening it from:

The New Gallery
The JSF navigation diagrammer
The ADF task flow diagrammer (available only in the Studio edition of JDeveloper)

On the Page Layout page, select Blank Page. On the Managed Bean page, select Do Not Automatically Expose UI Components in a Managed Bean.

In the Create JSF Page dialog, you can optionally define some aspects of the look and feel for the new page (PageLayout tab), and you can specify whether or not components on the page are exposed in a managed bean (Managed Bean tab).

Read more...

By default components are not exposed to managed beans. If you wish to bind components to managed beans, select one of the automatic binding options on the Managed Bean page in the dialog. When you use an automatic binding option, JDeveloper automatically creates a backing bean for any new JSF page that you create, and associates every UI component in the page to a corresponding property in the backing bean for eventual programmatic manipulation.

But if you intend to add ADF bindings to a page, do not use the automatic binding feature. If you use the automatic binding feature, you will have to remove the managed bean bindings later, after you have added the ADF bindings.

Create JSF Page dialog, Managed Bean

Click OK.

By default JDeveloper displays the new JSF Facelets page in the visual editor.

When you create a new JSF page as a Facelets document type (with file extension .jsf), JDeveloper automatically creates a starter page structure

Read more... with one xmlns attribute for the JSF Core tag library and one xmlns attribute for the ADF Faces tag library. The other elements included in a starter file are elements for laying out a page, specifically everything else within <f:view> and </f:view>.

To view the page code, click the Source tab to switch from the visual editor to the XML editor. For example, the following code is generated for the new page:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<f:view xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
        xmlns:af="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/faces/rich">
  <af:document title="ContactList.jsf" id="d1">
    <af:form id="f1"></af:form>
  </af:document>
</f:view>

In the Component Palette, ADF Faces page, Layout panel, drag Panel Stretch Layout and drop it on the blank page in the visual editor.

When you drag the component to the visual editor, you should see a target rectangle with the name Form on the page; this means the component you are dragging will be inserted inside that target component.
Click Save All to save your work.

When you complete the steps for creating a JSF page, the View project in the Application Navigator should look something like this:

Read more...

Application Navigator, View project

In the project, the folders and files that conform to the Java EE Web module directory structure are:

Web Content folder: Contains the pages you create, along with other files that must be visible to the client browser (such as stylesheet files and images) for your application.
/WEB-INF/ folder: Contains the required Web Application Deployment Descriptor (web.xml) and the JSF configuration file (faces-config.xml).
web.xml file: The web application deployment descriptor for your application. This is an XML file describing the components that make up your application, along with any initialization parameters and container-managed security constraints that you want the server to enforce for you.
faces-config.xml file: Where you register the JSF application's configuration resources, such as validators, converters, managed beans, and navigation rules.
trinidad-config.xml file: Where you configure ADF Faces features such as skin family and level of page accessibility support.

Step 6: Bind an ADF Faces Table Component to the Service Bean

In the Data Controls panel, expand AddressBook, then expand findAllContacts().

Oracle ADF data controls are represented in the Data Controls panel as data collections, attributes, and methods

Read more... as well as specific, built-in operations that are generic to all data collections. The objects in the panel can be added to the view or web pages as databound UI components or to the controller as operations.

When you insert a component from the Data Controls panel, a new Oracle ADF binding will be defined in the page's UI model and the inserted component will contain references to Oracle ADF bindings, using EL (expression language) syntax.

The code that the Data Controls panel generates in your web page or client document, and the bindings that it creates depend on the type of document displayed in the visual editor and the combination of business service and visual element you select and drop into the open document.

Click and drag Contact to the center facet on the page in the visual editor. From the Create context menu, choose Table > ADF Read-only Table.
In the Edit Table Columns dialog, select Enable Sorting.
Accept the default values and click OK.

The page in the visual editor should look similar to this:

When you use the Data Controls panel to create a UI component, JDeveloper automatically creates the various code and objects needed to bind the component to the data control you selected.

Read more... To see the ADF data bindings defined for the page, click Bindings at the bottom of the editor window.

Bindings editor of JSF page

The Contact tree binding object uses the iterator binding object findAllContactsIterator to get its values. The iterator accesses the method findAllContacts() in the AddressBook data control, and returns a collection.

When you create a databound table using the Data Controls panel, JDeveloper adds the following ADF Faces tags to your page:

<af:messages> used at the top of an application page to give users important messaging information.
<af:table>, used to display tabular data.
<af:column>, used to create separate columns in the table.
<af:outputText>, which supports styled text.

ADF data binding expressions are added to every component attribute that will either display data from or reference properties of a binding object. You can examine the component attributes and ADF data binding expressions in the XML editor by clicking Source in the editor window. The binding expressions, which use EL (expression language), are evaluated at runtime.

A typical ADF data binding EL expression uses the following syntax to reference any of the different types of binding objects in the binding container:

#{bindings.BindingObject.propertyName}

where bindings is a variable that identifies that the binding object being referenced by the expression is located in the binding container of the current page. All ADF data binding EL expressions must start with the bindings variable.

Note: You can also refer to bindings using data.<PageDefName>.<binding>. The bindings. notation is just a shortcut to refer to the bindings on a page.

At runtime, the EL expression is evaluated and a value is pulled from the binding object to populate the component with data when the page is displayed.

For example, consider the first column in the databound table. The headerText attribute of the first column has the binding expression #{bindings.Contact.hints.name.label}, which results in the column heading name in the table at runtime.

In the Application Navigator, right-click ContactList.jsf and choose Run.

If the Create Default Domain dialog displays, enter the default password, for example weblogic1, in the Password and Confirm Password fields, then click OK.

The page in the browser should look similar to this:

By default, JDeveloper automatically configures an integrated server named Integrated WebLogic Server that references a user-specific instance of Oracle WebLogic Server bundled with the IDE.

Read more... Integrated WebLogic Server is a Java EE runtime service for packaged archive deployment. Based on zero-copy deployment, Integrated WebLogic Server lets you run and test an application and its projects as a Java EE application in a Java EE container. No special connection setup is required to use Integrated WebLogic Server. You can run the entire application, a project, or individual JSF pages.

When you run a JSF application in the IDE, JDeveloper automatically:

Starts Integrated WebLogic Server, if not already running.
Compiles and deploys the application to Integrated WebLogic Server.
Launches the application in your default browser using the following default address: http://<your_machine_IP_address>:<http_port>/<your_application_name>-<your_project_name>-context-root>/faces/<path_to_the_page>

To stop the application, click

Terminate in JDeveloper and choose the application bound instance DataBoundApp from the dropdown menu.

Note: Terminating the application stops and undeploys the application from Integrated WebLogic Server but it does not terminate Integrated WebLogic Server.

When you complete the steps for adding the data control to the JSF page, the View project in the Application Navigator, should now look like this:

Application Navigator, View project

The new files added to the Application Sources folder in the View project include:

ContactListPageDef.xml: The page definition file for the JSF page. A page definition file defines the Oracle ADF binding objects that populate the data in UI components at runtime, providing the interaction between the UI components on the page in the View project and the business service components in the Model project.

For every page that uses ADF bindings, there must be a corresponding page definition file that defines the binding objects used by that page. So each time you design a new page using the Data Controls panel and the visual editor, JDeveloper will create a new page definition file. You might need to edit the binding definitions in the page definition files if you remove binding expressions from your view pages.

Page definition files provide design time access to all the ADF bindings. At runtime, the binding objects defined by a page definition file are instantiated in a binding container, which is the runtime instance of the page definition file.
DataBindings.cpx: The file defines the Oracle ADF binding context for the entire application and provides the metadata from which the ADF binding objects are created at runtime. The binding context is a container object that holds a list of available data controls and data binding objects. It maps individual pages to the binding definitions in the page definition files and registers the data controls used by those pages. At runtime, only the data controls listed in the DataBindings.cpx file are available to the current application.

Step 7: Set the Labels

In the editor window, click the DataControls.dcx tab to bring the DCX overview editor forward.

If the DCX file is not already open, double-click DataControls.dcx in the Model project in the Application Navigator to open the file.
Expand AddressBook | findAllContacts(). Then select Contact and click Edit to open another overview editor.
In the Contact.xml overview editor, click Attributes on the left.
With name selected in the Attributes table, click the UI Hints tab. Then enter Contact Name in the Label field.

Oracle ADF control hints provides a centralized mechanism for any JavaBeans-based business service data item to be rendered in a consistent manner across all client types.

Read more... This mechanism, known as control hints, permits application developers to centralize certain UI settings across clients and thereby control many aspects of the way the UI interacts with the data item. Because the control hints are set at the level of the business service, it can also reduce the amount of UI coding.

The ADF control hints mechanism supports these control hint properties that you can customize:

Display Hint: Determines whether the attribute will be displayed or not.
Label: The text used in prompts or table headers that precede the value of a data item.
Tooltip: The text used in tooltips or flyover text. In web applications, it appears as the value of the HTML ALT attribute.
Format Type: Defines the formatter to use when the data item is displayed. Formatters are basically a collection of format masks that you can define in the <JDeveloper_Install>/jdeveloper/systemn.n.n.../o.BC4J/formatinfo.xml file.
Format: The particular format mask used by the selected formatter.
Control Type: The control type used to display the data item in the client UI: Edit makes the control editable, Date displays a calendar picker, and Default is interpreted by the client to select the most appropriate control.
Display Width: Defines the character width of the control that displays the data item.
Display Height: Defines the number of character rows of the control that displays the data item.
Form Type: Determines whether the attribute will be displayed in Detail or Summary mode. Detail mode produces a long form, Summary mode a short one. This property is supported for ADF Swing applications only; it is not available for Business Components web applications.
Field Order: Defines the numeric order in which you want the attribute to render within a category
Category: The identifier to be used by the dynamic rendering user interface to group attributes for display. The user interface will render the attribute with other attributes of the same category. You can use the category hint to aid the user interface to separate a large list of view object attributes into smaller groups related by categories. This control hint will be utilized by any dynamic rendering user interface that displays the attribute.
Auto Submit: Triggers a partial submit on value changes in the user interface when set to true (enabled).

Repeat the procedure to add a label for the attribute email, using the label text Email Address.

When you add control hints at the business service level, JDeveloper creates a .properties file for you that contains the text resources for the project.

Read more...

The file that defines the value for the control hints you set depends on the specific business service used for the project. In the case of beans-based business services, (including JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans, and Oracle TopLink), by default JDeveloper generates a standard .properties file for the project's text resources and saves the control hint definitions as translatable strings.

Notice in the Application Navigator that the file ModelBundle.properties has been added to the Model project in the model package:

Application Navigator, Model project

The project-level resource bundle option JDeveloper uses to save control hints is determined by the Resource Bundle page of the Project Properties dialog. By default JDeveloper sets the Resource Bundle Type option to Properties Bundle, which produces a .properties file.

The first time you customize a control hint in the project, JDeveloper creates the ModelBundle.properties file. The ModelBundle.properties file contains translatable key strings for the control hint definitions you added. For example, if you open ModelBundle.properties in the source editor, you should see the following code that identifies the translatable string:

# 

acme.bean.Contact.name_LABEL=Contact Name

In the Application Navigator, right-click ContactList.jsf and choose Run.

You should see the new labels on the page in the browser:

In the browser page, you can expand the width of a table column by dragging one end of the column header.

Read more... If you had selected the Enable Sorting checkbox when you added the databound table at design time, you can sort the column contents by selecting the Sort Ascending or Sort Descending icon on a column header:

Sorting icons on column header

Step 8: Bind to a Parameterized Method and a Parameter

You will create a command button bound to a method that takes a parameter, and an input text field bound to the method parameter.

Read more... When the button is clicked at runtime, the method will return objects that match the parameter value only. The matched objects will display in a read-only table.

In the Application Navigator, right-click the View project and choose New > Web Tier > JSF/Facelets > Page, then click OK.
In the Create JSF Page dialog, enter ContactLookup.jsf as the file name. Make sure Facelets is the selected document type.
On the Page Layout page, select Blank Page. On the Managed Bean page, select Do Not Automatically Expose UI Components in a Managed Bean.
In the Component Palette, ADF Faces page, Layout panel, drag Decorative Box and drop it on the blank page in the visual editor.
In the Data Controls panel, click Refresh on the panel toolbar, expand AddressBook, then expand findContactsByName(String).

To create a table that is bound to a parameterized method, you will drag the Contact method return that is located under findContactsByName(String) in the Data Controls panel.

Read more... The parameterized method has one parameter, name.

Drag Contact to the center facet on the page in the visual editor. From the Create context menu, choose Table > ADF Read-only Table. In the Edit Table Columns dialog, select Enable Sorting. Accept the remaining default values and click OK.
In the Edit Action Binding dialog, accept the default values and click OK.
In the Component Palette, Layout panel, drag and drop Panel Group Layout into the top facet on the page.
In the Property Inspector, Common section, change the Layout value to scroll.
In the Component Palette, drag another Panel Group Layout and drop it into the panel group layout component you just added. In the Property Inspector, change the Layout value to horizontal.

When you don't want content to be stretched, Oracle recommends creating islands of non-stretched content

Read more... by wrapping the content in a panel group layout component with layout="scroll". The panel group layout component is an ideal component for non-stretched content because it can be stretched and does not stretch its children.

The second panel group layout component with layout="horizontal" is then used to lay out the content components in a horizontal fashion.

In the Data Controls panel, under findContactsByName(String), expand Parameters.
Drag name and drop it into the panel group layout component (horizontal) you just added. From the context menu, choose Text > ADF Input Text w/ Label.
In the Property Inspector, Common section, delete the default Label value and replace with Enter part of name: followed by two spaces.
In the Data Controls panel, drag findContactsByName(String) and drop it into af:panelGroupLayout - horizontal in the Structure window. From the context menu, choose Method > ADF Button.
In the Property Inspector, delete the default Text value and replace with Find.
In the Structure window, select af:panelGroupLayout - scroll. In the Property Inspector, Style section, enter padding:5.0px in the InlineStyle field.

The page should look like this in the visual editor:
In the Application Navigator, right-click ContactLookup.jsf and choose Run.

The page in the browser should look similar to this:

When you enter sh in the input field and click the button,

Read more... the contacts that have 'sh' in their names are returned in the table:

Browser page, contacts found by name

Because you previously entered label text for the Contact email and address attributes using control hints, the label text that is stored in the ModelBundle.properties file is applied to the column headers in this table as well.

Summary

In this tutorial you created databound pages using Oracle ADF data controls and ADF Faces components. You learned how to:

Use JDeveloper wizards and dialogs to create applications, starter pages and starter Java classes
Use the visual editor, Component Palette, and Property Inspector to create UI pages
Create a data control from a simple JavaBean object
Use the Data Controls panel to create databound UI components without writing any code
Set labels at a centralized location for the business service
Use Integrated WebLogic Server to run an ADF Faces application

To learn more about ADF data binding and developing databound applications, refer to:

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