In my application, I have URN-identified data coming in from the server. I'm in the process of abstracting as far as possible so there is very little to no logical code in my views, and I'm using a generic presenter that wraps those views. All widgets have URNs, making it super easy to map incoming data to a specific widget (until now, a 1 to 1 relationship). This has worked well for pretty much every widget, and now I've reached a point where I'm tripped up.
Assume I have (just for simplicity's sake) two RadioButton elements on a view. These buttons belong to a "group" (just by setting their name values to the same thing), but obviously they're 2 distinct elements. I can't map my URN-identified data to a single widget as in every other case because, in this case, it is two widgets.
Here's an example of what I mean:
Utility Company is a ListBox, so just one widget there. I map each item in the list to a specific Enum value.
Utility Rate is a TextBox, so again just one widget to map.
For Energy Usage, they can select to use either an average for the year or input 12 monthly values. I'm stuck here. I can't map to just one of the RadioButton elements, because then I'd need some extra logic in the view to handle the behavior appropriately.
Am I stuck mapping to just one widget and sticking (unwanted) logic in my view to determine what the state of all of the elements should be based on the value that came in for the one widget that is mapped?
How should I handle this case?
Edit (Solution):
Following the concepts of jusio's answer, I came up with a workable solution. Because I didn't want to go sticking special case handling through my logic to take care of a non-widget, I created a RadioButtonSet faux widget (public class RadioButtonSet <T extends Enum<?> & HasDisplayText> extends Widget implements HasValueChangeHandlers<T>, HasValue<T>), into which I manually pass the radios I intend to group. Having done that, I can get or set its value and have it fire appropriate events when the user changes the selection. Then mapping the collection of radios is no different than doing so for a listbox. Thanks jusio.
I believe in your case you shouldn't treat radio buttons as two separate widgets, basically in your case you can treat the radio button group as combo box, because behavior is almost the same (the only problem is that you have additional master detail). So basically what you will have to do is to wrap real BO objects into some kind of RadioButtonGroupModel, and give it to view, view can take this model and generate radio buttons (with some editors or whatever else). I remember running into this problem when i was extending databinding FW for JFace, and this was the best way I could find to solve this problem.
If I understood correctly the problem, there are 2 possible solutions:
Give each RadioButton a unique URN (ex: oldURN_1 , oldURN_2)
When you send data for a URN, disable the other one
Keep the same Name for each RadioButton but add a number variable in the data the server sends indicating which radioButton it is supposed to use (ex: 0 for Average and 1 for Monthly)
Related
I'm working on creating a basic user interface and I wanted to try and create a portion that is in a scrollTaskPane and is capable of holding multiple entries. As I'm going about creating it I can obviously test it with a simple amount of entries but I'm confused how I can go about later allowing for it to take input to create entries in the scrollTaskPane of maybe 1 entry one time, and then later needing to allow for input of 20 entries. I only know how to use absolute positioning and am trying to figure out the best way to go about it. I also need to later be able to select each entry.
For the entries that will eventually be called and displayed in my interface, I'm planning to store them in a simple text file and use a semicolon as a delimiter between the task "Type" "Name" "Description"(which will be accessible through a button) and "Due Date". Or I may try to learn to use a database for the information. But I haven't decided yet and don't know anything about connecting a database with a java program.
This is the current look (the scrollTaskPane in the middle). And my goal is to put in entries that are each rectangle boxes going across the scrollTaskPane with a checkbox on the end of them. Should I use some sort of grid layout? Or something else? I'm a beginner at user interfaces, so any help is appreciated!
You can make a custom layout, and then keep adding those layout. So extend a layout class, add TextField and a check box in the layout. Initialize the layout with your values, add then add to the ScrollTaskPane.
I have a large set of data from which the user has to select one. I'm thinking of a way to implement it (of course, in a GUI). I have a few ideas. But just thought of posting here as there may be better alternatives..
Say, user has to select a name from a large set of user base. If I simply put a text field for user to enter the name, then there can be issues like entering same name in different formats, misspelling etc...
I see two options here
Using a combo box
Using a list (Actually i'm thinking of something like a tool tip. As I cant show the whole list always due to space issues)
But combo box won't be much user friendly i guess. As the user will have to scroll around the whole list to select an entry. If the number of entries are too large, this will be
Which means, now I'm left only one option. A popping up list, which will change the content according the text user is entering in the text field. So he can type first few letters and the list will show all the entries starting from the entered text. Got my point, right?
Are there any other better to achieve this kind of need?
If I'm going to implement above, what will be the best way to follow. I'm thinking of extending the JTextField to add required functionality. Well, I'll put some method to set the popup list entries. And I'll add some actionListner to watch the text field, and control the popup list accordingly...
Autocomplete is what you are probably looking for. Google for "java swing jcombobox autocomplete" and limit results for the last couple of years to get relevant results. There will be a lot of examples and ideas on how to implement this with custom code.
I believe there is also some custom libraries like "swingx" that provide at least partial or full implementations to save time.
http://swingx.java.net/
They have released code as recently as the beginning of this years so it appears active and might have what you need.
You could take a look at SwingLab's autocomplete feature, it allows you to attach it to a JCombBox, JList or JTextComponent
use AutoComplete JComboBox/JTextField
based on Standard Java Classes
no issue with larger sets of data
no issue with Focus, BackSpace Key, Caret
for better performance to required sort the array before use
simple workaround for setStrict(true/false), restrict input to array
I've been trying to freshen up on my Java knowledge and I've been building a small GUI program and I've been running into a bit of a problem.
Basically, I have a JList which I'm currently populating with strings from an object from one of my classes which implement AbstractListModel which we can call my ItemList class. It contains an ArrayList of objects of the type Item which implements Serializable.
But, what I'd like to do is rather than populate my JList with a bunch of strings I'd like to populate it with some kind of string + JTextField combination so I can see one property of each Item object while also being able to update another property by changing the JTextField.
Now, what I'm looking for is the simplest possible way of doing this, and I am assuming there is a (relatively) simple way to do this since it's such a common thing to want to do in a GUI application (although I wouldn't put it past Java and Swing to make it convoluted and complicated).
So, what is the correct way of doing this?
No need to ever use String objects. Instead:
Put Item objects in the JList.
Add a ListCellRenderer to the list, to show the Item object the most user friendly way.
When the user selects an item, show the details in a different place (I'm thinking a panel with 2 columns of labels and text fields, and two rows - one for each attribute, and perhaps a button to Save)
The edit controls would best be encapsulated in a panel that can then hidden when not required, & put in a variety of places, e.g.
Below the list
In the main part of the GUI
displayed in a JOptionPane or a (modal or not) JDialog
Here is an example of placing the 'view/edit panel' (the file details) below the selection component (the table).
I'm trying to make an android app (I'm new in the Android programming world), and I'm having problems creating the GUI.
The point is that I get information of some data that is divided in days... The problem is that I don't know, until I retrieve the information, how many days the GUI should display.
http://img574.imageshack.us/img574/3787/mainscreen.jpg
The grey part will be a TextView, and, also, the black part will be another TextView with multiple lines.
So, the point is, how can I do to have multiple TextView's without knowing before the exact number? I suppose that I can't declare them in the layout.xml
The only solution that I've been thinking about is to create in the layout 7 pairs of TextView and, when I know the exact number, just use what I have to, and don't use the others... (It's a bad solution)
What do you suggest?
Thank you for your answers!
You should create a ListView, which inflates TextView for the items you have.
You can use this example of how to create sectioned ListView, which will look exactly like you want.
I'm not familiar with Android, so other people may offer better, more specific advice.
In the environments I'm familiar with, the problem of displaying an unknown number of items is solved by using not a series of display elements for each data item but a list control. The list component will display as many items as you give it, and can usually be modified to have different appearance for different data, so you're flexible in making it as pretty as you want.
Well you can consider this one also,
Create a table layout in XML, give it a id: TableLayout table=(TableLayout)findViewById(r.id. ....)
Create dynamic TextViews using: TextView day=new TextView(this); day.setText(day name);
Now add this text view to your table layout : table.addView(day);
Run the code for textView creation and addition to table in loop
Hope this helps...............
I have a question about GUI design, specifically with Java Swing and creating clean separation between presentation and model.
It's a bit difficult to describe, but essentially we have lots of reference data in our system (i.e. that would correspond to lookup tables in the DB). We want people to be able to edit them all from one screen.
So, in an ideal world what we'd like is a combo box in the top-left corner with a list of 'types' of reference data (so each corresponding to one table in the DB).
Then, when selected, a list of the data is populated below, also a filter (or search box). When one of these items is selected, the panel to the right is activated which will allow the actual data to be edited.
Now, here's the problem: each type of data we need to edit is different, so it has different fields etc. We could go with a generic solution but I'm not really a fan of them - there are lots of different validation rules for each etc, even for different clients, and it would be a nightmare to manage.
We're using the Presentation Model pattern to achieve some degree of separation between GUI code and the model but I can't think of a clean way of doing this which doesn't somehow blur the line of responsibilities a bit.
What are the ways you have solved problems like this?
[Note: apologies for the long question, hope it's understandable, I can re-phrase if necessary]
You could use the Factory Pattern to create a UI widget for the element that you are selecting. You could also use it to create a validation rule object depending on the type. This would give you some of the flexibility you desire.
So you can have something like:
IWidget widget = UIFactory.createFor(myObject.getType())
That can be invoked on the selection event to create the right widget to edit the selected element.
The IWidget could have methods such as:
validateData()
refreshData()
setDataElement(IDataElement element)
That would allow you to treat all UI widgets generically, but still have a special UI widget for each element type. I am assuming that the elements that you are selecting from the table all implement some IDataElement interface that contains the getType() method.
I used this solution tied together with the Eclipse Extension mechanism to plug-in new UI elements into my "base" solution, to have an extensible core and a high level of reuse. You could achieve something similar by injecting types and widgets into your factory, either manually or with Spring.
If you dont want to go down the generic path, you could have your model hold a mapping of combobox item -> panel name for use with a CardLayout. You could then create custom panels for the editing each of the reference data types. When the combo box selection is changed, you can save the current state in your model, request the panel name of the current selection, prepare your next panel for display and then have your CardLayout show it.