Reinhard Poetz dijo:
Sorry, I don't like this client-side approach.
We have to find something better because sometimes the 'presentation
state' of a widget can depend on the 'application state'. Flowscript as
controller should have access to both.
Hi Reinhard:
How manage a dynamic "show/hide a control" in a page without doing a round-trip to the server?
Based on some observation while no-tech oriented users filled HTML forms. It makes clear to me that they don't liked the round-trip to the server. It was confusing to him! It is clear a non-conventional interface. Also it waste time, no matter how fast the connection (including the server) are. The observation was related to calculated widgets.
I think this is a similar case, because the show/hide control is just a rendering page issue. Of course, you can add add additional parameters to reflect the current "application state" and let the page have the right behavior. If we suspect that it can be a security concerns, there is a gold rule:
"Anything returned from the client must the checked again, when the
control return to the Flow (serversided)."
(jumping in late) I don't think it's *only* a rendering issue.
A colleague of mine recently asked me how to change widgets availability in a form depending on the user's role or application state such as when a form goes through different people and/or states in a workflow.
The purpose here isn't dynamic interaction within an interaction with a single user, but allow to "configure" the form before it is displayed to the user.
I came to 3 possible states for a widget:
- enabled: what we have today
- disabled: the widget behaves like an output and it doesn't read its value from the request (solves the "Anything returned..." below).
- hidden: the widget doesn't display itself.
A disabled composite widget (e.g. a repeater) doesn't call readFromRequest() on its children. Similarily, the woody transformer should take into account hidden composite widget references (e.g. <wt:repeater-widget> by ignoring their content.
WDYT?
Sylvain (first post from my Mac!!)
-- Sylvain Wallez Anyware Technologies http://www.apache.org/~sylvain http://www.anyware-tech.com { XML, Java, Cocoon, OpenSource }*{ Training, Consulting, Projects }
