I have a question about the Component model (I think) I want to create a system that binds multiple pages together something similar to a wizard. The situation is as follows.
We would like to implement Webware pages that work on there own and do some given task however it is desirable to link multiple pages together to form a workflow. Ideally each page would not need to know about the others in the flow of the wizard. So when Page1 completes flow would move onwards to Page2. I guess the design would follow that of a PropertySheet which contains one or more PropertyPages. The Container sheet would contain any logic needed to tie the Pages together.
So my question; is Component the right way to do this? if so could someone give me a very high level run down of how this would work as the examples I can find don't seem to make it clear as to how I would do this.
I don't think Component really has much to help you here. I'd probably do this with _action_=pageName, and put everything in the same servlet. You could keep the transient data in a session (OK), or pickle and sign it and put it in hidden fields (better: back button friendly). I think there's a recipe for pickling on the wiki somewhere.
Now, putting everything in the same servlet will work better if you seperate templates from servlets, so that you can have multiple templates for a single servlet. ZPTKit does this well, and maybe CheetahKit or KidKit works well too. I believe PSP doesn't do this well, which is one of the issues with its model. But if you put it in multiple servlets, you can still use the pickling trick to pass the complete state of the form around until all fields are filled out. In that case I'd subclass all the servlets from a single abstract servlet that implemented the specific form logic.
-- Ian Bicking / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / http://blog.ianbicking.org
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