Creating and Rendering Controls Dynamically In JSP

can you please explain what do you want to achieve by creating docbaseattributevalue dynamically. docbaseattributevalue control basically used to represent/display value of existing attribute. is user going to specify at runtime which attributes he/she wants to see ?

Hi Tejraj,

Thanks for the quick reply. May be I am doing this wrong. But my intial requirement is to customize creation of multiple new documents. For this I want to leverage the webtop functionality to create control dynamically based on datadictionary configurations (like Open ended, multiple values etc.). This can be seen new document component. Based on this, I want this to be achieved for the new document I am creating.

Suppose, If user wants to create 2 new document from single interface. I want to make it less cumbersome and use createcontrol and bind this in JSP dynamically so that all the controls can be rendered without page refresh using AJAX.

Regards

In gist, just want to create and add controls dynamically in JSP/

i have never worked with ajax so I am not sure, however we can achieve functionality of adding controls dynamically but without ajax screen will refresh.

Thanks Tejraj,

I will figure out AJAX part. But can you please let me know the adding of controls dynamically in JSP?

one of the approach (which just add <dmf:text> or similar control) can be:

1. define instance variable say controlCount in behavior class

2. initialize itto '1' in onInit method

3. in JSP fetch the value of instance variable and create for loop something like:

for(int count = 0; count < controlCount; count++) {

<dmf:text id='<%= "text_"+count) />

}

4. hava a 'Add' link/button beside last text control, whose onClick method calls behavior class method which just increment the value of instance variable by 1

In your case, if you want to add docbaseattributevalue dynamically, you would also need to know the attribute for which this control needs to be added

Thanks,

This seems to be wonderful Idea, only hitch is to create 100documents like this and I have to provide same properties for all documents checkbox also. I will try it out though.

creating 100 documents at a time through UI is going to be very heavy process. additionally you need to extend the OTB webtop create functionality to create multiple documents at a time.

can you give little brief what is the desired system behavior/functionality from end user persperctive.

"...My requirement is to create docbaseattributevalue controls dynamically and also depending upon user input that for how many objects he want these controls on page."

- Alternatively solution is NOT to customize the atttributes component, but to allow the user to manipulate the data dictionary directly. You can hide attributes from attributes page by making it hidden in the object type definition. Since you can do this using DQL, you should be able to integrate your UI with backend calls. Keep in mind, this may require restart of app server, so you should only provide this to "power users" and should only happen off hours.

Thanks Johnny and Tejraj for taking interest.

Actually, the requirement is kind of bulk creation of documents which may have same properties apart from name etc. So, instead of creating 1at a time, it is required to provide a UI functionality for users to help them create multiple documents at a time having same properties.

Hi Abhinav,

I dont understand why my suggestion does not fit with your requirement. Once you have defined which attributes you want your users to see, they will see the same attribute display listing for multple documents at a time. My comment about the restart would only not work if you intend to change the display attribute on a frequent basis and/or if you wanted different users to see different attributes for same object type. If this is your requirement, then I suggest you look at building attribute listing using Forms Builder. It has more control on hiding/showing attributes without needing to customization.

-Johnny

Thanks Johnny,

My requirement is more about getting end users value without refreshing page for multiple documents. Showing attributes is another part.

It is more like first user enters how many documents he want to create in the textbox and as soon as he clicks ok button in component page itself(Not container).Rest of the panel displayed showing mandartory attributes for each document occupying single row. i.e. Each row represent one document and total number of rows is number of documents user wants to create. When users fills these attributes he/she clicks Ok button of Container. This will commit the transaction and create the documents.

I want this without any screen refresh to reduce delay and using server side controls to update the values at server side.

I agree your suggestion will fulfill part of my requirement but showing docbaseobject through ajax at runtime is what giving me an issue. Hope this clarifies more.

Regards,

Abhinav

Lots of customization to be required using WDK. You can do this in Forms Builder rather easily.

lastnitescurry

Screen refresh delay is going to minimal compared to how long it will take a user to populate all the required attributes for each document.

Personally I think what you are trying to achieve using WDK is nutts.How nutts depends:

on how many required attributes?
display of non mandatory attributes?
default values?
selection of a document template?

Maybe you can achieve this with AJAX but I would add that feature at the end. You will need a DocbaseObject control for each unique document to be created.

Last year I delivered a similar requirement for an Engineering company. Used Excel as UI. Templates could be configued with manadatory and non mandatory attributes. There also was a row at top to provide default values.

If an attribute had value assistance it was put into a hidden sheet and Excel value assistance to allow users to select correct values.

This Excel sheet would be processed on checkin via a TBO.

Interesting idea Brian. Reminds me a lot like the old Docloader content migration strategy.

lastnitescurry

It was an updated version from another project. I was able to use Apache POI to read & write the Excel files. Previous version used Excels save as XML feature to provide read only.

Some stuff I would change but at core it is very effective. Excel does 90% of UI stuff. Processing can be done in TBO. Some Composer config to provide control attributes (e..g check box to refresh the value assistance from data dictionary)

dnvhariprasad

Just wanted to share that:

EMC's ECSF, EPFM has these functionalities OOTB like importing bulk documents through excel.