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Over 10 years ago, I wrote my first blog post. Since then, I've authored books, had kids, traveled the world, found Trish and blogged about it all.

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Thursday November 25, 2004

AppFuse Tapestry/JSF Status

There's 3 phases of adding a new web framework to AppFuse. The first phase is integration and configuration. This is the fun part and involves adding JARs and configuring everything so the framework actually works. At the end of this phase, I'm usually pretty enthusiastic about my progress and think I can finish the whole project in a few more days. Then comes the "features" phase, when I start coding AppFuse features with the framework. This part always takes wwaaaaaaayyyy longer than I anticipate. This is the part where I realise previously done things (from other framework implementations) won't work and I have a long road ahead of me. For instance, with Tapestry and JSF, I have to figure out how to do the following: Country drop-down based on locale (currently a JSP tag, so should work with JSF), multi-select checkbox, and placing an asterisk next to required fields.

The asterisk isn't too hard if you do it the "WebWork way" - where you simply specify required="true" on JSP Tag. However, I'd prefer to have it read from the validation engine, so this will probably take some digging on how to do it with JSF/Tapestry. For the country drop-down, I'll probably have to create a Tapestry Component. I believe both frameworks have a multi-select checkbox component. After working with Tapestry's contrib:Table component for a few hours, I miss the Display Tag. The contrib:Table works, but it's a LOT more difficult to configure than the Display Tag. It also blows up if you click the column headings too many times. Also, it doesn't have any exporting features like the Display Tag. Sure, it might not need them, but a lot of folks have come to rely on these and it's a handy feature. Furthermore, another unfortunate thing I found in Tapestry this morning is it doesn't seem to read the locale from the request. So if you change your browser's language, it won't switch the language. You actually have to logout and kill the session to switch the locale. Bummer.

My main problem with the 2nd phase of the project is choosing whether to "do it right" or "get it done". I often start out just trying to get shit done, but end up being a perfectionist and trying to do it right. This phase took a couple of weeks to get through with WebWork. Ugh - I'd rather just get this stuff done, but I don't think it's gonna happen. I think I'll be working on the "features" phase for quite some time. Oh well, at least I'll learn the ins and outs of each framework.

The final "finishing up" phase is one of the best. It's when everything works and I write the installation scripts and tutorials. This is slightly painful b/c there's nothing new to discover, but it's also nice because there's nothing new to learn or get tripped up on.

AppFuse 1.7 estimated release date? I was hoping for the next couple of weeks, but I'd better stick with the end of the year. I'm sure there's going to be a fair amount of banging my head against the wall in the next few weeks.

Posted in Java at Nov 25 2004, 08:52:13 AM MST 1 Comment
Comments:

Matt - I commend you for your efforts with AppFuse. Having the same application developed in every presentation framework is something that sounds so nice in theory. But in practice is just isn't fun because of all the reasons you've listed. Each framework is its own world requiring you to adapt to it, not just slap it on. To the details you've listed - the Country drop-down in Tapestry will not require a new component. Use the @PropertySelection component with an IPropertySelectionModel attached to it. You may need a custom model, though. Multi-select checkbox? What's that? Checkboxes are easy in Tapestry - @Checkbox. This is where you may need to adapt though. Checkboxes are done right in Tapestry - bound to a boolean with no fiddly silliness like reset() in Struts. You can put @Checkbox in an @Foreach and bind each checkbox to a unique boolean. Placing an asterisk beside required fields is pretty simple - a custom subclass of ValidationDelegate overriding one of the "suffix" methods will do the trick with a few lines of code will do the trick.

Posted by Erik Hatcher on November 26, 2004 at 08:04 AM MST #

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