Table of Contents
[ iii ]
Webapp URIs in this Book 62
Testing Our First Webapp 63
The Model-View-Controller Architectural Pattern 63
The MVC in Plain English 63
The Model in OFBiz 64
The View in OFBiz 64
The Controller in OFBiz 65
Other Files in an OFBiz Component 66
Summary 67
Chapter 3: Screen Widgets 69
Equipping Our Webapp with a Screen Widget View Handler 69
Using the Screen Widget View Handler 71
Files and Locations 71
Creating Our First Screen Widget 71
Defining a Screen Widget 71
Informing the Control Servlet about the Screen Widget 72
Referencing Screen Widgets 73
Uniform Pattern of Flow in OFBiz 73
Seeing Our First Screen Widget 74
The Anatomy of the <section> Element 74
Our First Conditional Screen Widget 74
Element Order in the controller.xml 75
Inform the Control Servlet about the Screen Widget 75
If-Then-Else Structure 75
The <if-condition> Element 76
The Then—<actions> and <widgets> Elements 76
The Else—<fail-widgets> Element 78
The Minimum <section> 78
Sending Parameters with Requests 79
Seeing Our Conditional Screen Widget 79
Screen Widget Context and Variables 79
Utility Objects in Context 80
Nested Sections for Nested Conditions 85
Organizing a Large Screen into Smaller Screens 88
The Global Context Revisited 90
Outer Contexts Visible to Nested Ones 92
Screen Widget's Integration with FreeMarker 93
Cleaning Up in the "party" Component 94
Commenting Changes to the Core Code 96
Screen Widgets as Templates 97
A Candidate for Templating 97
Creating the Header 98
Creating the Footer 98
