Wizards with Multiple Target Objects
Two types of multiple-object wizards are supported:
• wizards with multiple unrelated target objects
Example: create multiple parts
• wizards with a tree of related target objects
Example: create a change notice and related change tasks
The data specific to a given object should be contained either in a table row specific to that object or in a wizard step specific to that object. An example table where each row represents a part being created and each column is an attribute of the part is shown below.
Each wizard step must display one of these types of data:
• data in tabular format where each row represents a different object
• data that is specific to one and only one of the objects created
• data that is common to all objects created
A step cannot contain object-specific data for multiple objects unless it is in tabular format.
In multiple-object wizards, the object to which an input field applies is identified by an "objectHandle" embedded in the name attribute of the HTML input field. For example:
<input id="null1188140328133"
name="<someFieldIdString>!~objectHandle~newRowObj_430512131997223~!
<someAdditionalText>" value="" size="60" maxlength="60"
type="text">
In the example above, "newRowObj_430512131997223" is the object handle, "!~objectHandle~" is the required prefix, and "~!" is the required suffix. The HTML name attribute in which the object handle is embedded can be any string and the object handle may appear anywhere within the string.
When the DefaultFormProcessorController loads the form data in to ObjectBeans, it will strip off the object handle (including the required prefix and suffix) from the name attribute and use the resulting string as the key for the value in the form data parameter maps. For example, to retrieve the form value for the input field above you would call ObjectBean.getTextParameter() with the following key:
<someFieldIdString><someAdditionalText>
The framework generates object handles on name attributes for you in one of two ways:
• If data for the objects is being captured in tabular format, where each row represents an object and each column an attribute of the object, the handle will be dynamically generated for you if you set rowBasedObjectHandle=true on the table config in the builder::
table.setRowBasedObjectHandle(true);
The object handle for each row will be based on the row’s OID.
objectHandle = CreateAndEditWizBean.getNewObjectHandle(next.getOid().toString());
• Where all the data on a given wizard step is for the same object, you specify the object handle for that object on the wizard step action:
<jca:wizardStep action="setContextWizStep" type="object"
objectHandle="<your object handle string>" …
If data on the wizard step is common to all objects created, no object handle is needed on the input fields. The object handle associated to the data in an ObjectBean can be accessed by the ObjectBean.getObjectHandle() method. The FormProcessorController controls the order in which processors are called to process the ObjectBeans, as described in the sections below. Note that in the illustrations below, circles are used to represent ObjectBeans. Circles representing objects of the same type will have the same shading.
