5.5.4.1. Declarative Creation of Actions
You can specify a set of actions in an XML screen descriptor for any component that implements the Component.ActionsHolder
interface, including the entire screen or frame. This is done in the actions
element, which contains nested action
elements.
The action
element can have the following attributes:
-
id
− identifier, which should be unique within theActionsHolder
component. -
caption
– action name. -
description
– action description. -
enable
– accessibility flag (true
/false
). -
icon
– action icon. -
invoke
- name of the controller method to be invoked. The method should bepublic
void
, and either not have arguments or have one argument of theComponent
type. If the method has aComponent
argument, then an instance of the visual component that launches this action will be passed to it when invoked. -
shortcut
- keyboard shortcut for invocation.Shortcut values can be hard-coded in the XML descriptor. Possible modifiers,
ALT
,CTRL
,SHIFT
, are separated by the "-" character. For example:<action id="create" shortcut="ALT-N"/>
To avoid the hard code, you can use the predefined shortcut aliases from the list below, for example:
<action id="edit" shortcut="${TABLE_EDIT_SHORTCUT}"/>
-
TABLE_EDIT_SHORTCUT
-
COMMIT_SHORTCUT
-
CLOSE_SHORTCUT
-
FILTER_APPLY_SHORTCUT
-
FILTER_SELECT_SHORTCUT
-
NEXT_TAB_SHORTCUT
-
PREVIOUS_TAB_SHORTCUT
-
PICKER_LOOKUP_SHORTCUT
-
PICKER_OPEN_SHORTCUT
-
PICKER_CLEAR_SHORTCUT
Another option is to use the full qualified name of the
Config
interface and method which returns shortcut:<action id="remove" shortcut="${com.haulmont.cuba.client.ClientConfig#getTableRemoveShortcut}"/>
-
-
visible
– visibility flag (true
/false
).
The examples of declaration are provided below.
-
Declaring actions at the screen level:
<window ...> <dsContext/> <actions> <action id="sayHelloAction" caption="msg://sayHello" shortcut="ALT-T" invoke="sayHello"/> </actions> <layout> <button action="sayHelloAction"/> </layout> </window>
// controller public void sayHello(Component component) { showNotification("Hello!", NotificationType.TRAY); }
In the example above, an action with
sayHelloAction
identifier and a name from message pack is declared. This action is bound with a button, which caption will be set to the action name. The action will invoke thesayHello()
controller method when clicking on the button, or when pressing the ALT-T shortcut if at that moment the screen has input focus. -
Declaring actions for PopupButton:
<popupButton caption="Say something"> <actions> <action id="helloAction" caption="Say hello" invoke="sayHello"/> <action id="goodbyeAction" caption="Say goodbye" invoke="sayGoodbye"/> </actions> </popupButton>
-
Declaring actions for Table:
<table id="usersTable" width="100%"> <actions> <action id="create"/> <action id="edit"/> <action id="copy" caption="msg://copy" icon="icons/copy.png" invoke="copy" trackSelection="true"/> <action id="changePassw" caption="msg://changePassw" icon="icons/change-pass.png" invoke="changePassword" trackSelection="true"/> </actions> <buttonsPanel> <button action="usersTable.create"/> <button action="usersTable.edit"/> <button action="usersTable.copy"/> <button action="usersTable.changePassw"/> </buttonsPanel> <rowsCount/> <columns> <column id="login"/> ... </columns> <rows datasource="usersDs"/> </table>
In this example
copy
andchangePassw
actions are declared in addition tocreate
andedit
standard actions of the table. These actions invoke corresponding methods of the controller. In addition, thetrackSelection="true"
attribute is specified for them, which means that the action and corresponding button become disabled if no row is selected in the table. It is useful if the action is intended to be executed over a currently selected table row.An optional
openType
attribute can be specified for create and edit actions to define edit screen opening mode, as described for thesetOpenType()
method of the CreateAction class. -
Declaring PickerField actions:
<pickerField id="colourField" datasource="carDs" property="colour"> <actions> <action id="lookup"/> <action id="show" icon="icons/show.png" invoke="showColour" caption="" description="Show colour"/> </actions> </pickerField>
In the example above, the standard
lookup
action and an additionalshow
action invoking theshowColour()
method of the controller, are declared for thePickerField
component. SincePickerField
buttons that display actions use icons instead of captions, the caption attribute is explicitly set to an empty string, otherwise action name and button caption would be set to the action identifier. Thedescription
attribute allows you to display a tooltip when hovering over the action button.
You can obtain references to any declared actions in the screen controller either directly by injection, or from components that implement the Component.ActionsHolder
interface. This can be useful to set action properties programmatically. For example:
@Named("carsTable.create")
private CreateAction createAction;
@Named("carsTable.copy")
private Action copyAction;
@Inject
private PickerField colourField;
@Override
public void init(Map<String, Object> params) {
Map<String, Object> values = new HashMap<>();
values.put("type", CarType.PASSENGER);
createAction.setInitialValues(values);
copyAction.setEnabled(false);
Action showAction = colourField.getAction("show");
showAction.setEnabled(false);
}