Generic User Interface - CUBA Platform. Developer’s Manual

5.5. Generic User Interface

Generic user interface (Generic UI, GUI) subsystem allows you to create UI screens using XML and Java. The screens created using this approach work identically in both standard client blocks: Web Client and Desktop Client.

Figure 15. The Structure of Generic User Interface

Main components of Generic UI screens are marked as green:

XML-descriptors – XML files containing information about datasources and screen layout.
Controllers – Java classes containing logic for screen initialization and handling of events generated by UI controls.

The code of application screens included in the gui module interacts with visual component interfaces (VCL Interfaces) implemented separately in the web and desktop modules of the cuba application component. For Web Client the implementation is based on the Vaadin framework, for Desktop Client on the Java Swing framework.

Visual Components Library (VCL)contains a large set of ready-to-use components.

Datasources mechanism provides a unified interface that ensures functioning of data-aware visual components.

Client’s infrastructure (Infrastructure) includes main application window, mechanisms for display and interaction of UI screens and means of interaction with the middleware.