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Posted to user@struts.apache.org by "Kichline, Don (EM, PTL)" <do...@penske.com> on 2004/10/19 22:33:09 UTC
non-standard attributes in taglib
We have a web based application that is a work in progress. Because our company mandates that IE be used, certain aspects of microsoft's non-standard extensions have been utilized in some of our pages.
All new screens in our system will be developed using Struts 1.1. We have however run into one small problem.
The HTML taglib does not take non-standard attributes. At least that I can see.
So we have one of a number of choices to make:
1. Remove use of non-standard attributes (this one is not likely)
2. Modify the html tag lib to support generic non-standard attributes and submit it
2a. Submissions are accepted (we are fine then)
2b. Submissions are rejected (we are back where we started)
3. Do not use the html tag lib (we don't want to do this for obvious reasons)
4. Dynamically add the attributes to the elements in an onload javascript function (This is what we are currently doing to work around this problem, not intended as a long term solution.)
Ignoring solution #1, what do people think we should do with this?
Thanks,
Don Kichline
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Re: non-standard attributes in taglib
Posted by Niall Pemberton <ni...@blueyonder.co.uk>.
Firstly on a general note, if its new development, then IMO it would be
better to use the latest Struts 1.2.4 release.
More specifically on adding additional attributes to Struts tags, I recently
refactored some of the HTML tags (specifically all those that derive from
BaseHandlerTag) and added the prepareOtherAttributes(StringBuffer) method
which gets called just before the closing tag element and gives you
somewhere to put the rendering of additional attributes. So for example if
you wanted to add the "wrap" attribute to the TextareaTag, then you would
simply have to do the following....
public class CustomTextareaTag extends TextareaTag {
protected String wrap;
public void setWrap(String wrap) {
this.wrap = wrap;
}
public String getWrap() {
return wrap;
}
protected void prepareOtherAttributes(StringBuffer handlers) {
prepareAttribute(handlers, "wrap", getWrap());
}
public void release() {
super.release();
wrap = null;
}
}
You would also need to either modify the struts-html.tld to use your custom
implementation and add the "wrap" attribute, or set up your own tld for this
tag. This is available either in the nightly build or in the recently posted
Struts 1.2.5 Test Build which can be found here:
http://svn.apache.org/dist/struts/v1.2.5/
Alternatively, there are a couple of outstanding enhancement requests for
mechanisms which facilitate additional attributes. To date nothing has been
done about them but maybe they would suit your needs and you could
contribute ideas/patches to those bugs:
1) Bug 1598
http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1598
This bug suggests tackling this by having some kind of "other" attribute
which just gets passed through unchanged: I imagine whats being proposed
there would be, using the "wrap" example, something like the following..
<html:textarea property="...." other="wrap='off'"/>
2) Bug 29379
http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=29379
This bug requests support of JSTL's param tag - personally I don't see how
using JSTL's param tag would work, but maybe a new <html:param> tag could
do this and, using the "wrap" example again would work something like the
following...
<html:textarea property="...." >
<html:param name="wrap" value="off"/>
</html:textarea>
The way I can think of making this work would involve more re-factoring of
many of the tags though.
Having said all that about the *bugs* though, the problem you'll face will
be getting anyone to implement your changes and you may go to the trouble of
developing patches that just get ignored.
Niall
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kichline, Don (EM, PTL)" <do...@penske.com>
To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <us...@struts.apache.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 9:33 PM
Subject: non-standard attributes in taglib
We have a web based application that is a work in progress. Because our
company mandates that IE be used, certain aspects of microsoft's
non-standard extensions have been utilized in some of our pages.
All new screens in our system will be developed using Struts 1.1. We have
however run into one small problem.
The HTML taglib does not take non-standard attributes. At least that I can
see.
So we have one of a number of choices to make:
1. Remove use of non-standard attributes (this one is not likely)
2. Modify the html tag lib to support generic non-standard attributes and
submit it
2a. Submissions are accepted (we are fine then)
2b. Submissions are rejected (we are back where we started)
3. Do not use the html tag lib (we don't want to do this for obvious
reasons)
4. Dynamically add the attributes to the elements in an onload javascript
function (This is what we are currently doing to work around this problem,
not intended as a long term solution.)
Ignoring solution #1, what do people think we should do with this?
Thanks,
Don Kichline
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Re: non-standard attributes in taglib
Posted by Craig McClanahan <cr...@gmail.com>.
Historically, the Struts developers have been very strict about
accepting only W3C standard attributes, and I don't see this changing
anytime soon -- it would be somewhat ironic for an open source project
to endorse a proprietary single-vendor lock-in by doing something like
this :-). I suspect most people who want to use such attributes
anyway follow your option (2) but just maintain their own version of
the modified tag library.
Since you're talking about a new application here, you should also
take a look at using JavaServer Faces (JSF) components for your user
interface, instead of the Struts HTML tags. With the standard
components you will run into the same issue (they only support
standard attributes), but it seems a lot more likely that a community
could grow up around custom JSF components that supported these
attributes, because they can be used in any JSF compatible
environment, not just in applications that use Struts.
Craig
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 16:33:09 -0400, Kichline, Don (EM, PTL)
<do...@penske.com> wrote:
> We have a web based application that is a work in progress. Because our company mandates that IE be used, certain aspects of microsoft's non-standard extensions have been utilized in some of our pages.
>
> All new screens in our system will be developed using Struts 1.1. We have however run into one small problem.
>
> The HTML taglib does not take non-standard attributes. At least that I can see.
>
> So we have one of a number of choices to make:
>
> 1. Remove use of non-standard attributes (this one is not likely)
>
> 2. Modify the html tag lib to support generic non-standard attributes and submit it
>
> 2a. Submissions are accepted (we are fine then)
>
> 2b. Submissions are rejected (we are back where we started)
>
> 3. Do not use the html tag lib (we don't want to do this for obvious reasons)
>
> 4. Dynamically add the attributes to the elements in an onload javascript function (This is what we are currently doing to work around this problem, not intended as a long term solution.)
>
> Ignoring solution #1, what do people think we should do with this?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Don Kichline
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: user-unsubscribe@struts.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: user-help@struts.apache.org
>
>
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