Navigation

[BoD <Bo...@JRAF.org>]

Hi.
I work for a software publisher making web applications and we currently 
use Turbine.
We find that our applications are hard to maintain because of the way we 
handle the navigation: currently, we just use the TemplateLink tool in 
velocity templates and in Action classes, to build the URLs pointing to 
the different parts of the application.
I've been assigned the task to see if there was a better way to handle 
these aspects. I looked to other web frameworks and most of them have a 
way to declare externaly the navigation rules (eg: struts-config.xml for 
Struts, faces-config.xml for JSF, Spring Web Flow for Spring, xwork.xml 
for Webwork). Basically, these files document the flow of navigation in 
a single place, and that's what we'd like to have.

Now my questions are:
1/ did I miss something (is there anything similar that could be used in 
Turbine)?
2/ if not, is there any development planned in that direction, for 
future versions of Turbine?

And I guess a more general question is: how do you guys deal with these 
problems? Do you just use the TemplateLink tool? And do you have the 
same feeling that it's a problem to have the links at several parts of 
the application?

Thank you very much for your help.

BoD


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Re: Navigation

[Leandro Saad <le...@gmail.com>]

On 3/17/06, BoD <Bo...@jraf.org> wrote:
>
> Hi.
> I work for a software publisher making web applications and we currently
> use Turbine.
> We find that our applications are hard to maintain because of the way we
> handle the navigation: currently, we just use the TemplateLink tool in
> velocity templates and in Action classes, to build the URLs pointing to
> the different parts of the application.
> I've been assigned the task to see if there was a better way to handle
> these aspects. I looked to other web frameworks and most of them have a
> way to declare externaly the navigation rules (eg: struts-config.xml for
> Struts, faces-config.xml for JSF, Spring Web Flow for Spring, xwork.xml
> for Webwork). Basically, these files document the flow of navigation in
> a single place, and that's what we'd like to have.
>
> Now my questions are:
> 1/ did I miss something (is there anything similar that could be used in
> Turbine)?


No. Part of this is because turbine modules return void, instead of some
other value that could be used to determine the next template to be
rendered.
Guara modules return the Outcome object. This objects is used by the "view"
code to determine which template to render next. if Outcome.UNKNOWN is
returned the template from RunData is used.

2/ if not, is there any development planned in that direction, for
> future versions of Turbine?


I don´t know.


And I guess a more general question is: how do you guys deal with these
> problems? Do you just use the TemplateLink tool? And do you have the
> same feeling that it's a problem to have the links at several parts of
> the application?


I like the template tool. Sometimes is desirable to override the value set
on RunData (think reused on modules). I have a very specific situation where
the same module is executed by regular http requests and by ajax requests,
but I want to return HTML or JavaScript code, depending on the type of
request, without changing my module written in Java. Turbine does not handle
this situation very well.


Thank you very much for your help.
>
> BoD
>


--
Leandro Rodrigo Saad Cruz
CTO - InterBusiness Technologies
sitedafesta.com.br
db.apache.org/ojb
guara-framework.sf.net
xingu.sf.net