Wow - Continued...

[wb...@Ensign-BickfordInd.com]

Okay, here is answering the questions on what it was I did...

Disclaimer:  I am new at Struts and web apps so if there is a better way 
to do something I want to hear it.  Really.  Getting all this working at 
once was a pretty steep learning curve.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
The Display Tag library  ( http://edhill.its.uiowa.edu/display/ )
This was the best one I could find for it, although the documentation is 
somewhat lacking and required some source diving to learn that I could 
do grouping and such.  It supports Dynabeans and does all kinds of nice 
looking things...  I could go into it all now, but if you go to the web 
site its all already described.  

In the JSP it looks like this

<display:table width="95%" name="results" >
  <display:column property="id" title="Request" href="viewRequest.do" 
paramId="idnum" paramProperty="id"/>
  <display:column property="vendorCompanyName" title="Vendor"  
href="viewRequest.do" paramId="idnum" paramProperty="id"/>
  <display:column property="startDate" title="Starting" />
  <display:column property="endDate" title="Ending"/>
  <display:column property="employeeLastName" title="Requested By"/>
  <display:column property="campus" title="Campus" />
</display:table>

It also works well with CSS proving both a default style to use and also 
you can override it on a column basis
The top two columns build links in the display which is cool.  It also 
does grouping (not shown) which was something else I needed
Supports paging, XML, CSV and Text output, etc...
_________________________________________________________________
DAO Layer

This layer is home grown and pretty simple.  I have the following levels 
in the app:
Action
Busness Logic
specificDAO
baseDAO

The action layer makes calls to the business logic to determing what 
data should be returned.  It gets and passes down a DATASOURCE it gets 
from the struts config.  This is how I avoid keeping everything below 
here unaware of the servlet running it.   the business logic determines 
what it needs and makes a call to the specificDAO for this part of the 
app for instance:

Business Logic to SpecificDAO:     getProjectList( )

The SpecificDAO builds the SQL query and calls a method in the baseDAO 
which it extends called   executeQuery

The ExecuteQuery takes the SQL, gets a connection based on the 
Datasource and executes the SQL.   It then takes the result set and 
using the column names in the metadata creates a Dynabean for each of 
the rows containing properties for all of the fields.  It returns an 
ArrayList which bubbles up the Action.  That stuffs it into the session 
and the JSP page will be able to display it using the taglib above.  I 
also have a variant of this which allows a bean to be passed down 
through the DAO which the execute then uses instead of a DynaBean.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
DynaForms / Validator
These little gems save me the trouble of making a ton of beans and 
coding alot of validation routines.  I use them for all the forms and to 
do all the validation.  I am using the action to handle any excessive 
validation I need to do.  The config files start getting a little big, 
but I think that you can split up config files now... I have to look 
into that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Tiles
This kicked ass.  I am building a series of applications for our 
intranet so I want to maintain the same look and feel.  I have a common 
directory of tiles and definitions that I copy from one project to the 
next and simply override the definitions that apply to the current 
application.  In this app I will take the common look and override stuff 
like:
* RegionalNavigationBlock
* RegionalTitle
* RegionalFooter
* Body

I can basically have a whole new framework up in a few minutes (HTML 
anyway).  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ANT
You gotta love ANT.  I use ant for all my compilation, but also to 
concatinate all of the properties files together into one so that I only 
need one referenced in the config file.  Keeps it easy to work with 
cause I never have to deal with the whole file at once...








































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RE: Wow - Continued...

[Joe Celentano <li...@joecelentano.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wbchmura@Ensign-BickfordInd.com
> -------------------------------------------
> The Display Tag library  ( http://edhill.its.uiowa.edu/display/ )
> This was the best one I could find for it, although the documentation is
> somewhat lacking and required some source diving to learn that I could
> do grouping and such.  It supports Dynabeans and does all kinds of nice
> looking things...  I could go into it all now, but if you go to the web
> site its all already described.

Ed had a BOF at JavaOne this year to sort of show how he came up with that
tag lib and how it works. It's very straightforward, easy to use, and easy
to modify. I've already added a bunch of features that I'm going to submit
back to him, and they all were extremely easy to implement. If anybody has a
table tag they are in love with that seems like it's better than this, I'd
love to hear about it!

Joe


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