[Trinidad] panelTabbed - validation of unvisited tabs

[Peter Rawlins <pe...@focus-solutions.co.uk>]

I have a form containing various input fields followed by a panelTabbed, and lastly an OK commandButton.  The panelTabbed contains some showDetailItem children, which have various input fields, some of which have required=true.  The users may visit the tabs as they see fit, and then press the OK button, and I need each showDetailItem child to be valid as a precondition for the button action.

However if a showDetailItem is not disclosed it will not validate its children.  So if the user doesn't happen to visit every tab, the unvisited tabs may not be valid, but the validation phase passes, and the commandButton's action method is invoked.

This behaviour seems wrong to me, as I would have expected that all rendered=true fields inside a form should be valid before the form is considered valid.  Does anyone know of a way to force the display of the invalid tabs, with their errors?

I've attempted a workaround by adding code to temporarily disclose the other tabs in turn, and manually call processValidators() on them, but this doesn't work because the input fields of the undisclosed tabs have no submitted data, and claim to be valid (which also seems strange).  I've also considered adding code to replace submitted values of null with "", but this seems like a kludge too far.

Looking through the mailing lists, I found an old thread which looked similar, but no solution:
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=905706&#905706

I'm using trinidad-1.0.1.

RE: [Trinidad] panelTabbed - validation of unvisited tabs

[Peter Rawlins <pe...@focus-solutions.co.uk>]

On 7/19/07, Adam Winer wrote:
>
> There's two questions here:
> (1) Is there a way to validate tabs that have been disclosed,
>   but aren't disclosed right now?
> (2) Is there a way to validate tabs that have never been disclosed.
>
> For 1, the answer is yes:  call processValidators() and
> processUpdateModel() on the children of the showDetailItem.
>
> For 2, the answer is no, you can't.  And you can't set the submitted value to "", because > that'll blow up for many renderers.
>
> What you need here is bean-level validation, not component-level validation.
> Alternatively, you might disable the button until all tabs have been visited.


Adam,  thanks for the quick reply.

I've got quite a lot of similar pages to create using tabbedPanels, so I'd like to make the most of the automatic validation based on the declarative page definition.

After careful consideration, I've decided to go with your very last suggestion - with a slight tweak :-)

I plan to track which tabs have been visited, but leave the button always enabled.
When the button is pushed, the action will first perform a check that all necessary tabs have been visited, and if not, disclose the next required tab as appropriate.  If the check passes, then the normal button action will be performed.  I'll be relying on the standard behaviour of not letting the user get out of the current tab unless it's valid - so I need to ensure that no "immediate" actions switch away from the current tab.

Additionally, I expect to use bean-level validation for cross-field validation where the fields are on different tabs.

Many thanks for your help.

Regards,
Peter.

Re: [Trinidad] panelTabbed - validation of unvisited tabs

[Adam Winer <aw...@gmail.com>]

On 7/18/07, Peter Rawlins <pe...@focus-solutions.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> I have a form containing various input fields followed by a panelTabbed, and
> lastly an OK commandButton.  The panelTabbed contains some showDetailItem
> children, which have various input fields, some of which have
> required=true.  The users may visit the tabs as they see fit, and then press
> the OK button, and I need each showDetailItem child to be valid as a
> precondition for the button action.
>
> However if a showDetailItem is not disclosed it will not validate its
> children.  So if the user doesn't happen to visit every tab, the unvisited
> tabs may not be valid, but the validation phase passes, and the
> commandButton's action method is invoked.
>
> This behaviour seems wrong to me, as I would have expected that all
> rendered=true fields inside a form should be valid before the form is
> considered valid.  Does anyone know of a way to force the display of the
> invalid tabs, with their errors?
>
> I've attempted a workaround by adding code to temporarily disclose the other
> tabs in turn, and manually call processValidators() on them, but this
> doesn't work because the input fields of the undisclosed tabs have no
> submitted data, and claim to be valid (which also seems strange).  I've also
> considered adding code to replace submitted values of null with "", but this
> seems like a kludge too far.

There's two questions here:
(1) Is there a way to validate tabs that have been disclosed,
  but aren't disclosed right now?
(2) Is there a way to validate tabs that have never been disclosed.

For 1, the answer is yes:  call processValidators() and
processUpdateModel() on the children of the showDetailItem.

For 2, the answer is no, you can't.  And you can't set
the submitted value to "", because that'll blow up
for many renderers.

What you need here is bean-level validation, not
component-level validation.  Alternatively, you might
disable the button until all tabs have been visited.

-- Adam






>
> Looking through the mailing lists, I found an old thread which looked
> similar, but no solution:
> http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=905706&#905706
>
> I'm using trinidad-1.0.1.
>

RE: [Trinidad] panelTabbed - validation of unvisited tabs - apologies for duplicate

[Peter Rawlins <pe...@focus-solutions.co.uk>]

the original didn't appear for over 12 hours :-(