JViews JSF Web applications at a glance
JavaServer™ Faces technology is provided by the
Java Community Process(
JCP) under
JSR-314. It defines a standard
MVC framework based on component-driven user interface (UI) model for Web development. JSF helps to separate the different roles involved in the development of a Web application, namely the
application developer, who focuses on the business logic, the
component developer, responsible for connecting the back-end logic with the user interface, and the
page author, responsible for the application’s UI.
With JSF, developing JViews Diagrammer Web applications is easier as the client-side UI is created by connecting well-defined components together while the system handles the required client-- and server-- side hurdles automatically.
The JViews Diagrammer JSF Web technology consists of:
The tag libraries (a set of JavaServer™ Pages - JSP™ tags)
A server-side Java API
The JavaScript library
The tag libraries
The tag libraries are used to build JSP pages; each tag represents a component with a set of configurable attributes. These components are compiled into Java code that is executed on the server-side to produce or manipulate content for the page; each component is also represented by a set of dynamically generated JavaScript objects on the client-side, to handle display and client-server communication. Not all components have a visual representation; interactors, for example, are associated with graphic views and are responsible for data manipulation rather than displaying content.
The basic infrastructure of the JViews Web technology has the following libraries:
JViews Core, which has the following tag identifier http://www.ilog.com/jviews/tlds/jviews-faces.tld
JViews Framework, which has the following tag identifier http://www.ilog.com/jviews/tlds/jviews-framework-faces.tld
The JViews Diagrammer features provide an additional tag library:
JViews Diagrammer, which has the following tag identifier http://www.ilog.com/jviews/tlds/jviews-diagrammer-faces.tld
The URIs uniquely identifying the JViews Web technology tag libraries are for identification purposes only, these are not live URIs.
These libraries describe the following components:
debugDependencies: an auxiliary component to help identify unresolved JSP dependencies
imageButton: an interactive component that can be associated with a customized action
menu: an auxiliary component that defines a menu model to create pop-up menus
contextualMenu: a component that creates pop-up menus on a graphic view
menuItem: the auxiliary component that represents a menu item in a pop-up menu
menuSeparator: the auxiliary component that represents a simple separator in a pop-up menu
messageBox: a visual component that allows the display of text messages to the user
diagrammerView:a graphic view, displays an
IlvDiagrammerin the Web browser
overview: an auxiliary display component, used in conjunction with the graphic view
objectSelectInteractor: an interactor for selecting and moving graphic objects in a graphicview
objectSelectRectInteractor: an interactor for selecting and moving a set of graphic objects in a graphic view
nodeOrLinkSelectInteractor: an interactor that triggers a server-side action when selecting a node or link in a diagram view
nodeOrLinkSelectRectInteractor: an interactor that triggers a server-side action when selecting a group of nodes and/or links in a diagram view
selectInteractor: an interactor that allows you to select objects in a diagram view, using a unique technique that reduces the amount of data exchanged with the server
selectionManager: an auxiliary component for the
selectInteractor providing customization of the selection graphic representation
panInteractor: an interactor for panning the graphic view
zoomInteractor: an interactor for zooming on a given rectangular region in the graphic view
panTool: an auxiliary navigational component, used in conjunction with the graphic view
zoomTool: an auxiliary navigational component, used in conjunction with the graphic view
The server-side Java API
The JSF components in the JViews Diagrammer Web technology rely on Java servlets to handle the client requests and produce the appropriate response. A client request is triggered by the Web page, when manipulating the diagram view; it can be the result of a direct user input requesting a view update, or an asynchronous request, indirectly sent as part of an interaction.
The servlets are responsible for decoding the client request and processing the appropriate response, which may be a new image update representing the current state of the diagram view (
IlvSDMView).
For more information about the different servlets available and how to extend and/or customize them, see
JViews servlet implementation.
The JavaScript library
Each JViews Diagrammer JSF component in the tag library is internally represented by a JavaScript object on the client side. These objects are dynamically generated by the server as part of the basic infrastructure of the Web application. These objects provide great flexibility as they can be directly manipulated by the user as a way to fine-tune the behavior of the JViews Diagrammer JSF components, or as a way to integrate them with third-party JavaScript libraries and custom code.
For more information about the different JavaScript objects and their API, see
JViews JSF applications versus JViews JavaScript applications and the
JavaScript API reference documentation reference documentation.
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