Small Talks/2011/July/Envisage ZK 6.0: Rendering List and Tree Model with Templates

Author
Tom Yeh, Potix Corporation

Date
July 20, 2011

Version
ZK 5.1

This page is under construction, so we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the content!

The Story

Before 5.1, the custom renderer must be implemented in Java. It is the most powerful since you could do anything with Java. However, in many cases, it is tedious since an additional Java class have to create and maintain and it is more about View than Control in MVC terminologies.

With 5.1, a concept called template is introduced. It allows UI designers to specify templates right in a ZUML page, and then the model can be rendered based on the template without any Java code.

What Is Template

A template is a segment of a ZUML page enclosed with the template element as shown below.

<window>
    <template name="foo">
      <textbox/>
      <grid>
         <columns/>
      </grid>
   </template>
...

The template could contain any ZUML elements you want, even including another templates. When ZK interprets a template, ZK won't interpret its content immediately. Rather, it stores it as an instance of org.zkoss.zk.ui.util.Template into the component, such that it can be retrieved later to create components by the application or the component.

Comments

Copyright © Potix Corporation. This article is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.