ZK8 Features for MVC - Shadow Elements - Part 1

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DocumentationSmall Talks2016OctoberZK8 Features for MVC - Shadow Elements - Part 1
ZK8 Features for MVC - Shadow Elements - Part 1
Author
Robert Wenzel, Engineer, Potix Corporation
Date
August 2016
Version
ZK 8.0

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Introduction

ZK 8 added several new Features mainly improving Component control when using the MVVM design pattern. The question I sometimes heard since was: (How )can we benefit from these features in our MVC application ?

To answer the question I'll start with the most prominent features which are:

  • shadow elements
  • form proxies

Let's have a look where they can be used in the MVC world.

If you are missing a feature let us know in the comments section below.

Shadow Elements in MVC

Some of the Shadow Elements LINK ME are more/less beneficial in MVC than others here a short summary

  • <if>
most useful when used with dynamic @load expressions in MVVM
in MVC you can attach/detach components directly (so this is nothing new for MVC)
used statically you can render parts of your UI based on a conditional EL expression <if test="${some.condition}">...</if>
  • <choose>, <when>, <otherwise>
similar to <if> no real benefit for MVC
  • <forEach>
very useful see paragraph below
  • <apply>
helps to compose the UI from ZUL fragments (more efficiently than <include>)
in java you could just call Executions.createComponents(...) LINK ME

Apply

For static UI composition an <include> 

<include src="customerDetails.zul" customerId="123"/>

can be replaced by an <apply> element. 

<apply templateURI="customerDetails.zul" customerId="123"/>

The difference is that an <include> does several things at once.


ForEach

https://www.zkoss.org/wiki/ZK_Developer's_Reference/MVC/Controller/Wire_Components#Shadow_Selectors

CollectionTemplate

ZUL Template

Java Based Template

Using ZK8 Form Proxies in MVC

Creating a Simple CRUD Template

Summary

Download

  • The source code for this article can be found on github.

Running the Example

Clone the repository 

  git clone [email protected]:zkoss-demo/mvc-shadow.git
  cd mvc-shadow
  git checkout master

The example war file can be built with maven: 

   mvn clean package

Execute using jetty: 

   mvn jetty:run

Then access the overview page http://localhost:8080/mvc-shadow/


Comments



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