Author
Robert Wenzel, Engineer, Potix Corporation

Date
March 2016

Version
ZK 8.0

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

Introduction

To wrap up the Wizard Example Series here the final Part showing how things finally fit together when applying a 3rd party CSS framework (Bootstrap) to the wizard.

The implementation decisions/techniques used in the previous chapters now become handy. The strict separation between view and viewModel code enables the style overhaul without touching any Java code. Restyling an application still requires a significant amount of work where the major task is to adjust the various zul pages and templates to render the markup required by Bootstrap. But compared to changing both zul and java code the possibility to introduce errors is much smaller (and even if you cause probems, you know it's somewhere in the view).

Here a recording of the results (descriptions of the most significant changes will follow below):

Adding the Bootstrap resources

It's straight forward: just add the required css/js resources. ZK offers several ways to do so:

script / link directives
script / style components
javascript / stylesheet elements in a lang-addon.xml
embed element in zk.xml

For simplicity of the example I just added them to my root page.

/wizardexample/src/main/webapp/order.zul [1]

  <!-- Latest compiled and minified CSS -->
  <?link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css" ?>
  <!-- Latest compiled and minified JavaScript -->
  <?script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/js/bootstrap.min.js" ?>

Of course in a real application you'll likely chose to include the css/js files in your web application (not the topic here).

Render the UI in Bootstrap style

Once the layout is decided (in the ideal case a web designer decided for you, and provided static html mockups), you can change you zul files accordingly.

Here I'll not try to make all ZK components look "like" Bootstrap, instead I'll use XHTML components and native elements to produce the HTML necessary for Bootstrap. This allows to use and update the 3rd-party css styles directly whenever needed (or even apply different bootstrap themes later).

ZK8's reusable templates and shadow elements help again to avoid repeating the more verbose HTML markup. If necessary the markup structure of an existing ZK component can be adjusted using a custom "mold" LINK ME!!!! to fit into the desired layout.

Page/Wizard layout

/wizardexample/src/main/webapp/order.zul [2]

Here the [http://getbootstrap.com/css/#overview-container bootstrap-class - container) - was added to provide a responsive fixed width layout - nothing else worth mentioning here. See yourself in the diff.

More interesting are the changes in the wizard template defining the overall look and feel:

/wizardexample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/zul/template/wizard/wizard.zul [3]

One of the most straight forward changes is applying the bootstrap button styles:

    <button zclass="btn btn-default" label="@load(wizardVM.backLabel)" onClick="@command(wizardVM.backCommand)" />
    ...
    <button zclass="btn btn-success pull-right" label="@load(wizardVM.nextLabel)" onClick="@command(wizardVM.nextCommand)" />

NOTE: I use zclass instead of sclass to replace ZK's own button class (z-button) using bootstrap's css-classes (btn btn-default ...).

For the progress bar it was also simple to adapt the bootstrap progressbar example markup. The outer <n:div> is rendered using the native namespace, since it does not require dynamic updates, while the inner <x:div> uses an xhtml component to enable data binding on the dynamic style and textContent properties. A notifyChange on the progress-property in our wizardVM object will automatically adjust the label and progressbar width triggering the css animation provided by bootstrap.

	<template name="wizardProgress">
		<n:div class="progress">
			<x:div class="progress-bar progress-bar-success progress-bar-striped" 
				style="@load(('width: ' += wizardVM.progress += '%; min-width: 2em;'))"
				textContent="@load((wizardVM.progress += '%'))"/>
		</n:div>
	</template>

Line 5: the textContent-attribute on XHTML components is a new ZK8 feature to allow dynamic text content directly inside any html tag

In a similar fashion a bootstrap panel can be composed (I assume you notice the pattern):

	<div zclass="panel panel-primary"
			viewModel="@id('wizardVM') @init(wizardModel)"
			validationMessages="@id('vmsgs')"
			onOK="@command(wizardVM.nextCommand)">
		<n:div class="panel-heading">
			<x:h3 class="panel-title" textContent="@load(wizardVM.currentStep.title)"/>
		</n:div>
		<n:div class="panel-body">
			<sh:apply template="@init(empty wrapperTemplate ? 'defaultWizardContentWrapper' : wrapperTemplate)"/>
		</n:div>
	</div>

Basket Layout

On basket page the <grid> was replaced by a striped bootstrap table. The shadow element <sh:forEach> allows to reuse the same ListModel of BasketItems from the BasketViewModel only changing the layout and bind expressions. As described above xhtml and native elements are used to render the markup required by bootstrap.

The Tooltips are enabled using the Bootstrap JS API more on that below.

In order to make the page a little more responsive to browser width changes the Basket recommendations at the bottom use the Bootstrap grid system to vary the number of recommendations per row at different display sizes:

/wizardexample/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/zul/order/steps/basket.zul [4]

<x:div class="row">
	<sh:forEach items="@init(basketVM.recommendedItemsModel)">
		<x:div class="col-lg-4 col-sm-6">
			<x:div class="well well-sm">
				<sh:apply template="basketItemLabel" item="@init(each)"/>
				<button zclass="btn btn-info btn-xs pull-right" iconSclass="z-icon-shopping-cart" 
					onClick="@command('addRecommendedItem', item=each)" 
					ca:data-toggle="tooltip" ca:data-placement="right" 
					ca:data-title="${i18n:nls('order.basket.add')}"/>
			</x:div>
		</x:div>
	</sh:forEach>
</x:div>

Form layout

Add some Responsiveness

Leverage the Bootstrap JS API

Tooltip

Bootstrap also offers a Javascript-api to enable dynamic effects. On the basket page I use the Bootstrap-tooltips configured as a ZK8 data-handler.

$('[data-toggle="tooltip"]').tooltip()

Modal

Summary

That's it for now, any ideas what to show next? Waiting for your comments.

Download

The source code for this article can be found in github (branch: part-4).

Running the Example

Checkout part-4

   git checkout part-4

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/wizardexample/order.zul

Comments

Anonymous

ZK8 Wizard Example - Part 4 final

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