The Concept of Data Binding

The Concept of Data Binding

ZK's annotated data binding mechanism involves the following players to make it work:

• Data Bean
• ZK UI Components declared in ZUL file
• ZK's annotated data binding manager utility

In a nutshell, a bean's particular property is associated with a specified component attribute, such that whenever a value is modified, the annotated data binding manager calls the data bean's getter and setter methods to keep the values in sync between the bean and the component.
The syntax for declaring this association in ZUML is

<component-name attribute-name="@{bean-name.attribute-name}"/>

A Basic Example of ZK Annotated Data Binding

Here we walk through a basic annotated data binding sample step by step.

Prepare the Data Bean

Create a data oject "Person" with two properties:

public class Person {
    private String _firstName = "";
    private String _lastName = "";
    private Boolean _married = true;
 
    public Person(){
    	
    }
    public Person(String firstName, String lastName, Boolean married){
    	_firstName = firstName;
    	_lastName = lastName;
    	_married = married;
    }
    
    // getter and setters
    
 
    public void setFullName(String f) {
        // do nothing
    }
 
    public String getFullName() {
        return _firstName + " " + _lastName;
    }
}

Declare the data bean in ZUL file

Instantiate the Person class in zscript:

<window>
    <zscript><![CDATA[
        //prepare the person object
       	import bean.Person;
        Person person = new Person();
        person.setFirstName("Max");
        person.setLastName("Planck");
    ]]>
    </zscript>
    // UI declaration
</window>

Activate the Annotated Data Binding Manager

We activate the data binding manager by declaring the page initiator, the initiator does the following automatically for us:

1. Create an instance of AnnotatedDataBinderInit.
2. Sets the AnnotateDataBinder instance as a variable with the name "binder" stored in the component as specified in arg0 "component-path"(if arg0 is not specified, use Page instead).
3. Calls DataBinder.loadAll() to initiate all UI components from the associated data source.

<?init class="org.zkoss.zkplus.databind.AnnotateDataBinderInit" ?>

Declare Components for Annotated Data Binding

Now we declare the components in our ZUL file to apply the annotated data binding mechanism:

<?init class="org.zkoss.zkplus.databind.AnnotateDataBinderInit" ?>
<window>
    <zscript><![CDATA[
        //prepare the person object
       	import bean.Person;
        Person person = new Person();
        person.setFirstName("Max");
        person.setLastName("Planck");
    ]]>
    </zscript>
    <grid width="400px">
        <rows>
            <row> First Name: <textbox value="@{person.firstName}"/></row>
            <row> Last Name: <textbox value="@{person.lastName}"/></row>
            <row> Full Name: <label value="@{person.fullName}"/></row>
        </rows>
    </grid>
</window>

The result is a table with 3 rows, when user enters values in the textboxes and an onChange event is fired, the lable in the last row is updated instantly.