Apache Click v2.3.0 Milestone 1 now available

Click 2.3.0 Milestone 1  is available for download. This milestone contains important new features including Ajax support, Page Actions and light-weight stateful controls. In addition there are new documentation, examples and other minor enhancements.

• Click Home
• Roadmap and Changes - full list of new features, improvements and bug fixes
• Upgrade Path - please see the upgrade path when upgrading from 2.2.0 or earlier.
• Download Click 2.3.0-M1
• Maven bundles
• Live examples

New features and improvement:

• Ajax support.
• Page Action support.
• Stateful Controls.
• Improve fields to only be processed if they have an incoming request parameter. This improvement streamlines dynamic forms since fields added at runtime during s POST request won't bind their values and won't be validated for that request. In subsequent requests the Field will have an incoming parameter and so will have it's value bound and validated. Another advantage is that dynamically added Fields won't have their default value overridden in the POST request they were added in. This issue has been raised by Nirmal Solanki [CLK-722].
• Added automapping support for GAE with a caveat that page templates must be placed under the folders page or pages. This issue was raised by Ke Sun [CLK-639].
• Added MessagesMapService interface to support pluggable messages map implementations [CLK-655].
• Improved MessagesMap to be extendable and customizable [CLK-728].
• Added support for loading DateField translations for month and day names from the JDK. [CLK-650].
• Added support for Menus that do not have roles defined. If no roles are defined, IsUserInRoles passes a null argument to hasAccess to determine whether access is permitted to menus without roles [CLK-724].
•  Added support for absolute page classnames when configuring pages in click.xml. Absolute classnames aids with IDE hot-linking and is less confusing to use. [CLK-704]. 
• Fixed escaping of control values and attributes to be XML friendly in order to support Ajax requests. Previously all HTML characters was escaped, now only the following characters are escaped: <, >, ", ', & [CLK-674]. 

New documentation:

• Added a section covering the new Behavior support.
• Added a chapter on Ajax, covering AjaxBehaviors, Ajax execution flow and a full example.
• Added a section covering the new Page Action support.
  

New examples:

• Added examples showcasing the new Ajax support. See the Ajax Menu for the full list of examples.
• Added an example showing how to integrate a TabbedPanel, Form and Table.
• Added an example showing a Stateful TabbedPanel.
• Added an example FieldSeparator Control and example usage page [CLK-544]. 

Removed:

• Removed the ability to automatically bypass validation for Forms through JavaScript. This ability was added in 2.2.0 but raised concerns over security and was dropped for 2.3.0. If you used this feature in existing applications, please see the Upgrade path for a safe alternative to bypass validation. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Deprecated:

• Deprecated stateful page support: Page.setStateful().
• Stateful pages had the following issues:
  
  • Stateful pages was introduced to make it easier to store page state across multiple HTTP requests. However developing a stateful page is very different from developing a stateless one and this lead to Click applications that are inconsistent and harder to maintain.
  • In addition stateful page support has never been implemented consistently across the framework and some components did not work correctly.
  • Stateful pages are very coarse grained, making it difficult to control which objects are stored in the session.
  • Stateful pages have also introduced unnecessary complexity in the framework itself, which can now be phased out.
  Unfortunately there is no direct upgrade path from a stateful page. However the majority of use cases are catered for by the new stateful support in the controls: Table, Form, TabbedPanel, Field and AbstractLink.

The Apache Click team

Apache Click 2.2.0: Dynamic Form Validation

In this three part series I'll blog about some of the new features added in 2.2.0, namely:

1. DataProviders (Japanese version)
2. Explicit binding (Japanese version)
   
3. Dynamic Form Validation ( Japanese version)

In this third and final installment I'll cover conditional form validation. This feature simplifies dynamic Form behavior by allowing developers to control when form validation should be applied. Generally form validation should be applied when the user submits the completed form. However when working with dynamic forms, the form is often submitted (using JavaScript) to the server in an incomplete state in order to add dynamic Fields and components. I'll refer to this as "incomplete submissions" because the form was not completely filled out by the user when the submission occurs.

Ideally form validation should not be applied to incomplete submissions as the user will be presented any validation errors that occurred. Seeing the errors will be unexpected for the user since they are still busy filling out the form and did not intend to perform a submission.

Let's look at a simple example. Below we have a page with a required name field and a checkbox that indicates whether the user is married or not. If the married checkbox is checked, a field is displayed for capturing the spouse's name. The spouse's name field is also required.

public class ValidationDemo extends BorderPage {

    Form form = new Form("form");

    // The submit button is used to submit the completed form. Note, do not
    // name the Submit button "submit". That will cause a JavaScript error when
// the button is clicked.
    Submit ok = new Submit("ok");

    @Override
    public void onInit() {
        super.onInit();
        form.add(new TextField("fullName", true));
        addControl(form);
        Checkbox married = new Checkbox("married", "Married?");

        // We use JavaScrcipt to submit the "incomplete" form when the user
        // clicks the checkbox.
        married.setAttribute("onclick", "form.submit();");
        form.add(married);

        form.add(ok);

        // Explicitly bind the checkbox
        ClickUtils.bind(married);
        if (married.isChecked()) {
            form.add(new TextField("spouseName", true));
        }
    }
}

Note the highlighted line above. We are using JavaScript to submit the form when the married checkbox is checked.

Here is a screenshot of the page:

When the checkbox is checked, the form is submitted and the spouse field is added. Next the form is validated and the required name and spouse error messages is displayed, as seen in the screenshot below:

We don't want to show the validation messages yet. Particularly problematic is the error message for the Spouse Name field since the user has not seen this field until now.

One solution is to clear the error messages if the form was submitted but the "ok" Submit button was not clicked, meaning the form was submitted through some other means ie. JavaScript. We can add this logic to the onPost page event:

...

@Override
public void onPost() {
    // Clear form errors if the "ok" submit button was not clicked
    if (!ok.isClicked()) {
        form.clearErrors();
    }
} 

This produces the screenshot below:

This looks better. The Spouse Name has been added and no error messages are shown.

However this solution is not ideal because the validation step is still performed and we have to manually clear the errors. So is there a better way?

Indeed there is. By leveraging Explicit binding, one can conditionally switch off form and field validation as follows:

if(!submit.isClicked()) { 
    form.setValidate(false); 
}

Let's revisit our earlier example and update it to use conditional validation:

public class ValidationDemo extends BorderPage {

    Form form = new Form("form");

    // The submit button is used to submit the completed form. Note, do not
    // name the Submit button "submit". That will cause a JavaScript error when
// the button is clicked.
    Submit ok = new Submit("ok");

    @Override
    public void onInit() {
        super.onInit();
        form.add(new TextField("fullName", true));
        addControl(form);
        Checkbox married = new Checkbox("married", "Married?");

        // We use JavaScript to submit the "incomplete" form when the user
        // clicks the checkbox.
        married.setAttribute("onclick", "form.submit();");
        form.add(married);

        form.add(ok);

        // Bind the submit button. If it wasn't clicked it means the Form was
        // submitted using JavaScript and we don't want to validate yet
        ClickUtils.bind(submit);

        // If the Form was submitted but the submit was not clicked, don't validate
        if(form.isFormSubmission() && !submit.isClicked()) {
            form.setValidate(false);
        }

        if (married.isChecked()) {
            form.add(new TextField("spouseName", true));
        }
    }
}

The screenshot below shows the form after checking the checkbox:

As you can see, no errors are displayed since the form was not validated.

Conditional form validation together with explicit binding provides a good combination for adding dynamic behavior to your Click pages and forms.

This concludes the three part series covering the new features of Click 2.2.0.

Apache Click 2.2.0: Explicit Binding

In this three part series I'll blog about some of the new features added in 2.2.0, namely:

1. DataProviders (Japanese version)
2. Explicit binding (Japanese version)
   
3. Dynamic Form Validation ( Japanese version)

In this second installment I'll cover explicit binding which allows developers to bind, or set, a control's value to incoming request parameters. Not all controls support binding though. The most common bindable controls include Field, Form and Abstractlink. Explicit binding simplifies dynamic Page and Form behavior as it allows you to bind and query control values whenever you need to, for example in the onInit event or the Page constructor.

When talking about explicit binding it is also worth mentioning implicit binding.
Implicit binding occurs automatically every request as part of the onProcess event. So Control values will automatically be set once the onProcess event has occurred.Click Controls uses a convention of handling bind logic in a method called bindRequestValue().

A typical bindRequestValue() implementation looks like this:

public void bindRequestValue() {
    Context context = getContext();
    String controlName = getName();
    String value = context.getRequestParameter(controlName);
    if(value != null) {
        setValue(value);
    }
}

// For completeness sake we show the onProcess implementation as well.
// onProcess delegates the binding logic to bindRequestValue
public void onProcess() {
    bindRequestValue();
    ...
}

Generally the control name is used to lookup the incoming request parameter, but
other conventions can be used as well.

Under most circumstances, implicit binding is all you need. But sometimes you might want to know the value of a control before the onProcess event occurs. For example, within the onInit()
event, you might want to check which drop-down value a user selected in order to
add another Field to the Form. Remember, only Controls that are created and
attached to their parent page/container partakes in the onProcess event. That's why it's important to create and attach Controls to their parents prior to the onProcess event.

As you probably know already, the onInit event occurs before onProcess, and because implicit binding only occurs during onProcess, the Control value is not available for querying from onInit.

So how can you find out the value of a Control during the onInit event? This is
where explicit binding comes into play. Explicit binding allows developers to
dictate when the Control value is bound. So how can one explicitly bind the Control value?
By invoking the Control method, bindRequestValue(). (Recall that not all Controls
support binding and might not provide a bindRequestValue() method.)

There are a couple of caveats to be aware of when invoking bindRequestValue
directly.

• Fields should only be bound if their parent Form has been submitted, otherwise if you have multiple forms on the page, you might end up in a situation where form1 fields could be bound to form2 fields.
• Forwarded requests have already been processed and should not be used for binding purposes.

To make things easier, Click provides a couple of helper methods that takes care
of the caveats mentioned above. These helper methods are available from the
ClickUtils class which sports a variety of bind() and bindAndValidate() methods.
You can even pass in Containers such as Form to these methods and all child
controls will be bound.

The bindAndValidate() method will both bind and validate a Field or Form.



It's worth mentioning that it's also possible to lookup request parameters directly through the Context object instead of having to bind the control value.

Let's look at some examples next.

In this first example we will look at a dynamic Form where a Checkbox determines
whether a TextField should be added to the Form or not.

public class DynamicFormDemo extends Page {

    @Override
    public void onInit() {
        super.onInit();
        Form form = new Form("form");
        addControl(form);
        Checkbox chk = new Checkbox("chk");
        form.add(chk);

        Submit ok = new Submit("ok");
        form.add(ok);

        // Explicitly bind the checkbox in the onInit event which allows us to query
        // whether the Checkbox was checked or not.
        ClickUtils.bind(chk);
        if(chk.isChecked()) {
            form.add(new TextField("name"));
        }
    }
}

We use the ClickUtils.bind() method to explicitly bind the Checkbox value so we
can query whether it is checked or not.

In this second example we expand the first by adding a Select field as well.

public class DynamicFormDemo extends Page {

    @Override
    public void onInit() {
        super.onInit();
        Form form = new Form("form");
        addControl(form);
        Checkbox chk = new Checkbox("chk");
        form.add(chk);
        Select countries = new CountrySelect("countries");
        countries.getOptionList().add(Option.EMPTY_OPTION);
        form.add(countries);

        Submit ok = new Submit("ok");
        form.add(ok);

        // Explicitly bind the Form (and all it's child controls) in the onInit
        // event, allowing us to query whether he user checked the Checkbox and
        // which country was selected.
        ClickUtils.bind(form);
        if (chk.isChecked()) {
            form.add(new TextField("name"));
        }

        if (StringUtils.isNotBlank(countries.getValue())) {
            form.add(new TextField("location"));
        }
    }
}

Note, instead of binding the Checkbox and Select separately we pass the Form to
the ClickUtils.bind() method. When passing a container such as a Form to the
ClickUtils.bind() methods, all bindable controls in the container will have their
values bound. This provides an easy shortcut to quickly bind multiple controls.

In this third and final example we show how to both bind and validate a form.

public class DynamicFormDemo extends BorderPage {

    @Override
    public void onInit() {
        super.onInit();
        Form form = new Form("form");
        addControl(form);
        Checkbox chk = new Checkbox("chk");
        form.add(chk);
        Select countries = new CountrySelect("countries", true);
        countries.getOptionList().add(Option.EMPTY_OPTION);
        form.add(countries);

        Submit ok = new Submit("ok");
        form.add(ok);

        // Explicitly bind and check that the Form (and all it's child
        // controls) is valid in the onInit event, allowing us to safely
        // query whether he user checked the Checkbox and
        // which country was selected.
        if (ClickUtils.bindAndValidate(form)) {
            if (chk.isChecked()) {
                form.add(new TextField("name"));
            }

            // The form validation passed and since the countries field is required
            // we can safely assume that a valid country has been selected
            form.add(new TextField("location"));
        }
    }
}

The ClickUtils.bindAndValidate() methods will bind and validate the field/s and return true if the field/s are valid, false otherwise.

ClickIDE 2.2.0.0 has been released!

ClickIDE 2.2.0.0 is now available! ClickIDE is an Eclipse plug-in for the developing Click web applications.

This version supports Apache Click 2.2.0 and fixes some minor issues.

For details about ClickIDE see:
http://click.apache.org/docs/click-ide.html

Download is available here:
http://click.apache.org/docs/click-ide-downloads.html
 

Enjoy Click

SD Times interview with Apache Click vice president

Malcolm Edgar, Apache Click Vice President, recently had a chat with SD Times editor in chief, David Rubinstein. Great to see Click getting some much deserved exposure.

Full interview can be viewed here.

Apache Click 2.2.0: DataProvider

In this three part series I'll blog about some of the new features added in 2.2.0, namely:

1. DataProviders (Japanese version)
2. Explicit binding (Japanese version)
   
3. Dynamic Form Validation ( Japanese version)
   

In this first installment I'll cover DataProviders and how they simplify Click Page implementations.

To understand the benefits of DataProviders, we need to look at the problem they are trying to solve. To start off with let's do a quick recap of the major life cycle events of a Click Page. Below we list the events in the order they are executed:

• <<init>>: page is created
  
• onInit: page controls are created and added to the page
  
• onProcess: control values are bound to request parameters, control values are validated and action listeners are fired
• onRender: database intensive operations are performed here
  

Click allows certain events to be skipped depending on the outcome of a previous event. onRender for example, will be skipped if a Control action returns false. This together with the fact that onRender is the last event exposed by Click makes onRender ideal for database intensive operations. If a control action listener decides to redirect to a different page, it can return false to bypass the slow onRender method.

For example:

public class CustomerPage extends BorderPage {

    private Table table = new Table("table");
    private ActionLink editLink = new EditLink("edit");

    @Override
    public void onInit() {
        super.onInit();

        table.add(new Column("firstname"));

        ...

        editLink.setActionListener(new ActionListener() {
            public boolean onAction(Control source) {
                Map params = Collections.singletonMap("id", editLink.getValue());

               // Redirect to edit customer page and pass the selected customer ID
               setRedirect(EditCustomerPage.class, params);
               return false;
            }
        });
    }

    @Override
    public void onRender() {
        // Database intensive operation: retrieving all customers from the database
        List<Customer> customers = getCustomerService.getCustomers();
        table.setRows(customers);
    }
}

In the example above you can see that we don't want to hit the database and retrieve all the customers only to be redirected to another page that does not render the customers we retrieved. In other words, because the customers won't be rendered by the page we redirect to, we don't want to pay for the database hit. Since the onRender event is skipped if an action listener returns false, it makes sense to place database intensive code there.

Inconsistent

Unfortunately this pattern cannot be applied to all controls. Some controls need their values populated before the onProcess event, either for validation or parameter binding purposes. For example, the Select control validation depends on its values to determines whether or not a valid selection was made. FormTable needs to have it's rows set  in order to update its entity values against incoming request parameters.

Having some of the controls populated in onInit and others in onRender is inconsistent and a common pitfall for new users as they have to figure out which controls should be populated in which event.

DataProvider

The solution used in Click was to add a DataProvider interface to enable on demand data loading. A DataProvider has a single method, "public List getData()", that the control can invoke when it needs it's data. For example, a Table will invoke getData when it is rendered, a Select will invoke getData when it is validated and a FormTable will invoke getData when it is processed.

DataProviders leads to a more consistent Page implementation where all control creation logic can be encapsulated in the onInit event or even the page constructor. For example:

public class CustomerPage extends BorderPage {

    private Table table = new Table("table");
    private Select select = new Select("markets");

    @Override
    public void onInit() {
        super.onInit();

        table.add(new Column("firstname"));

        ...

        table.setDataProvider(new DataProvider() {
            public List<Customer> getData() {
                return getCustomerService().getCustomers();
            }
        });

        select.setDataProvider(new DataProvider() {
            public List<Option> getData() {
                List options = new ArrayList();
                for (Market market : getMarketService().getMarkets()) {
                    options.add(new Option(market.getId(), market.getName());
                }
                return options;
            }
        });
    }
}

In the example above we use DataProviders for both the Table and Select control. The Table data is only retrieved when the Table is rendered, so in the event of a redirect, the database operation is skipped. The Page is now consistent as all control setup logic is placed inside the onInit event.

Is onRender still necessary?

Absolutely. While DataProviders allow control creation logic to be encapsulated within the onInit event, not all data needs to be represented with controls. The Page template (Velocity) for example can be used to render markup for the customers passed from the page. onRender could still be used to retrieve the customers and make it available to the template. For example:

public class CustomerPage extends BorderPage {

    public void onRender() {
        addModel("customers", getCustomerService().getCustomers());
    }
} 

<table>
...

#foreach($customer in $customers)
  <tr>
    <td>
      $customer.name
    <td>
    <td>
      $customer.holdings
    <td>
  </tr>
#end
</table> 

If an action listener returns false, onRender is skipped and the database operation won't be performed, which is exactly the behavior we want.

Hope this overview was helpful. In the next installment I'll cover Explicit binding and Dynamic Form Validation, which both simplifies dynamic form creation.

Apache Click v2.2.0 has been released

Click 2.2.0 final is available for download. Major new features include DataProviders for on-demand data loading and a Page interceptor facility for implementing cross cutting concerns such as security and transaction handling. There are also improved support for dynamic forms and stateful pages.

• Click Home
• Roadmap and Changes - full list of new features, improvements and bug fixes
• Upgrade Path - please see the upgrade path when upgrading from 2.1.0 or earlier.
• Download Click 2.2.0
• Maven bundles
  
• Live examples

New features and improvements:

• Added DataProvider support for Table, Select, PickList and CheckList providing on demand loading of data. With DataProviders, users won't have to be concerned about which page event (onInit or onRender) to set the data on the control [CLK-640].
• Added PagingDataProvider interface to support large paginated result sets for Tables [CLK-640].
• Added a MenuFactory for creating and loading Menus from configuration files. All the static Menu methods have been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
• Added an option for MenuFactory to not statically cache menus. This allows developers to cache menus in different scopes such as HttpSession. [CLK-405].
• Added i18n support for Menus loaded from menu.xml. The menu DTD now includes a new name attribute. By specifying a name attribute in menu.xml, the Menu will attempt to load its label and title from resource bundles [CLK-591].
• Added a Page Interceptor facility that provides an extension point for code which can listen to key page events and also interrupt normal page processing flow. [CLK-598].
• Added improved dynamic Form support. Forms can now optionally bypass validation for JavaScript based submissions using the new JavaScript function "Click.submit(formName, validate)" [CLK-638].
• Added improved dynamic Page and Form behaviour through new helper methods that can bind and validate Forms and Fields before the onProcess page event e.g. in the Page constructor or "onInit" event. The new methods are:
  
  • ClickUtils.bind(Field)
  • ClickUtils.bind(Form)
  • ClickUtils.bind(AbstractLink)
  • ClickUtils.bindAndValidate(Field)
  • ClickUtils.bindAndValidate(Form) [CLK-638]
• Added improved disabled behavior through the following changes:
  
  • Disabled fields are not processed or validated
  • Disabled field values are not copied to domain objects
  • Disabled fields are automatically enabled if the field has an incoming request parameter, indicating that the field was enabled on the client using JavaScript. Please note that this behavior does not apply to Checkbox or Radio fields. See the setDisabled() javadoc for details [CLK-646].
• Added new method Container.replace for replacing an existing control with a new control. In previous releases, an exception would be raised if a page or container already contained a control with the same name as the newly added control. In 2.2.0 the replace method is automatically called when adding a control which name matches that of an existing control in the page or container. This behavior will likely only benefit stateful pages since stateless pages are recreated each request [CLK-666].
• Added methods to Fields for styling their labels. See new methods Field.setLabelStyle(String) and Field.setLabelStyleClass(String). This issue was raised by Stefax [CLK-595].
• Added methods to Fields for providing styling hints to their containing elements. See new methods Field.setParentStyleHint(String) and Field.setParentStyleClassHint(String). This issue was raised by Stefax [CLK-595].
• Added trim property to Field for controlling if the Field request parameter is trimmed or not. See new method Field.setTrim(boolean). This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-627].
• Added new Context methods Context.hasRequestParameter(String) and Context.hasRequestAttribute(String).
• Added support to Select for a default option that can be used to validate non selection against and allows the Select to only populate its optionList at rendering time, instead of during onProcess event. [CLK-641].
• Improved default autobinding mode to bind both public fields and fields annotated with @Bindable. In previous versions the default autobinding mode only binded public Page fields [CLK-648].
• Added mock support for user principals and roles. This issue was raised and fixed by Sven Pfeiffer [CLK-585].
• Added localized Date format pattern support. This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-610].
• Added Polish resource bundle for DateField. This issue was raised and fixed by Rafal Rusin [CLK-624].
• Migrated controls to import resources through Elements and the getHeadElements method [CLK-647].
• Improved SpringClickServlet to re-inject transient beans after stateful page deserialization. This feature is only supported when the stateful page instance is created by Click, not Spring [CLK-667].
• Replaced Page and Control getMessage methods with varargs equivalents [CLK-604].
• Removed Click core's dependency on Velocity. This issue was raised by by Andrey Rybin [CLK-606].
• Replaced multiple ClickUtils close methods with a single method accepting a Closeable. This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-620].
• Improved ClickServlet to use the response's OutputStream if the Writer cannot be retrieved [CLK-644].
• Fixed issue where RadioGroup label referenced a non-existing ID. RadioGroup is now wrapped inside a span tag with the given ID. This issue was raised and fixed by Finn Bock [CLK-577].
• Fixed DateField to set seconds back to zero. This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-664].
• The menu.dtd has been published to http://click.apache.org/dtds/menu-2.2.dtd. If you want your configuration to conform to the menu.dtd, include the following declaration in your menu.xml:
  

  <!DOCTYPE menu PUBLIC
  "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Click Menu 2.2//EN"
  "http://click.apache.org/dtds/menu-2.2.dtd">
  

• The new click-2.2.dtd has been published to http://click.apache.org/dtds/click-2.2.dtd. If you want your configuration to conform to the click.dtd, include the following declaration in your click.xml:
  

  <!DOCTYPE click-app PUBLIC
  "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Click Configuration 2.2//EN"
  "http://click.apache.org/dtds/click-2.2.dtd">
  

New examples:

• Dynamic Form demonstrates how to dynamically add new Fields at runtime.
• Dynamic FieldSet demonstrates how to dynamically add a FieldSet at runtime.
• Dynamic Select demonstrates how to dynamically add fields based on a Select field value.
• Disabled Demo demonstrates the behavior of disabled fields.

Enjoy.

- The Click team

Apache Click v2.2.0-RC1 now available

Click 2.2.0-RC1 is now available. Major new features include DataProviders for on-demand data loading and a Page interceptor facility for implementing cross cutting concerns such as security and transaction handling. There are also improved support for dynamic forms and stateful pages.

• Click Home
• Roadmap and Changes - full list of new features, improvements and bug fixes
• Upgrade Path - please see the upgrade path when upgrading from 2.1.0 or earlier.
• Download Click 2.2.0 RC1
• Maven bundles
  
• Live examples

New features and improvements:

• Added DataProvider support for Table, Select, PickList and CheckList providing on demand loading of data. With DataProviders, users won't have to be concerned about which page event (onInit or onRender) to set the data on the control [CLK-640].
• Added PagingDataProvider interface to support large paginated result sets for Tables [CLK-640].
• Added a MenuFactory for creating and loading Menus from configuration files. All the static Menu methods have been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
• Added an option for MenuFactory to not statically cache menus. This allows developers to cache menus in different scopes such as HttpSession. [CLK-405].
• Added i18n support for Menus loaded from menu.xml. The menu DTD now includes a new name attribute. By specifying a name attribute in menu.xml, the Menu will attempt to load its label and title from resource bundles [CLK-591].
• Added a Page Interceptor facility that provides an extension point for code which can listen to key page events and also interrupt normal page processing flow. [CLK-598].
• Added improved dynamic Form support. Forms can now optionally bypass validation for JavaScript based submissions using the new JavaScript function "Click.submit(formName, validate)" [CLK-638].
• Added improved dynamic Page and Form behaviour through new helper methods that can bind and validate Forms and Fields before the onProcess page event e.g. in the Page constructor or "onInit" event. The new methods are:
  
  • ClickUtils.bind(Field)
  • ClickUtils.bind(Form)
  • ClickUtils.bind(AbstractLink)
  • ClickUtils.bindAndValidate(Field)
  • ClickUtils.bindAndValidate(Form) [CLK-638]
• Added improved disabled behavior through the following changes:
  
  • Disabled fields are not processed or validated
  • Disabled field values are not copied to domain objects
  • Disabled fields are automatically enabled if the field has an incoming request parameter, indicating that the field was enabled on the client using JavaScript. Please note that this behavior does not apply to Checkbox or Radio fields. See the setDisabled() javadoc for details [CLK-646].
• Added new method Container.replace for replacing an existing control with a new control. In previous releases, an exception would be raised if a page or container already contained a control with the same name as the newly added control. In 2.2.0 the replace method is automatically called when adding a control which name matches that of an existing control in the page or container. This behavior will likely only benefit stateful pages since stateless pages are recreated each request [CLK-666].
• Added methods to Fields for styling their labels. See new methods Field.setLabelStyle(String) and Field.setLabelStyleClass(String). This issue was raised by Stefax [CLK-595].
• Added methods to Fields for providing styling hints to their containing elements. See new methods Field.setParentStyleHint(String) and Field.setParentStyleClassHint(String). This issue was raised by Stefax [CLK-595].
• Added trim property to Field for controlling if the Field request parameter is trimmed or not. See new method Field.setTrim(boolean). This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-627].
• Added new Context methods Context.hasRequestParameter(String) and Context.hasRequestAttribute(String).
• Added support to Select for a default option that can be used to validate non selection against and allows the Select to only populate its optionList at rendering time, instead of during onProcess event. [CLK-641].
• Improved default autobinding mode to bind both public fields and fields annotated with @Bindable. In previous versions the default autobinding mode only binded public Page fields [CLK-648].
• Added mock support for user principals and roles. This issue was raised and fixed by Sven Pfeiffer [CLK-585].
• Added localized Date format pattern support. This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-610].
• Added Polish resource bundle for DateField. This issue was raised and fixed by Rafal Rusin [CLK-624].
• Migrated controls to import resources through Elements and the getHeadElements method [CLK-647].
• Improved SpringClickServlet to re-inject transient beans after stateful page deserialization. This feature is only supported when the stateful page instance is created by Click, not Spring [CLK-667].
• Replaced Page and Control getMessage methods with varargs equivalents [CLK-604].
• Removed Click core's dependency on Velocity. This issue was raised by by Andrey Rybin [CLK-606].
• Replaced multiple ClickUtils close methods with a single method accepting a Closeable. This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-620].
• Improved ClickServlet to use the response's OutputStream if the Writer cannot be retrieved [CLK-644].
• Fixed issue where RadioGroup label referenced a non-existing ID. RadioGroup is now wrapped inside a span tag with the given ID. This issue was raised and fixed by Finn Bock [CLK-577].
• Fixed DateField to set seconds back to zero. This issue was raised by Andrey Rybin [CLK-664].
• The menu.dtd has been published to http://click.apache.org/dtds/menu-2.2.dtd. If you want your configuration to conform to the menu.dtd, include the following declaration in your menu.xml:
  

  <!DOCTYPE menu PUBLIC
  "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Click Menu 2.2//EN"
  "http://click.apache.org/dtds/menu-2.2.dtd">
  

• The new click-2.2.dtd has been published to http://click.apache.org/dtds/click-2.2.dtd. If you want your configuration to conform to the click.dtd, include the following declaration in your click.xml:
  

  <!DOCTYPE click-app PUBLIC
  "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Click Configuration 2.2//EN"
  "http://click.apache.org/dtds/click-2.2.dtd">
  

New examples:

• Dynamic Form demonstrates how to dynamically add new Fields at runtime.
• Dynamic FieldSet demonstrates how to dynamically add a FieldSet at runtime.
• Dynamic Select demonstrates how to dynamically add fields based on a Select field value.
• Disabled Demo demonstrates the behavior of disabled fields.

Enjoy.

- The Click team

ClickIDE 2.1.0.0 released: support Apache Click 2.1.0 and Eclipse 3.5

The latest version of ClickIDE is available. This release supports Click 2.1.0 and Eclipse 3.5.

ClickIDE is based on Eclipse and the Eclipse Web Tools Project (WTP), and provides extended features for developing web applications using Click.

Important links:

• ClickIDE Home
• Download ClickIDE 2.1.0.0

Main features:

• Fast switching between Page classes and templates (Ctrl+Alt+S)
• Project creation wizard
• Click page creation wizard
• Visual editor for the Click configuration file
• Velocity template editor
• Spring Framework and Apache Cayenne Integration
• Integrated Click documentation

New features and enhancements in 2.1.0.0:

• Upgraded to Cayenne to 3.0 M6.
• Added "Use PerformanceFilter" option in the project creation wizard.
• Added switching comment action in the Velocity editor ([CTRL] + [/]).
• Added (*) to required attributes in the click.xml editor.

Enjoy Click!

Apache Click becomes a Top-Level Project and v2.1.0 now available

Apache Click has become a new Apache Top Level Project (TLP), signifying that Click is a well-governed project under the Apache Software Foundation principles.

Furthermore Click 2.1.0 has been released sporting many new features, including support for Google App Engine, a free Java hosting environment from Google.

• Click Home
• Roadmap and Changes - full list of new features, improvements and bug fixes
• Upgrade Path - please see the upgrade path when upgrading from 2.0.1 or earlier.
• Download Click 2.1.0
• Maven bundles
  
• Live examples

New features and improvements:

• Added support for Google App Engine, a free Java hosting environment from Google. This provides an ideal environment for students and startups to easily host their Click applications online. See GoogleAppEngineListener for details [560].
• Added support for an in-memory File Upload Service that can be used for uploading files in a Google App Engine environment.
• Added support for templates with custom extensions through the new ConfigService.isTemplate method. The default ConfigService implementation, XmlConfigService, provides support for the extensions .htm and .jsp, but new extensions can be provided in a subclass. See the JavaDoc for details [568].
• Added support to the Page class for conditionally including Control head elements through the new method includeControlHeadElements [571].
• Added support to deploy resources inside JARs from the Servlet 3.0 compliant location, META-INF/resources. Click's own pre-packaged resources are now also located in the JAR under META-INF/resources [570].
• Added new Calendar popup to DateField. This Calendar popup uses Calendar Date Select which is based on the Prototype JavaScript library.

  Please note if you don't want a dependency on the Prototype library you can use the third-party Click Calendar instead.

• Added first class support for HEAD elements such as JavaScript and Css. The following classes were added: Element, ResourceElement, JsImport, JsScript, CssImport and CssStyle. A new method was added to Page and Control: Control.getHeadElements() and Page.getHeadElements() [501].
• Added SubmitLink control that can submit a Form [519].
• Added HiddenList control for rendering and submitting a list of hidden fields [491].
• Added pluggable security access controller (AccessController) to Menu class. This pluggable interface enable use of security frameworks such as Spring Security (Acegi) or JSecurity to control user access to Menu items. This issue was raised by Demetrios Kyriakis [406].
• Added an Ant task, called DeployTask, for deploying static resources at build time. This task is useful when deploying Click applications in restricted environments. For more details see the section: deploying resources in a restricted environment.
• Added a ResourceService, for serving static resources at runtime. This service is useful when deploying Click applications in restricted environments. For more details see the section: deploying resources in a restricted environment [564].
• Added method, ClickUtils.createTemplateModel, which returns a template model containing objects such as the Context path, Page path, HTTP request, HTTP response, HTTP session etc.
• Added ability to specify a custom TreeNode icon through the new method TreeNode.setIcon(String). This issue was raised and fixed by Tim Hooper [494].
• Added method Format.url for encoding URL's in templates [399].
• Added method FieldColumn.setProperty that can be overriden to provide custom binding for complex domain objects. This issue was raised and fixed by WarnerJan Veldhuis [528].
• Added TypeConverter configuration option to ClickServlet. See getTypeConverter() method for details. This issue was raised Joseph Schmidt and fixed by Adrian A. [539].
• Added Slf4jLogService for supporting multiple application servers. This issue was raised Oliver Burn [555].
• Added @Bindable annotation support for page field autobinding. @Bindable supports public, protected and private Page variables [556, 599 ].
• Added property files with translation for the Russian language. This issue was raised and fixed by Andrey Rybin [607], [611].
• Added new Tree methods setWidth / getWidth and setHeight / getHeight. Also fixed rendering issues in IE6/7 for long node labels that overflow the tree width [616].
• The click.dtd has been published to http://click.apache.org/dtds/click-2.1.dtd.
• If you want your configuration to conform to the click.dtd, include the following declaration in your click.xml:
  

  <!DOCTYPE click-app PUBLIC
  "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Click Configuration 2.1//EN"
  "http://click.apache.org/dtds/click_2_1.dtd">

• Improved Form validation to allow Form subclasses to override the validate method and implement cross-field validation. The following changes were made: the previous validate method was renamed to validateFileUpload and a new empty validate method was introduced, that can safely be overridden in subclasses [572].
• Improved Page redirect to support parameters. See the new Page methods setRedirect(String, Map) and setRedirect(Class, Map) This issue was raised and fixed by Adrian [536].
• Improved Link Controls to support multivalued parameters through the new AbstractLink methods getParameterValues() and setParameterValues() [554].
• Improved Table to support very large datasets by promoting the methods getFirstRow() and getLastRow() as public. These methods provide the necessary information to only retrieve the displayed rows [504].
• Improved LinkDecorator to support target identfier property parameter names. This issue was raised by Demetrios Kyriakis and fixed by fixed by Adrian A. [400].
• Improved PickList methods getValueObject() and setValueObject(Object) to delegate to getSelectedValues() and addSelectedValue(String) respectively [490].
• Improved Spring integration with SpringClickServlet and PageScopeResolver, supporting Spring instantiated Pages with @Component configuration [534].
• Improved CompressionServletResponseWrapper and CompressionResponseStream classes to have public visibility to enable use in custom servlet Filters [547].
• Improved Menu control to render attribute class="selected" when the menu item is selected. This issue was raised and fixed by Frederic Daoud [551].
• Improved PerformanceFilter to implement exclude-paths filtering [498].
• Improved XmlConfigService to scan for deployable resources inside folders on the classpath [552].
• Improved Cayenne DataContextFilter, including adding support for LifecycleListener registration [559].
• Improved AbstractLink to allow rendering of both icon and label in Link controls (default behavior renders either a label or an icon) [535].
• Improved Page and Control message handling with null args. This issue was raised by WarnerJan Veldhuis [600].
• Fixed resource deployment on JBoss 5 and up. The solution is based on the work done by the Stripes Framework developers [589].
  
  

Deprecated:

• Deprecated methods: Control.getHtmlImports() and Page.getHtmlImports(). These methods have been deprecated in favor of Control.getHeadElements() and Page.getHeadElements().
• Deprecated methods: Page.getPageImports() and Page.setPageImports(). These methods have been deprecated in favor of Page.getHeadElements().

Updated third-party libraries:

• Update Velocity library to version 1.6.3.
• Update Cayenne library to version 3.0M6.
• Update Prototype.js library to version 1.6.1.

New Documentation:

• Documentation has been converted to Docbook and are made available in three different flavors: PDF, HTML (single page) and HTML (multiple pages). Thanks to Gilberto C Andrade for doing the conversion [482].
• Added a new section, Deploying resources in a restricted environment, describing how to deploy static resources in environments where WAR/EAR are not unpacked or where file system permissions are restricted, such as Google App Engine.
• Added documentation describing the new HEAD element support. Please see the new section on Page HEAD elements and the section on Control HEAD elements.

New examples:

• Page HEAD elements demonstrates how to add JsImport, JsScript, CssImport and CssStyle HEAD elements to a Page.
• Control HEAD elements demonstrates how to add JsImport and CssImport HEAD elements to a custom Control.
• SubmitLink Demo shows how to use the new SubmitLink control.
• Large Dataset is an example of a Table with a large number of rows and how to lazily page through the rows using a custom data provider.
• Reusable Panel is an example of a reusable Panel which provides a Form for capturing Client details.
• Quartz Job Scheduler is an example demonstrating how to integrate the Quartz Job Scheduling framework into a Click application.
• Excel Table Exporter example demonstrates how to export a Click Table to an Excel spreadsheet using Apache POI.

Enjoy.

- The Click team

New book: Getting Started With Apache Click

We start 2010 with some great news. Freddy Daoud just announced his new book: Getting started with Apache Click. Finally, a book is available on the Click framework that provides a great way for getting started quickly.

From the website:

This book will help you get started with this excellent framework, starting with the basics and moving on to creating a sample application. You'll also learn how to integrate popular third-party frameworks such as Spring, Hibernate, Java Persistence API (JPA), and more.

There is also a chapter on authentication and authorization which integrates Click and Apache Shiro, an open source security framework also hosted at Apache.

You can view the book table of contents here, and download the example source code here.

Enjoy.

The Click team.