Extending components

[brentyarger]

I want to add some accessibility enhancements to the rich:dataTable, rich:extendedDataTable, and rich:scrollableDataTable. I believe I will need to create a new renderer for these components. The question is, what is the proper way to add these enhancements? I want to create a new jar containing these components that is separate from richfaces, and then be able to reference it like "custom:dataTable".

[ilya40umov]

I suppose you could try RichFaces CDK to develop your own components which are going to be based on the standart RF components.

You may look at the following link for the details:

http://docs.jboss.org/richfaces/latest_3_3_X/en/cdkguide/html_single/

[brentyarger]

I've seen the guide before, but its focus is on creating new components. I like these components how they are currently, but I just want to add some WAI-ARIA attributes to improve accessibility. Has anybody out there extended the components to create their own versions?

[ilya40umov]

IMHO You will need to write your own components anyway. These are only the options in which way.

The simplest way to create custom component as I know is a composit component on Facelets. You can look at the link:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-facelets/

There is an example how to simply write a component. I don't know any simpler ways. But may be someone else knows. =)

[ilya_shaikovsky]

It depends on your needs. If additional attributes needed in order to setup some other attrutes according to some rules - Ilya is right probably it's better to create custom facelet(1.2) / composite component (2.0),

but if in the same way you want to add some functionality to the component itself - just import the component and modify as you need using CDK. B.t.w. if you believe that the feature you trying to add is common and not specific to your project and could be useful for the others we will be really glad to see you as a contributor. Check that topic which describes how to perform additions to the component using CDK and contribute a patch.

[brentyarger]

Thanks to both Ilyas for your help. That last link was what I was looking for. I am not sure which method I'll use for adding this functionality, but now I know my options.