open a browser tab by using navigation rule

[thiagu.m]

hi every one

it it possible open a new tab or new browser window by using the pages.xml navigation rule.
this is my requirement:
when ever a user click a link or button i need to open the PDF report in a new tab or new browser window. after open the report i need to disable the link or button to restrict the user wont open the report next time.
if i use the h:commandLink with target value as blank it open the PDF report in the new tab , but it wont refresh the parent or main page .
so button disable wont happened. if i try with a4j:commandLink with target and reRender open it wont open the new tab.
i tried with s:link and target parameter also , it is open the new window but it wont refresh the main page.
any idea how to do this one.

thiagu.m

[asookazian]

Good question.  Well I tried some clicking around in the itext Seam example and I noticed that none of the links open the PDF in a new tab or window.  Also, when I right-click and select open in a new tab in FF3, the PDF opens in a new tab but the focus does not change from the original tab.

As far as opening a new tab from pages.xml, I've never heard of that but that would be cool...

Anyways, check this out: http://docs.jboss.org/seam/2.2.0.GA/reference/en-US/html_single/#itext.document

Note that there is no attribute for newTab or newWindow.  Most likely we need to file a JIRA enhancement request for this unless somebody knows of a good solution...

[kblief.kblief.gmail.com]

I had to do something similar, but had to make a call to a cgi and return that PDF to a new tab/window (I couldn't convince my boss to just use itext in seam.)

What I ended up doing was having a s:div with a render tag that was backed by a boolean value on the backer bean.

<s:div rendered="#{backingBean.makeReport} >

</s:div>

Then inside the s:div tag I put a little javascript and a form to post to the document I needed to create.  I used jQuery to submit the form.

<s:div rendered="#{backingBean.makeReport} id="makeForm">
  <script type="text/javascript" >
     jQuery(document).ready(function(){
       jQuery('#form').submit(function(){     
          var new_window = "new_window";
          window.open('',new_window,'');
          this.target = new_window;
          return true;
       });
       jQuery('#form').submit();
     });
  </script>
  <form action="/report.seam" id="form" method="post">
  </form>
</s:div>

I then had a a4j:commandButton that flipped the flag to render the s:div which would submit the form and create the report.

<a4j:commandButton type="button" 
    action="#{backingBean.renderReport}"
    value="Create Report"
    onclick="disableButton(this);" 
    reRender="makeForm"
/>

<s:div rendered="#{backingBean.makeReport} id="makeForm">
  <script type="text/javascript" >
     jQuery(document).ready(function(){
       jQuery('#form').submit(function(){     
          var new_window = "new_window";
          window.open('',new_window,'');
          this.target = new_window;
          return true;
       });
       jQuery('#form').submit();
     });
  </script>
  <form action="/report.seam" id="form" method="post">
  </form>
</s:div>

The backing bean is something like this

private Boolean makeReport = false;
...
public void renderReport(){
    setMakeReport(true);
}

public void setMakeReport(Boolean makeReport) {
    this.makeReport = makeReport;
}

public Boolean getMakeReport(){
    return this.makeReport;
}

if you disable the button onclick it will stop people from regenerating the report.

function disableButton(button) {
    jQuery(button).attr("disabled","disabled");     
}

Then in the report.page.xml file you can call the method that creates the report in the <action execute="#{ReportBean.generate}" />

This may or may not help you, but it allowed me to put PDFs in popups.