Proposed API changes for the schedule component

[bleathem]

We are hoping to include the RichFaces Sandbox schedule component in RichFaces 4.3.  To this end, I've taken a close look at the component, and have been tracking suggested changes via the RFXBOX jira issue: RFSBOX-67.

In particular, I would like to discuss RFSBOX-94 which is proposing a significant change to the Schedule component API.

Currently the schedule component (as I understand it) works like a dataTable, where one specifies the var/value attribute of the schedule component, mapping it to a back end data structure (List, ExtendedDataModel etc.)  On then uses the var attribute to populate the attributes of scheduleItem components.  The facelet code ends up looking like:

<schedule:schedule value="#{myBean.lazyDataModel}" var="event">
     <schedule:scheduleItem eventId="#{event.id}" startDate="#{event.startDate}" title="#{event.title}"
                                   endDate="#{event.endDate}"
                                   allDay="#{event.allDay}" styleClass="#{event.id == 1 ? 'first' : null}"
                                   data="#{event.data}" color="#{event.color}"/>
</schedule:schedule>

My proposal is to change the approach to model the select/selectItems approach to defining the list of schedule items.  The above example would then look something like:

<schedule:schedule>
     <schedule:scheduleItems value="#{myBean.lazyDataModel}"/>
</schedule:schedule>

Where <schedule:scheduleItems> returns a list of ScheduleItem objects.  This could be expanded to allow dynamic creation of the ScheduleItem objects, and maintain the flexibility of the current approach, as in:

<schedule:schedule>
     <schedule:scheduleItems value="#{myBean.someObjectList}" var="event">
          <schedule:scheduleItem title="#{event.mapsToTitle}" startDate="#{event.mapsToDate}" />
      </schedule:scheduleItems>
</schedule:schedule>

One advantage of this approach is it would allow one to create a static schedule component, as in:

<schedule:schedule>
    <schedule:scheduleItem eventId="1" title="My Event" allDay="true" startDate="2012-11-02" />
</schedule:schedule

In summary I don't think the dataTable approach is required, as we don't need the ability to control the scheduleItem markup/layout the way we do with columns.  Rather we are simply interested in populating a list of ScheduleItem objects so we can create the JSON data the fullcalendar plugin is looking for.

WDYT?  Would a change to this API make the component use more intuitive and flexible for JSF developers?

[lfryc]

Hey Brian,

could we use <a4j:repeat /> instead of scheduleItems?

We did some modifications to allow dynamic subtree creation we could leverage here, right?

[bleathem]

The thing that separates this from the tab/tableetc. approach, is we don't want to manipulate the markup of the scheduleItem components, rather we just want to build up a list of objects, in an analogous way to what we do with selectItems.

As such, I'll adjust my initial use cases above as:

selectEvent list built in javacode:

<schedule:schedule>
     <schedule:scheduleItems value="#{myBean.lazyDataModel}"/>
</schedule:schedule>

selectEvents list build in the facelet, looping over a collection:

<schedule:schedule>
     <schedule:scheduleItems value="#{myBean.someObjectList}" var="event" title="#{event.mapsToTitle}" startDate="#{event.mapsToDate}" />
</schedule:schedule>

Individual "static" selectItem:

<schedule:schedule>
    <schedule:scheduleItem eventId="1" title="My Event" allDay="true" startDate="2012-11-02" />
</schedule:schedule>

In this modified proposal, UIScheduletems could inherit from UIScheduleItem, introducing only the var and value attributes.