Hello,

There is a special use case for @Templated annotation on class fields. Having a complex UI with lots of custom components, I am facing a rather cosmetic problem. There is a master template.hml, custom components are based on dom tree snippets inside the template, not only simple data entry elements. Example:

CustomerDetail.html

<div data-field="main">

  <form>

      <div data-field="ident">

         <div class="prefix"></div>

          <div class="field"></div>

         <div class="suffix"></div>

       </div>

      <div data-field="custType">

         <div class="prefix"></div>

         <div class="field"></div>

         <div class="suffix"></div>

      </div>

  </form>

</div>

CustomerDetailTemplate.java

@Templated("CustomerDetail.html#main")

public class CustomerDetailTemplate extends Composite implements HasModel<Customer> {

    @AutoBound @Inject DataBinder<Customer> customerDataBinder;

    @Inject @DataField @Bound Ident ident;

    @Inject @DataField @Bound CustType custType;

    @Templated("CustomerDetail.html#ident")

    public static class Ident extends EditableField {

    }

    @Templated("CustomerDetail.html#custType")

    public static class CustType extends EditableField {

    }

For simple use cases, where no functionality is overridden in EditableField, it would be much easier to mimic the exact behavior with:

CustomerDetailTemplate.java

@Templated("CustomerDetail.html#main")

public class CustomerDetailTemplate extends Composite implements HasModel<Customer> {

    @AutoBound @Inject DataBinder<Customer> customerDataBinder;

    @Inject @DataField @Bound @Templated EditableField ident;

    @Inject @DataField @Bound @Templated("#custType") EditableField custType;

The current implementation works correctly, the classes are merged together with subtemplates, even overriding works. The code is just a little bit verbose.

The proposed change would introduce @Templated annotation on fields to build a templated custom component.

Does it make sense?

With regards

Lukas