Luc Bors Weblog

ADF 11g Quicky 4 : Where is my cursor ?

2012-02-10T15:51:00.007+01:00

In my current project I encountered a usability issue. The users where unable to see where the cursor was located. It was flickering, but on a page with ,multiple input components it was very difficult to locate the field where the cursor was located. I decided to help them out and that proofed to be both very simple and in the end very helpful. I used skinning to give the active field a colored

ADF 11g : Fancy Master Detail or how to Highlight Related Detail Records

2012-02-06T22:53:00.011+01:00

Last week I a had a rather interesting question: Is it possible to highlight related data that is in different af:table components ? Sure you can, so I decided to write a simple example application, and share the knowledge in this post.The use Case.After selecting a row in one table I need to highlight related rows in another table.The implementation.To implement this, I create a page based on

ADF 11g : Query Component with ‘dynamic’ view criteria

2011-10-19T10:24:00.013+02:00

In my current project use a lot of re usable taskflows. In one particular situation I needed exactly the same taskflow to be re-used with one tiny small difference: The displayed query component needed to have different fields compared to page in the base taskflow. Now there are lots of possible solutions (two query components and a switcher, or two query components using the rendered property).

ADF 11g Quicky 3 : Adding Error, Info and Warning messages

2011-10-03T21:39:00.009+02:00

How can we add a message programatically ? Last week I got this question for the second time in a months time. I decided to write a short blogpost on how this works.Adding messages is very easy, you just need to know how it works.You can add a message to your faces context by creating a new FacesMessage. Set the severity (ERROR, WARNING, INFO or FATAL ), set the message text, and if nessecary a

Announcement – Free ADF Webinar for ODTUG

2011-09-18T22:23:00.001+02:00

This Tuesday I will present a webinar for ODTUG. In this webinar I will talk about how to provide management information from within your ADF application. Topics : ADF DVT's, Google Maps, MS Excel, and Reporting Solutions.Tuesday, September 20, 2011, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM ESTReaching out from ADF: Management Information using ADF-DVT, Google Maps, MS Excel, and Oracle Reports. Luc Bors, AMIS

ADF 11g : Using the ActiveRowKey property

2011-08-31T20:37:00.012+02:00

In ADF 11g Release 2, the ADF Table component has a property called 'ActiveRowKey'. According to documentation, this represents the row that is currently active on the client. In click-to-edit mode, the active row will be made editable and is brought into view (if not already visible). Upon initial display, the click-to-edit component defaults the active row to the first visible row. In this

ADF 11g : Show PDF in a Popup

2011-07-27T20:32:00.026+02:00

In one of my previous posts I showed how to use ADF popup components to display external content such as webpages like wikipedia in an inline frame. Based on this post a colleague of mine tried to display a PDF document. That didn't work. In this post I explain how you can use a servlet to open a PDF document in the inline frame. I will not explain how to invoke popups. If you need to know how

ADF 11g : Printing Directly From Your Application

2011-07-26T10:46:00.030+02:00

Last week I was asked this question : "Can we print directly from within our ADF Application, without invoking the printer dialog ?" I wasn't sure but after some investigation the answer was clear. Yes you can ! Here is how...I decided to create a print start up form where I can select printers and print the document. Most of the functionality needed is provided by the Java Print Service

ODTUG Kscope 11: My story on ADF in the Fusion MiddleWare Track

2011-07-25T23:08:00.007+02:00

From June 26th to June 30th the KScope 11 conference was in Long Beach California. Nice setting for a great conference. It was the first time that KScope had a Fusion Middleware Track. For me it was a very busy conference with three presentations, handson workshops, live demonstrations and a Boff session with the EMG. In this post some of my highlights.Friday and Saturday On Friday in the

Book Review : Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development – Made Simple

2011-06-26T07:42:00.007+02:00

On my way to Los Angeles (Long Beach) for KScope 2011 (12 Hours in an airplane) I had plenty of time to do some reading and writing.The book I read was an only very recently (june 2011) published ADF Book. This is not a technical deep dive into ADF, but it focuses on the process of application development.The book is written by Sten Vesterli an Oracle ACE Director and it is absolutely a good

ADF 11g Quicky 2 - Set Focus on MouseOver Event

2011-05-31T13:51:00.003+02:00

Another Quick solution here. What if I want to set focus on a field without actually having to click it ? This can be done by using a clientListeners and some java script code.1: 2:

ADF 11g Quickies - A new series of posts

2011-04-28T14:05:00.002+02:00

As an ADF consultant I get lots and lots of questions on ADF (duh..). I usually answer these using a simple sample and some explanations. These effort are hardly ever documented by me. I decided to use this Blog to write all these tiny things down for future 'ADF generations'.From now on this Blog will host ADF 11g Quickies.

ADF 11g Quicky : Select text from a resourcebundle

2011-04-26T11:19:00.013+02:00

One of the questions I got lately is how to select a specific text from a resource bundle and use it in an ADF Application. This is easy and can be done as shown below.All you need is a resourcebundle containing the keys and text values, a selectcomponent to set the actual key and some java code in a valueChangeListener to search the resourcebundle for the key. So first create the resourceBundle

ADF 11g : UI Designer meets ADF Developer

2011-03-31T21:16:00.010+02:00

For years, creating a UI design for ADF Faces pages has been a pain in the ***. I have seen UI designs created in excel, powerpoint, and even photoshop. Designs looking great, however, nine out of ten couldn't be realized using the ADF Component stack. Either because 'non-existing' components were used or because pixel perfect alternatives are not available.Today I found a valuable resource on

Referal: Adding a Keystroke filter to and ADF Shuttle Component

2011-02-28T22:33:00.005+01:00

No new technical entry this month. I've been busy preparing training material for my ADF Masterclass on march 25th. Besides that I wrote my column ADF@WORK (in dutch) and prepared a training on building Web services with JDeveloper. I did however post a technical entry on the AMIS technology blog about "Adding a Keystroke Filter to an ADF Shuttle Component"For more detail on this look here

ADF 11g PS3 : Check Uncommitted Data Behavior

2011-01-31T22:50:00.007+01:00

In ADF 11g PS 3 (11.1.1.4) there is a nice little feature that you can use to prevent users to leave a page when there is uncommitted data. It is called "Check Uncommitted Data Behavior" and can be used on all action components. Using it is very easy. You just drop the component from the data control pallet onto your page as a child of a command component.The component is added to the page

ADF 11g : How to control where a new row is inserted

2010-12-10T15:42:00.008+01:00

On the JDeveloper forum a question was asked how to insert a new row in an ADF table after the selected row. Default behavior is insertion before the current row. In this short post I describe how to achieve this. In order to do this I create a custom method on the application module that takes the position (BEFORE or AFTER) as an argument. Based on this argument the new row is inserted at the

ADF 11g : Change a Viewobjects' Query on the Fly

2010-11-30T21:35:00.006+01:00

One of the requirements at my current project is to have one ADF table display data from different database tables. That is, depending on criteria entered by the user, the query behind the view object needs to change. All in all 12 different database tables are involved in this story. This requirement is based on functionally in the original (oracle forms) application. This forms application

ADF 11g : SelectOneRadio in Table Layout

2010-11-11T21:21:00.012+01:00

Today at one of my customers I was asked the question if you can use a SelectOneRadio component in table layout. I know that the first thing they should have done is try Google to find a solution. As a matter of fact they did and found this blogpost by Frank Nimphius. This however is based on ADF 10g. The part where Frank converts the InputText to a selectOneRadio isn't available in ADF 11g

Book Review: Quick Start Guide to Oracle Fusion Development

2010-10-25T23:02:00.006+02:00

A couple of weeks ago yet another ADF book was released. This time it was Grant Ronald’s turn. He managed to write a “Quick Start Guide to Oracle Fusion Development”. I was somewhat worried because it is seemingly impossible to write a Quick Start Guide to Fusion Development. However after reading the book I was very surprised of what the book has to offer to people starting with fusion

ADF 11g inputNumberSpinbox: Changing Value When Value is Null

2010-09-30T22:00:00.011+02:00

This post is a short one, however, it is useful. When you use a Spinbox to change and display values, you might encounter a problem when the Spinbox' value is empty (or Null). I used the Employees table in the HR Schema for this example.Created ADF BC for this, and dropped the collection as an ADF Form an a simple page.I converted the commission inputText component to an inputNumberSpinbox and

ADF 11g: toggle operators in query component

2010-08-16T21:23:00.002+02:00

When you use view criteria to be exposed in an component, it is sometimes weird that ADF allows you to change query operators. In this use case I define a view criteria using a BETWEEN clause on two dates.When you create an component based on this criteria, you will see that it is rendered with operation 'between' as the selected operator. You do however have the

ADF 11g: Change attribute order in query component

2010-08-12T09:10:00.011+02:00

Ever wondered if you can change the order in which the attributes are displayed in an 'af:query' component? It can be done. Here is how.After you have created BC you can drop the named criteria "all queriable attributes" as an 'af:query' component with table.When you run this, you will see the default generated query component. let's assume that the attributes in this component are not in the

ADF 11g: Using a List in Query component

2010-08-09T20:19:00.017+02:00

When you create a default query component you might miss some of the features that ADF offers to you. One of these is the use of lists in the query component. In this post I'll explain to you how to do that.First image here is the way a query component displays when you use all the defaults, and do no tweaking at all. Forget that I already changed some attributes so they are not displayed in the

ADF 11g Skinning: Three ways to change look and feel

2010-07-26T08:53:00.025+02:00

On the JDeveloper ADF forum there are many questions on how to change the look and feel of components. In this post I'll explain three ways to do that.Setting skin Selector propertyFor this we need to define a custom skin. mySkin.desktop MySkin

ADF 11g panelgroup: Tournament Layout

2010-06-30T21:36:00.013+02:00

This is a short post on layout. With the quarter finals of the world cup 2010 coming up, it is time to show a simple layout example. A layout to show all teams and groups, competing in the world cup.This layout is achieved by af:panelgrouplayout, af:panelbox, and af:forEach.I read all the group data from a database table, and use the af:forEach to create a panelbox for each group. After that I

ADF Mobile Client: Article on OTN - Developing Applications for the BlackBerry

2010-05-20T21:45:00.006+02:00

After a couple of months of hard work, my article on developing ADF applications for blackberry smartphones finally made it to OTN.If you go to otn.oracle.com you cant' miss it. If it's gone by the time you read this, you can find the article right here.

ADF 11g popup and panelwindow: Open wikipedia in a modal popup.

2010-04-30T19:33:00.024+02:00

This post was more or less inspired by the noteWindow example on Oracles tag demo site. When hovering the highlighted text in this example the user gets extra information about the subject. I wanted to give the end user the opportunity to get even more information, for instance by invoking a wikipedia page about the subject. The catch here is that I wanted this information to be shown in a

ADF 11g Contextual Event Framework: An Example

2010-03-31T20:07:00.012+02:00

Often a page or a region within a page needs information from somewhere else on the page or from a different region. While you can pass parameters to obtain that information, doing so makes sense only when the parameters are well known and the inputs are EL-accessible to the page. Parameters are also useful when a task flow may need to be restarted if the parameter value changes.However, suppose

ADF 11g : Label Modifications and Persisting Resource Bundle Changes

2010-02-28T19:24:00.010+01:00

In a comment on one of my posts on the AMIS technology blog I had a question on UIComponents. The question was if it is possible to modify prompts and labels of components programmatically. As a matter of fact this is possible. You can do this for the session only, or you can choose to persist these changes. In this post I first explain how to implement the "session only" functionality, and in

ADF 11g: My new publications.

2010-01-29T08:33:00.008+01:00

I have had a very busy month. I spent most of my evenings writing. Writing code? Nope, writing text! It looked like it all came at the same moment. I had 3 deadlines in January, 2 of which were in the last week.One of the things I wrote was a blog post at the AMIS blog. It was a post that I started to write some time ago, but I never took the time to finish it. It describes how to create a

ADF 11g RC: Manipulating a components toolbar.

2009-12-28T12:00:00.001+01:00

Last week I had a question regarding the Rich Text Editor in ADF 11g RC.Is it possible to disable/enable or add/remove components form the rich text editor's toolbar? At first I didn't know the answer, but after some investigation it appears to be very simple.The most important piece of the puzzle is to understand how the toolbar is constructed. According to the components documentation, the

JHeadstart 11g TP - Magic with Wizards

2009-11-30T11:57:00.019+01:00

One of the main features in ADF 11g is the use of taskflows. There are different kinds of taskflows. One of these is a process train. A process train (the ADF name for wizard) can be used to guide the end user step by step through a rather difficult process. In this post I describe how you can use JHeadstart to generate the wizard for you.The very difficult (duh) process in his case is the entry

JHeadstart 11g TP - Master Detail and Overflow

2009-10-31T20:06:00.026+01:00

I have been working with JHeadstart 11g technical preview a lot lately. I want to share some of the features with you in a series of articles. Luckily Oracle allowed me to blog about the JHeadstart 11g technical preview. It is a technical preview, but is already pretty mature. Let's start with some basic generation. In this blog I describe how easy it is to create a layout in which a

Back again

2009-09-29T19:37:00.014+02:00

Almost two years ago I published my last post here. What happened in these two years? Did I quit developing ADF applications? Nope! I've been very busy on my new job. I started at AMIS Technology as an ADF expert and I've also been working with JHeadstart. It still is a great job, so that's not the reason that I am back here. It's just that it would be a shame if my own weblog should die.........

Changing appearances.

2007-11-02T10:09:00.000+01:00

Lately I've been working on an application that can serve offices in different countries. So what I hear you say.........I do that every day.............use the 'locale.language', use a bundle and be happy ;-) Ok, I know that, but I want to have changing appearances, not only changing text. That can also be done by using a skin selector for instance like the one below:#{

Hibernate untill your ADF-faces Spring (part II)

2007-10-12T09:29:00.001+02:00

If you are an ADF developer with an Oracle forms background, you've probably been using ADF Business Components to implement the business and integration layer of your webapplications. So have I. Hibernate was new to me, and I will try to explain just a little bit in this post. I have some very good developers in my team that do the hard work on the hibernate part of this project. I will keep it

Hibernate untill your ADF-faces Spring (part I)

2007-10-11T20:56:00.000+02:00

It's october and summer ended a couple of weeks ago. A lot of rodents and bears prepare for winter and hibernation. So will I! I got involved in a project in which creativity was pushed to the limit in a very early stage. We wanted to do a project with ADF (full framework) for one of our customers. This approach wasn't allowed. I've been mailing and talking about this case with some people at

New kid on the block !

2007-09-28T10:25:00.001+02:00

It's been a quit month on my blog but I've been very busy "fooling around" lately. That is what happens to you when you become a father for the first time. Less sleep......but tons of fun ! One thing that my daughter allready made clear to me is is that my time is no longer only available to Jdeveloper and ADF. Every time I find some minutes to do some research at home, she will start telling me

Easy scrolling in a table

2007-08-31T11:57:00.000+02:00

If you have a backgound in Oracle Forms, you'll really like this post, because you are used to these functions: "key-up, key-down, current-record-visual-attribute", and so on........Especially the arrow keys to scroll a table !It is possible to implement this in an ADF application. It takes some time to figure out, but it works, at least I'm very close now. Using some of the logic from one of my

Demo projectfiles available online

2007-08-27T14:10:00.001+02:00

Some of you bloggers have been asking for source code of the application. It took me a while to make this available online. One of the reasons is that blogger does not support file upload (other than images).After googling around for a while, I decided to use googlepages. You can find the project files here. For now there's only a draft version of the MyFacesPopup and the PullDownMenu.

Save limited space; use MyFaces popup's

2007-07-25T14:44:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I wonder how to put all these visual elements on an already overloaded page. Customers have their needs for functionality, but sometimes just don't know when to say STOP. We need this, we need that ............ I wondered if all this functionality has to be available at any time, and if so, if it should be visible. What if I was able to 'partially hide' elements, and bring them into

Fun: Milleniumbug's are still around

2007-07-12T16:49:00.000+02:00

I was sure that back in 1999 I found and coded my last fix for the milleniumbug. Maybe that was true for me, but even today they are around, even in brandnew products. In the new release of google analytics I found one.If you open the extended calendar, they will tell you it's 1907...........1907 was a great year for wine perhaps, but I dont think there was an internet back then.However,

Total Recall.......DBA's go wild !!

2007-07-11T20:51:00.000+02:00

Today Oracle launched the 11g database.It's all about the yingyang of requirements and innovations.If I just had the time I would tell you about it, but for now I'll just redirect you.Read the press release here.And read on the new features here. And just for fun............ go here and Watch the July 11 Webcast. It is the only way !!!

What's (on) your menu ?

2007-06-22T10:30:00.000+02:00

Imagine a restaurant which serves great food, preferably your own favorite restaurant. Now imagine that this same restaurant, has your own personalized menu. Wouldn't that be great. You could just go there and eat whatever you feel like at that moment.The same goes for the application you build. If you use ADF-Faces and a panelpage with menu facets to show the menu in your application, the

Sliding into view

2007-06-11T10:37:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago some one asked me if it was possible to bind inline style properties to a backing bean using Expression Language. I knew this was possible so I explained him how to do that. This also was a nice opportunity to try out how an af:inputNumberSlider works. I wanted to use the value of the slider to set the fontsize in the rest of my example application.It worked ! Here's how I

Whats new ?

2007-06-04T14:01:00.000+02:00

Recently this blog was mentioned on 'blogs.oracle.com' and on Steve Muench's weblog . Thanks Steve ! I guess my weblog is getting more popular by the week ("I Love Google Analytics").So I want to put some really new stuff here. I also want to post at least once every week..... Here's my challenge ! I want to write on templating, LOV's and other new features, but that takes time. And I'm not

One size fits all.

2007-05-16T14:24:00.000+02:00

I've been playing with the Jdeveloper 11G technical preview during this week and it's a lot of fun. The new ADF-Faces contains some very nice sizing components. So from now on you don't have to try every possible size for columns and panels. Just use panelsplitters and adf tables and have your end users try for themselves. Here are some examples that I just created. If the images are too small,

JDeveloper 11G Technical Preview

2007-05-08T14:30:00.000+02:00

Oracle released the JDeveloper 11G Technical Preview.Want to know more on this Tech. Preview , then go to http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/11/index.html

How to hide the * for required fields

2007-04-12T10:40:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it is annoying to see the '*' in front of a required field.If a customer demands the '*' to be removed, you really have a problem !It seems to be impossible to remove it and a lot of people say that it is.....................But here is your solution.If you put the following line of code in your stylesheet, the '*' will not be displayed !.xi { display: none;}For outlining everything,

Project planning

2007-01-26T10:26:00.000+01:00

From september on I've been working hard on a very exiting project. Thats why it has been very quiet on my weblog. However, in this project we found a lot of briljant solutions for common problems.... You can decide to avoid problems... but you can also try to solve them. The latter is what we did. Some solutions will be posted here shortly. I've more time now, so I'll try to post every week from

Search functionallity (like in oracle forms)

2006-09-11T09:52:00.000+02:00

If you tried using the find funcionallity, then you might have noticed that it doesn't work the way it is supposed to. However, we managed to let it work in the same way that it does in Oracle-forms.From scratch works more or less like this. Drop your view object as ADF table on the form. Add the find and execute operations. Drop the same view object on your form but now as ADF search form.

Select the current row by just clicking on it (and little coding)

2006-09-04T17:05:00.000+02:00

It took us some time to figure out how to select the current row in an ADF table by clicking on it, but in the end the solution is very simple.Give your "af:tableSelectOne" an id property for instance “select_id”.Give all the columns in your table an onClick property for instance: onclick="makeCurrent(this);"Ad javascript to your page with yhe following code:document.getElementById(

Sizing buttons

2006-08-31T15:00:00.000+02:00

Did you ever wish all your buttons had the same size ? Well, here the solution. If you don't do anything, buttons will be sized based on the label/text that they have. If you apply this code to your skin.css it will be bettercommand.button, input.button, button { width: 90pt; }More solutions to come.......

Back again

2006-08-28T15:29:00.000+02:00

After a long hot summer I'm back again. Next couple of weeks there will be a lot off new tips and tricks on this weblog. Some of them derived from other weblogs, some of them I found out myself with some help of my colleages. In short, there will be a lot of funny stuff about JDeveloper and ADF Faces.In the meanwhile feel free to try this at home.......Try to select the current row in an ADF

Pro JSF and AJAX

2006-06-29T12:05:00.000+02:00

The book was relaesed februari 2006 and it took me untill now to find it."Pro JSF and Ajax: Building Rich Internet Components" by John R. Fallows and Jonas Jacobi`."The examples are thorough and come with loads of readable code listings. In addition, many complex topics were further clarified with a good use of graphics"

ADF Developer's Guide for Forms/4GL Developers is Ready

2006-06-09T12:19:00.000+02:00

I've been reviewing the beta release for Oracle and it is an exciting document.Steve Meunch just announced it on his weblog (http://radio.weblogs.com/0118231/) that the guide is now finished.Quote:"The birth of a "baby" they've been working on for many months, the ADF Developer's Guide for Forms/4GL Developers. You can find links to the HTML Format and PDF Format of this new guide on the new ADF

Goal of my weblog: JDeveloper for forms developers

2006-06-09T11:25:00.000+02:00

On this weblog I will try to give an overview of all the information on JDeveloper that is available on the internet. Especially information concerning Forms developers that are (thinking of) using JDeveloper.The Information gathered all over the internet is assembled here to provide a clear overview. I will try to categorize the info so finding it will be much easier. Form there you can use the

Luc Bors' Weblog started

2006-06-08T13:31:00.000+02:00

Daar is ie dan eindelijk. Mijn eigen weblog. Wie weet waar dit toe gaat leiden............And from now on in English.....Finally there it is. My own weblog. What will the future bring....