The eoapplication Package

Package:
com.webobjects.eoapplication

Introduction

Documentation for this package is forthcoming. For information on using this package, see the book Getting Started with Direct to Java Client.

The most important classes in this package are:

Class	Description
EOController	A representation of controller objects responsible for managing and sometimes generating the user interface of a Java Client application
EOComponentController	A controller that manages user interface components
EOEntityController	A controller that displays enterprise objects in a user interface
EODocumentController	A controller that displays and edits enterprise objects in a user interface
EOInterfaceController	A controller that represents an Interface Builder nib file
EOApplication	The Java Client application
EOAppletController	A representation of an EOApplet as a controller in the controller hierarchy
EOApplet	The default Applet class used in Java Client applications
EOAction	An abstract representation of operations the user can invoke from the user interface
EOXMLUnarchiver	An object containing the parameters from an XML specification used to create the controllers in the controller hierarchy

Rule System and XML Description

For Direct to Java Client applications, the controller hierarchy for the client side of the application is created from an XML description. The XML description is created by a rule system on the server side of the application. The details of this process are described in the book Getting Started With Direct to Java Client.

There are three pieces of information associated with an EOController class that are used to generate a controller hierarchy with the rule system: the controller's controllerType, its corresponding XML tag, and its corresponding XML attributes. Each controller class specification identifies this information in a section titled "Rule System and XML Description".

controllerType

You use the controllerType key to define custom rules that should fire only for certain kinds of controllers. For example, suppose you want to set the minimum width of all an application's windows. To do so, you write a rule whose condition specifies that the controllerType is 'windowController'. Then the rule only fires for controllers that control windows. Each controller falls into one of the following controller types:

windowController
modalDialogController
entityController
widgetController
tableController
groupingController
dividingController
actionWidgetController

XML Tag and Attributes

As an XML description is parsed, an EOXMLUnarchiver maps XML tags to particular EOController classes. All concrete controller classes-classes whose instances can actually be used in a controller hierarchy-have an XML tag.

XML attributes tell the EOXMLUnarchiver how to configure the controllers. XML attributes are inherited. For example, there are three XML attributes defined for EOController-className, disabledActionNames, and typeName. These attributes can be used by any controller, however, because all controllers are subclasses of EOController.