com.smartgwt.client.docs.serverds

Class DSRequestModifier

java.lang.Object

com.smartgwt.client.docs.serverds.DSRequestModifier

public class DSRequestModifier
extends java.lang.Object

An object that modifies a dsRequest based on several available values, including preceding responses from the same queue.

This class is not meant to be created and used, it is actually documentation of settings allowed in a DataSource descriptor (.ds.xml file), for use with Smart GWT Pro Edition and above. See com.smartgwt.client.docs.serverds for how to use this documentation.

Some elements of this feature are only available with Power or better licenses. See smartclient.com/product for details.

You provide a list of DSRequestModifiers as the OperationBinding.criteria or OperationBinding.values of an OperationBinding. The ability to modify a request based on responses to earlier requests in the same queue is called TransactionChaining.

A DSRequestModifier consists of a fieldName, usually a value and possibly an operator and start and/or end values (applicable to advanced criteria only). The value, start and end settings can be static, or - with Power or better licenses - they can be expressions in the Velocity template language, which will be resolved at runtime, immediately before the DSRequest is executed.

In addition to the standard Velocity variables, special Velocity variables are available for the value field when used in a <values> declaration - see value for details.

See below some examples of OperationBinding.criteria declarations:

   <operationBindings>
       <operationBinding operationType="fetch" operationId="...">
           <criteria fieldName="lifeSpan" value="10"/>
           <criteria fieldName="scientificName" value="Gazella thomsoni"/>
       </operationBinding>
       
       <operationBinding operationType="fetch" operationId="...">
           <criteria fieldName="lifeSpan" operator="greaterThan" value="10" />
       </operationBinding>
   
       <operationBinding operationType="fetch" operationId="...">
           <criteria _constructor="AdvancedCriteria" operator="or">
               <criteria>
                   <Criterion fieldName="lifeSpan" operator="greaterThan" value="10" />
                   <Criterion fieldName="scientificName" operator="contains" value="Octopus" />
               </criteria>
           </criteria>
       </operationBinding>
   </operationBindings>
  

And an example of OperationBinding.values declarations:

  <operationBinding operationType="add">
      <values fieldName="orderID" value="$responseData.last('queuedAdd_order','add').orderID" />
  </operationBinding>
  

DSRequestModifiers are intended partly as a security mechanism, so like Declarative Security features, they apply to requests from browsers, but by default do not apply to requests initiated by server code. To have DSRequestModifiers apply to a server-initiated DSRequest, use either setRPCManager() or setClientRequest().

See the Master/Detail Add Example to see this in action.

Field Summary

Fields

Modifier and Type	Field and Description
VelocityExpression	end The value to use for the end of a range.
FieldName	fieldName The name of the field to add or replace on the DSRequest - whether this appears in the DSRequest's values or criteria depends on whether this is part of a OperationBinding.values or OperationBinding.criteria attribute.
OperatorId	operator The name of the operator to apply when constructing criteria.
VelocityExpression	start The value to use for the start of a range.
VelocityExpression	value The value to assign to the field named by fieldName.

Constructor Summary

Constructors

Constructor and Description
DSRequestModifier()

Method Summary

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Field Detail

fieldName

public FieldName fieldName

The name of the field to add or replace on the DSRequest - whether this appears in the DSRequest's values or criteria depends on whether this is part of a OperationBinding.values or OperationBinding.criteria attribute.

Default value is null

operator

public OperatorId operator

The name of the operator to apply when constructing criteria. This property only applies to criteria; it is ignored if specified as part of a OperationBinding.values attribute.

Default value is null

start

public VelocityExpression start

The value to use for the start of a range. This property only applies to criteria, and it only applies to operators of type "rangeCheck" - for example, the "between" operator. It is ignored if specified as part of a OperationBinding.values attribute, or for an inapplicable operator type.

The same rules apply to this attribute as apply to value, so you can use Velocity expressions if you have a Power or better license.

Default value is null

See Also:

Transaction Chaining

end

public VelocityExpression end

The value to use for the end of a range. This property only applies to criteria, and it only applies to operators of type "rangeCheck" - for example, the "between" operator. It is ignored if specified as part of a OperationBinding.values attribute, or for an inapplicable operator type.

The same rules apply to this attribute as apply to value, so you can use Velocity expressions if you have a Power or better license.

Default value is null

See Also:

Transaction Chaining

value

public VelocityExpression value

The value to assign to the field named by fieldName. This value can be static, and for Pro licenses that is the only option. With Power and better licenses, this value can be an expression in the Velocity template language. In this latter case, all the standard Velocity context variables provided by Smart GWT Server are available to you.

Note, dsRequestModifier values are evaluated during DSRequest setup, before the request's execute() method is called. This means that variables added to the Velocity context by calling addToTemplateContext() from a DMI method or custom DataSource implementation will not be available. In this case, you can either

• Apply the variable values directly to the DSRequest's criteria and values from your Java code. See the server-side Javadoc for DSRequest
• Add your template variables to the DSRequest's template context before dsRequestModifier evaluation takes place, in a custom override of the IDACall servlet

masterId and responseData

There is also one additional Velocity context variable available in this specific case: $masterId. If there is a foreignKey from the DataSource for the current operation to another DataSource for which an add or update operation has taken place earlier in the queue, this is the value of the target field of the foreign key, taken from the response data of that earlier operation (the most recent one, if there are several). This is useful because it will typically yield the (possibly just generated) primary key of the "master" record.

Consider a queued batch of "add" operations for an order header and its details. The detail additions need to know the unique primary key that was assigned to the order, but this will typically be generated at the time of inserting the order row into the database, so it is not known up-front. However, this value will be in the response to the DSRequest that added the order header, so it is accessible via $responseData; if there is a declared foreign key relationship from the detail DataSource to the header DataSource, the header's unique key value will also be accesible as $masterId. See this example: Master/Detail Add Example.

$responseData - which is an instance of com.isomorphic.velocity.ResponseDataHandler - exposes various overloads of first() and last() APIs that can be called to obtain the actual record data of prior responses. These methods return an instance of com.isomorphic.velocity.ResponseDataWrapper, which allows convenient handling of response data whether it is a single record or a list. Response data can be treated as a single record even if it is a List, so you can access the response data directly, with no need for an index; when you do this, and the data is actually a List or array, you get the first record. If the response data is a list or array, you can also access individual records in that list using Velocity index notation, and you can use the special value "last" to access the last element of a List or array.

Examples of the Velocity syntax needed:

$responseData.first.myField is the myField property of the first response in the queue. Note, this works whether that response returned a single record or a list. If it returned a list, this Velocity expression gets the first record in the list. This is a particularly useful shorthand for 'add' and 'update' operations, where the response data is typically a List containing a single record

$responseData.first('order').myField is the myField property of the first response to an operation (any operation) on the "order" DataSource

$responseData.first('order', 'add').myField is the myField property of the first response to an "add" operation on the "order" DataSource

$responseData.first('order', 'fetch').last.myField is the myField property of the last record in the response data of the first fetch in the queue (fetch operations always return a List of records)

$responseData.first('order', 'fetch')[0].myField is the myField property of a specific record (in this case, the first) in the response data of the first response in the queue. Note that this is shown for completeness only: there is no need to use index notation to explicitly request the first record, unless you are iterating over the entire list or have some other out-of-the-ordinary use case. The first record is assumed if you omit the index notation, so this example is equivalent to the simpler: $responseData.first('order', 'fetch')[0].myField

$responseData.first('order', 'fetch').allRecords.myField returns a list containing the myField property of every record in the response data of the first fetch in the queue on the 'order' DataSource. This feature is useful if you want to use the output of one fetch as the input of a later fetch: for example, the automatic keepParentsOnFilter algorithm makes use of this feature to use the results of one fetch in the criteria of the next fetch in the queue.

All of these syntactic variations are also available on the $responseData.last object - "last" here meaning the most recent response matching the DataSource and operation type (if applicable). Note, "last" potentially has three different meanings, depending on context: If your DataSource contains a field that is actually called "last", the following expression would be the correct way to obtain the value of the field called "last", on the last record of the last (most recent) response: $responseData.last.last.last

Please see the server-side Javadoc for the com.isomorphic.velocity.ResponseDataHandler class.

Default value is null

See Also:

Transaction Chaining

Constructor Detail

DSRequestModifier

public DSRequestModifier()