[seam-dev] Re: FormBuilder seam-gen extension announcement

[Max Rydahl Andersen]

Hi Tomas,

Just wanted to say I like this idea as oppose to code generate the view.

Does the beans you provide forms for have to be @Entity'ies ?
Could I use a normal pojo ?

/max

> Hi, Tomas, fwding to seam-dev list.
>
> Perhaps you would also like to share this work in the user forum?
>
> On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 7:02 AM, Tomas Cerny <tom.cerny at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear Gavin King,
>>
>> I have developed a new tool for view form generation from entity beans that
>> I think would be very useful for Seam developers.  I would like to get your
>> feedback on the tool and ideas if you have time.  If you like my tool, I
>> would like to discuss how we can best provide it to the Seam community.
>> Here are details...
>>
>> I am a graduate student and ICPC frontend developer working on application
>> that is build on JSF, facelets, Hibernate, Spring and Acegi.
>> My research is in the next generation web application frameworks for the
>> next generation of our application.
>>
>> Seam is great framework, and I love developing with it.  I started with
>> seam-gen and am continuing with manual development.
>> It is great for generation of a starter application, but its customization
>> abilities are limited.  If I try to customize code generated by seam-gen, I
>> can no longer regenerate.
>>  Another problem that I had with seam-gen is that it generates forms with
>> basic input components and does not offer any customization.  For example,
>> for properties of an enumerate type, seam-gen's form field is an input text
>> field; however, what I want is a drop-down list of the enumerated type
>> values.
>>
>> To address these problems, I have developed a tool called FormBuilder that
>> can fully generate view forms from entity beans and offers complete
>> customization of input fields. My tool uses Hibernate-Validation
>> (annotations). Developers can even define their own input components for
>> form generation.  When the input components are wrapped as facelet tag, it
>> can offer even more!
>>
>> Some features:
>>
>> The tool is completely configurable using annotations and XML.
>> Each generated form can function in either read-only or editable model,
>> depending on the "editable" attribute.
>>
>> The form uses configuration-by-exception for its field rendering for
>> security
>> Forms may be referenced by Facelets tags to decrease application coupling.
>> Tool forces good practice for code management (different users same style)
>> Entity field property propagation to the form allows client-side validation
>> I provide two tag libraries with client-side validation and new input
>> component types like Password, Link, Html, ColorPicker. (The first library
>> is Seam+RichFaces, and the second library is simple JSF.)
>> I also created new field annotations like (password, link, html,
>> javaScriptPattern, formOrder) for complete form generation.
>> Form creation and maintenance is completely handled by the tool.  After
>> entity bean updates, "fresh" forms are autogenerated to match.
>>  More information is available here:
>>
>> http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~cerny/formBuilder/guide.html
>>
>> I have also built an example application showing new components and client
>> side validation (tested on 5 main browsers!)
>>  It offers also comparison to forms generated by seam-gen.
>>
>> You can experiment with the application by going to
>> http://fire.ecs.baylor.edu:8080/FormBuilderExample/home.seam (not
>> official/private)
>>
>> Currently, you can download FormBuilder from
>> http://cs.ecs.baylor.edu/~cerny/formBuilder/download.  Later I am planning
>> to put it on SourceForge.net.
>>
>> I welcome any feedback (even bad) on this work.
>>
>> Tomas
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>



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