Author: admin

bookmark_borderFRULE: DominoDocument is a wild animal

Posted on by admin

Here’s the story:

We needed multiple “dynamic tables” in our projects. Thanks to Russel Maher I had something to start off with.

Too bad his solution worked on the “backend” document. After I had managed to get a “container” around his solution another problem popped up: Save conflicts.

I couldn’t figure out why this happened. I could only imagine it was some sort of “timing issue”. In his solution upon a save a cleaning of the table is done. This merely renames the fields such that they order properly (in case some rows had been deleted). In this process the document was saved in the end. Cause I had several such “tables” to handle the saves of each of those kind of interfered and created those save conflicts.

But how could I solve this?

After a LOT, you should by the time now (if you followed my blog for a while) know what a LOT means!!! Enough to almost give up! Luckily I didn’t.

I figured: if I could only “reorder/rename” those items in the DominoDocument, then those changes would “magically” be transferred to the document upon the actual save. This is all thanks to the architecture of JSF, the data store etc.. (don’t ask me details, I am just about to get a hang on this one!)

So while I tried to get this working I always came accross this thing here.

As I mentioned in that other blog: that guy reporting this error on the Lotus forum had mentioned it happened when trying to put a NULL value vector somewhere.

After a LOT of testing I found: this is exactly what happened in my case!!! I was trying to copy values from date fields over (in order to rename them). But date fields which have no date simply have a NULL in them.

So the final solution was pretty simple: Just check if that item is available or has a NULL value.

Now my solution works smooothly: no more save conflicts, just the way I imagined!

Here’s how it could look like:

bookmark_borderFRULE: NotesException: Note delete failed

Posted on by admin

Error while saving document
Could not save the document NEW_1d NotesException: Note delete failed

NotesException: Note delete failed
    lotus.domino.local.Document.Nsave(Native Method)
    lotus.domino.local.Document.save(Unknown Source)
    lotus.domino.local.Document.save(Unknown Source)
    com.ibm.xsp.model.domino.wrapped.DominoDocument.save(DominoDocument.java:1087)
    com.ibm.xsp.model.domino.DominoDocumentData.doSaveDocument(DominoDocumentData.java:567)
    com.ibm.xsp.model.AbstractDocumentDataSource.save(AbstractDocumentDataSource.java:76)

what the heck is this???
I only found a very old note in the 6/7 LN forum. The guy thought it was related to some “null value vector”..

any ideas?

Update:
It happens when you try to put a NULL value vector somewhere, see also this blog.  It’s a feature not a bug!

bookmark_borderQUINDIP: computed when composed fields in xPages

Posted on by admin

Did you ever wonder how you can “mimick” the cold computed when composed fields?

According to Brad Balassaitis there ain’t no equivalent in xPages.
According to Oliver Busse you can “fake” them anyway

Steps I would propose:

  • create a normal editable field and set it “disabled”
  • use this css to remove the border of the input: input[disabled]{border: 0px;}
  • use Olivers approach to add a value when the doc is first opened

<xp:actionGroup>

    <xp:setValue binding=”#{docCurrent.docRequestID}”

      value=”#{javascript:@Unique()}”>

        </xp:setValue>


            <xp:setValue binding=”#{docCurrent.docCreationDate}”

              value=”#{javascript:@Now()}”>

                </xp:setValue>

                  </xp:actionGroup>

                  It looks like this in the binding dialog:

                  I tested it, I think quite thoroughly: it works. I also tried to “change” the value via Inspector in the HTML source code.. after save&reload the old value was back.. so Notes seems to “know” which fields CAN and CANNOT be edited!! This is great news!
                  the fields are setup on creation of the document, they are saved to the document, they look like “static text”..


                  bookmark_borderYOUFEB: YOUr FEedBack required

                  Posted on by admin

                  I wanna thank to all loyal readers of my blog. I know you’re out there somewhere…

                  Please get in contact with me.. write comments about my blogs, what you liked, in terms of content, in terms of writing style, what you didn’t like, what you missed.

                  Let me know who you are and what problems your dealing with…

                  I know most of you (besides maybe some 20 guys around the world) are struggling with the same issues than I have…

                  Have you ever wondered if it is possible to keep all code within a LN application in one place? Say ONLY in the java classes?

                  I believe the interface with drag&drop of fields, clicking on properties, entering attribute values etc. is great, but it’s also a GREAT pain!!!

                  Who of you has read my post about “do not copy and paste” stuff? Where an xPage wouldn’t behave, just because I copied and pasted and forgot to remove one of those “properties”…

                  I do envy those guys working with GWT.. they GUIs are so slick, so fast, so adaptable… and as far as I know they application runtime lifecycles are more easy to understand.

                  Or can you really tell me about the order of execution of all those “events”? Or when the first moment would be where you have a handle to the DominoDocument?

                  I do understand that most LN applications are just “little” adaptations of document mgmt templates, discussion templates etc.. but hey.. there are people out there really trying develop high-end applications, including workflows etc…

                  stay tuned for more questions answered from my side.. and tell me about your questions…

                  Michael

                  bookmark_borderQUINDIP: full source to display miniature flags in your apps

                  Posted on by admin

                  This is a real time saver for you… well.. it took me some hours to get the whole thing done and tested.. few flags might be missing in the css code and a few have not been verified, but most countries are handled.
                  Enjoy!
                  (full source code at the end of the blog)

                  This time we start with the result: You want to have country flags displayed somewhere, say in a type-ahead (see this post)

                  That’s the HTML source code:
                  <TABLE>
                            <TR>
                                 <TD><SPAN class=”FR”></SPAN</TD>
                                 <TD>FR</TD>
                                 <TD>FRANCE
                                      <SPAN>some company info</SPAN>
                                 </TD>
                            </TR>
                  </TABLE>

                  Here the file with flags from most countries in the world (you can download it)

                  here the css styles used to display the flags:

                  /* switzerland */
                  .CH{
                   display: inline-block;
                  background-image:url(‘flags.png’);
                  background-position: -200px -89px;
                  width: 11px;
                  height: 11px;
                  }

                  /* germany */
                  .DE{
                   display: inline-block;
                  background-image:url(‘flags.png’);
                  background-position: -284px -117px;
                  width: 16px;
                  height: 11px;
                  }

                  /* usa */
                  .US{
                   display: inline-block;
                  background-image:url(‘flags.png’);
                  background-position: -4px -565px;
                  width: 16px;
                  height: 11px;
                  }

                   resources available here

                  the updated css fixes a minor bug when adjacent rows are higher than the flag and other flags would be “displayed”

                  bookmark_borderFRULE: frustrated about stupid error messages

                  Posted on by admin

                  Scenario:
                  created xPage, added some fields, changed some properties, added custom control with buttons to save etc…, tried to create and save a “document” …
                  wouldn’t save…  wtf makes fun with me???

                  damn…

                  tried to find out what the problem was, got the idea to add an “display errors” control, guess what, there WAS an error!!

                  Search??? what search??? and WHERE?????

                  almost went nuts!!!

                  finally, you guess: after HOURS!!!, I had a brilliant or stupid idea: remove the form validations on “save” as the xPage wasn’t really “connected” to an existing form, and guess what!!

                  THE SEARCH ERROR MESSAGE DISAPPEARED!!!

                  Lesson learned:
                  1. xPages error messages are stupid as stupid can be
                  2. never use form validations if the xPage isn’t associated with an actual form

                  FRUstradedLearningExperience

                  I know.. usually all this wouldn’t happen when you start from scratch.. but as all lazy developers.. I sometimes “copy&paste” and this ain’t really helping sometimes!

                  bookmark_borderindip: use bean within another bean

                  Posted on by admin

                  I wanted to use a bean within another bean. And I wanted the most elegant way to achieve this.

                  Here’s what I got:

                  define the beans in the faces-config.xml as follows (notice the color codings, to show references!)

                    <managed-bean>
                      <managed-bean-name>childBean</managed-bean-name>
                      <managed-bean-class>com.abb.xpages.beans.ChildBean</managed-bean-class>
                      <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
                    </managed-bean>
                     <managed-bean>
                      <managed-bean-name>ParentBean</managed-bean-name>
                      <managed-bean-class>com.abb.xpages.beans.ParentBean</managed-bean-class>
                      <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
                           <managed-property>
                       <property-name>childBeanX</property-name>
                       <value>#{childBean}</value>
                     </managed-property>
                    </managed-bean>

                  then in your “parentBean” you “inject” the childBean as follows:

                  ChildBean childBean = null;
                  public void setChildBeanX(ChildBean bean){
                  childBean = bean;
                  }
                  then you can access the childBean in other places in your parentBean, 

                  Example method from the parentBean:
                  public String getColor(){
                  return childBean.getColor();
                  }

                  As always I hope someone might find this useful when struggling around with beans! Also check out my other recent post regarding scope setting if you require notes objects being serialized.

                  bookmark_borderquindip: problems with beans containing references to Notes objects?

                  Posted on by admin

                  I tried desperately to maintain references to Notes objects within a bean.

                  I always got a stupid error, either 500 or serialization error…

                  then I stumbled across this excellent article.

                  Solution Summary:
                  don’t use “view” for bean scope if you need to serialize notes objects! use session or request scope.

                  Stupid!!! really stupid!!!

                  but now I got my stuff working

                  Michael

                  bookmark_borderquindip: handle onKeyPress event server side (sort of ;-) )

                  Posted on by admin

                  Did you ever need to “catch” a key event? I did! Using the type-ahead feature i wanted to fill some fields depending on the selected value from the type-ahead field.

                  Now I used the “onBlur” event first. But that would require the user to move the focus away from the field with type-ahead.

                  I was looking for a solution where immediately after hitting <enter> the fields below would be filled.

                  Turns out this is pretty easy:

                  use two onKeyPress event handlers: one client-side, one server-side:

                  client-side:

                  if (thisEvent.keyCode==13) {
                        return true;
                  }else{
                        return false;
                  }

                  server-side:
                  call whatever functionality you need! in our case it’s a bean populating dependant fields


                  the client-side piece of code checks for <enter> and calls the server-side functionality only on <enter>