indip: inject JS into xPage dynamically

wow…

so… as you can see.. I was struggling lately a lot with how I could my validation work the way I want it…

I would like to setup some configuration documents where I can define certain criteria upon which my documents (ie. xPages) are validated….

so the simple (required/threshold/regex pattern) ones I got (at least as a prototype) working…

what was still missing was a way to inject “logic” into my validation via setup document..

With LotusScript you could simply use “Evaluate” and the code provided in the setup document would be “evaluated” (ie executed)..

But how the hell can you achieve something similar in xPages? Well working with JavaScript it would be a breeze… as there exists also an “eval” statement.

But as I was/am trying to get our framework working based as much as I can on Java language some other mechanism should be applied.

As I cannot just simply inject some code into a running (already compiled Java class) this would not be so easy. A colleague mentioned 3 methods.
One method I forgot, the other were: use an own class loader and load a full class on the fly. Might work, but I am 100% sure the Notes JVM security model would cough on it.
The third was to use EL expressions with an ExpressionFactory. Would have been a way to go…

But lazy as I was I was trying to figure out a way how I could inject JavaScript into running Java code.

and guess what.. I was lucky and figured it out:

here’s the code:

FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
PageExpressionEvaluator eval = new ExpressionEvaluatorImpl(facesContext);

MethodBinding method = eval.createMethodBinding(
facesContext.getViewRoot(),
“#{javascript:var c = getComponent(“field1”);document1.replaceItemValue(“test”,c.getValue()); document1.save()}”,
null, null, null);

// other examples of JavaScript code to “experiment”
// “#{javascript:print(“hello world”)}”
// “#{javascript:return true}”

method.invoke(facesContext, null);

As you can see the interesting stuff is going on in the second parameter of the method createMethodBinding. There you can inject JavaScript code. Just enter your code into a button and then copy the relevant piece out of your xPage XML source code! In our framework this code will be read from the configuration document!

I admit.. the solution is “semi-optimal” cause I wanted to get rid of JavaScript as much as I can. But then hey: I don’t use those “formulas” very often, and for those rare cases I think I can accept the performance dip.

dip? indip? INDispensabletIP!

a side-dip: any ideas how I got the idea of how to get this working?

check this out:

in the package explorer view under Localxsp you will find the source code for all your xPages and custom controls! Just create a simple xPage with a button, add some JavaScript to the button and you basically get the code I posted above!

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