Re: [displaytag-user] is there a way...

[Kyle A. <ka...@gf...>]

Scott,

Take a look at the idea of unobtrusive javascript:

http://www.onlinetools.org/articles/unobtrusivejavascript/

Basically the idea is that you keep javascript-related stuff like
onmouse* out of the HTML code, and attach the appropriate eventhandlers
to the HTML element's class or ID (both of which are configurable in
displaytag).  Classes should be used when you want to apply something to
multiple elements in your page; IDs when you want to apply to only one
uniquely identified element.  In your case I'd use a class because it
would allow us to attach onmouse* events to multiple tables within a
page.

<display:table class="stripe" ... >
  ...
</display:table>

Resulting HTML:

<table class="stripe" ... >
  ...
</table>

I could go into a long and detailed description of how to code the JS,
but someone's already done the hard work of implementing the
highlighting you're looking for:

http://validweb.nl/artikelen/javascript/better-zebra-tables/

There are a couple of modifications you might want to make to that
script.  It will stripe all tables at the current moment.  If you want
it to only stripe tables with a class of "stripe" (or whatever), you'll
want to look at using the jQuery ( http://jquery.com/ ) library to make
the following change:

var tables = document.getElementsByTagName("table");	

to:

var tables = $("table.stripe");

If you want multiple events to be triggered when the document loads,
you'll have to use a full-featured event handler library.  I'd recommend
Yahoo's Event library ( http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/event/ ).  You'll
have to change:

window.onload = stripe;

to:

YAHOO.util.Event.addListener(window, "load", stripe);

Finally, notice that all the javascript does is add/subtract classes to
the table rows in question.  The actual appearance of the striping is
controlled by the styles defined for the classes in CSS files.  This is
consistent with unobtrusive javascripting (AKA DOM scripting), which
separates markup (HTML) from behavior (JS) from presentation (CSS).

Probably not the straightforward answer you were hoping for, but your
web development will go much smoother once you get the hang of
unobtrusive javascripting.  The long term rewards are well worth the
initial investment.

Kyle


_____

Kyle Adams | Java Developer  |  Gordon Food Service  |  616-717-6162