[Springframework-developer] GUI validation feedback

[Sam N. <sam...@ma...>]

I've been thinking about the issue of feeding back validation 
information to desktop applications (think: SWT or Swing) for 
spring-rcp. If we take Struts as an example, we need:

1. General message areas
2. Field specific feedback

So, if you are filling in a form and don't fill in a required field, you 
really want an message to that affect next to the field. The problem is 
that you do not want to require that the user define each and every 
location for errors - it would be nice if you could just define simple 
JTextFields, JLabels etc. and identify them as fields.
My proposed solution is to add a Factory, which is capable of taking a 
control (field, combobox, list etc) and a optional template, which then 
produces a Component which includes the field and an for feedback which 
will be propagated. The template will be a component which defines where 
the field can be and where the message will be. I suggest the following API:

void addTemplate(Class componentClass, FeedbackTemplate template)
void setDefaultTemplate(FeedBackTemplate template);

/**
  * Creates a component using the control classes template or the default
  * template
  */
Component createCompoment(String fieldName, Component control)

/**
  * Creates a component with a custom template
  */
Component createComponent(String fieldName, Component control, 
FeedbackTemplate template)

I need to look over the validation stuff to work out how these 
FeedbackTemplates will get their text, but the interface will look 
something like this:

FeedbackTemplate(String fieldName, Component control)

Component getUI();

void showMessage(String message);

getUI will be called by the factory. showMessage gets called to show the 
feedback.

Comments?

-- 
sam
http://www.magpiebrain.com/