[Springframework-rcp-dev] Support for buttons (actions) on forms

[Andy D. <an...@ma...>]

Has anyone given much thought to support for buttons or actions on 
forms?  When you think about it, Spring's Form framework is MVC, with 
the Form (and binding) being the controller.  With this in mind, I'd 
like to "bind" buttons on the form to actions.  Since the Form instance 
ends up being the closest thing to a Controller, it seems to me the best 
approach would be to register actions (ActionCommand, or 
ActionCommandExecutor?) with the Form.  Components in the view can then 
bind to these actions by name (ActionCommands have an 'id'), much in the 
same way components are bound to properties by name.
In our case, we use a UI designer, and then a custom FormUIProvider to 
load and bind the generated UI at runtime.  We use a convention where 
the UI designer names each component on the UI that can be bound (via 
Component's name property) with the name of the property to bind to + 
"_bound".  So, if I named a component "name_bound", then that component 
will be bound to the "name" property in the FormModel.  I'd like to do 
the same for a button.  If a button is bound, then it binds to the 
ActionCommand registered with the Form with the specified name.  This 
approach causes any "action" to be handled by the controller (Form 
instance), and avoids putting such code into the View or the backing 
bean.  With this approach, the MVC pattern is split up like so:

1. View = predesigned UI + FormUIProvider
2. Model = backing JavaBean + FormModel
3. Controller = Spring's Form + registered actions + Spring binding 
framework

Thoughts, suggestions?

  - Andy