Re: [Springframework-developer] Support for state/controller chaining in Portlets? (not quite webflow)

[J.Enrique Ruiz-V. <er...@di...>]

Hi Tim,

It could take to long time to explain you how we work with portlets, but 
basically, we use View mode for read-only operations and Edit mode for 
write operations. Before using Spring Webflow we were using one 
Controller for each mode, in Edit mode we were using our porting of 
MultiActionController to manage each update action. Now with Spring 
Webflow we have one Controller for each portlet, one flow for each 
portlet mode and we have one SWF-Action for each read or write action.

I hope this message can help you.

>Hi everyone,
>
>I'm just throwing this out here to see what other people have to say.  I can
>see from the list that there are a few developers actively working on portal
>solutions using Spring MVC.  We are starting on our first project using this
>as well, and one of the issues I'm trying to figure out now is the matter of
>maintaining state in a portlet.  
>
>In a typical CRUD example, if we have a portlet to display, edit and maange
>information about a certain object, like a Book. We'd have view, edit and
>delete functionality for example. 
>
>In a typical non-portlet webapp, we could easily split those up across
>different servlets for fine-grained areas of responsibility.  
>
>But it's not as simple with portlets, because there are limitations on what
>can be done, and essentially, all requests would need to go thru a single
>portlet configuration.  
>
>So, it no longer become sufficient to configure a simple portlet controller
>for a portlet.  There needs to be a way to maintain state and to delegate
>the request/response process to different types of controllers depending on
>the state.  Like a View page would need to go thru a derivation of
>BaseCommandController, an Edit page would go thru SimpleFormController. 
>
>And not to mention adding yet another dimension when considering portlet
>modes as well!
>
>This article at IBM Developerworks pretty much covers the same issue I am
>bringing up:
>
>http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/techarticles/0312_ha
>nis/hanis1.html
>
>I did look at Spring's WebFlow a few days ago to see if it could address our
>issue, but in the Webflow FAQ, it pretty much states that WebFlow should not
>be used in cases where the user will be using back-button, or indeterminate
>actions not within a strict flow.  
>
>So that kinda leaves me back at square one.  After some discussion with my
>co-worker, I would imagine that this is a common problem for any Spring
>portlet developer creating more than just simple portlet functionality.  And
>that as Spring portlet support matures, this will be a more common issue for
>everyone.  Hence this email to the list.  
>
>I'm now wondering how some of you have addressed this problem, and whether
>there is a need for Spring's portlet support, to be in Spring 1.3 to include
>some way to configure and facilitate a state process, maybe even based on
>WebFlow's state machine - although I have only given WebFlow's state
>functionality a brief look.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>-tim
>
>
>
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-- 
J.Enrique Ruiz-Valenciano
CIO, DiSiD S.L.L. (http://www.disid.com)
Phone: +34.655407965
Email: er...@di...