Re: [WebMacro-user] How to subclass WebContext?

[Marc v. de G. <mvd...@xs...>]

<< Removed irrelevant text >>

> You don't really want to subclass WebContext.  Instead, you want to
> make helper classes or tools (by implementing org.webmacro.ContextTool
> and configuring it via webmacro.properties).  If you have some kind of
> Jetgen tool, you can use it via your templates like this:
>     $Jetgen.Records
>     $Jetgen.LastQuery
>     $Jetgen.Whatever    ## i've never used Jeetgen, so I don't really
> know what it does.  :)
>
> And from your sevlet code, you can access your Jetgen tool like this:
>      JetgenTool jetgen = (JetgenTool) context.get("Jetgen");
>      jetgen.getRecords();
>      jetgen.getLastQuery();
>      jetgen.getWhatever();

> And if you don't like the ContextTool approach, you can just .put the
> object into the context:
>      context.put ("Jetgen", new JetgenTool());

I thought of that, but before I pass the field values over to the template,
I do want to do some formating of several values (e.g. dates values from the
yyyy-mm-dd format to the dd-mm-yyyy format). I do not want to do that in the
template. So, although I tried it, this is not an option for me.

> > The problem is: there are so many final classes, that I'm wondering if
> > it is
> > possible to do this. Especially the newInstance method. Can somebody
> > give me
> > tips on how to do this so I can use that WebContext subclass in the
> > WMServlet subclass I've already created? Or is there some other
> > approach
> > somebody can recommend for this problem?
>
> Btw, there is already an http request form tool
> (org.webmacro.servlet.FormTool) that is configured by default.  Access
> it from your templates as $Form, and from your code as:
> servletContext.getForm()
>
> Lots of things in WM are final on purpose.  The idea of WM is not to
> allow you to directly extend and subclass it, but to allow you to
> extend its functionality by creating tools that aren't (really)
> specific to WebMacro... and to use your existing classes and objects
> w/o change.  This way, WebMacro stays focused on what it does best:
> template rendering, and you can focus on your application w/o worrying
> about implementation details of WM.

I think I will go for this option. It is flexibele and I can add it or not
in future projects without much trouble. Thanks for the advice. Next problem
is how am I going to create a Tool class: www.webmacro.org, here I come for
another visit...

Regards,
Marc