[Wonder-disc] More stupid WOBuilder tricks

[<aro...@cl...>]

"More stupid WOBuilder tricks"

Yes WOBuilder is dead to Apple but some of us in the WOCommunity still 
like to use it. Along the lines of Gary Teter's excellent WOBuilder trick 
for the WireHose framework, we offer some tricks for the WOnder framework 
:-)

Ever wish your favorite AJAX widgets would show their bindings in 
WOBuilder? Ever wish your AjaxUpdateContainers displayed like a 
WOGenericContainer so that if you give them an "elementName = tr" binding 
they are actually visible in a table? Now you can have all this and more 
if you follow the steps outlined here.

There are two files that you must edit inside the contents of 
WOBuilder.app  You need to right-click (control-click) on the WOBuilder 
application icon in the Finder (not in the dock). This will allow you to 
"show package contents". At that point you'll want to navigate into 
"Contents/Resources" and switch the finder view to the detail view. Group 
the results by "kind" and scroll down to the bottom. These two files are 
important for WOBuilder hacking:

1) WebObjectToWBWebObject.plist - allows you to map any component to one 
of roughly eight canned layout widgets for WOBuilder.

2) WebObjectDefinitions.xml - allows you to setup bindings and validation 
information for any random component.

To make an "AjaxUpdateContainer" behave like a WOGenericContainer, open up 
#1 above and towards the bottom add the following line:

    "AjaxUpdateContainer" = "WBGenericWebObject";

"WB" must stand for "WO Builder". If you look at this file, you'll see 
there are a handful of these WB objects that you can use to give special 
visual functionality to any object you choose. Right now, we just wanted 
to make the AjaxUpdateContainer behave like a WOGenericContainer so that 
it will render properly. If you didn't know, the AjaxUpdateContainer 
always renders as a "div" unless you specify an "elementName". Once you 
specify an element name, you can use AjaxUpdateContainer objects to 
replace virtually any HTML element on the page.

To recap, if you ever wished your wiz bang component could look and feel 
like a "WOPopUpButton" for example, all you would need to do is map it to 
a "WBWOPopUpButton" object in this plist file.

Now, to give bindings to the AjaxUpdateContainer, open up the #2 xml file 
and towards the bottom, cut and paste the following:

  <wo class="AjaxUpdateContainer">
    <binding name="elementName" passthrough="NO" required="YES"/>
    <binding name="id" passthrough="NO" required="YES"/>
    <binding name="onRefreshComplete" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="action" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="insertion" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="insertionDuration" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="beforeInsertionDuration" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="afterInsertionDuration" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="observeFieldID" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="frequency" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="decay" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onLoading" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onComplete" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onSuccess" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onFailure" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onException" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="evalScripts" passthrough="NO" defaults="YES/NO"/>
    <binding name="asynchronous" passthrough="NO" defaults="YES/NO"/>
 
    <validation message="'elementName' must be bound">
        <unbound name="elementName"/>
    </validation>
 
    <validation message="'id' must be bound">
      <unbound name="id"/>
    </validation>
  </wo>


Here's another snippet for AjaxObserveField:

  <wo class="AjaxObserveField">
    <binding name="observeFieldID" passthrough="NO" required="YES"/>
    <binding name="updateContainerID" passthrough="NO" required="YES"/>
    <binding name="action" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="fullSubmit" passthrough="NO" defaults="YES/NO"/>
    <binding name="onLoading" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onComplete" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onSuccess" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onFailure" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="onException" passthrough="NO"/>
    <binding name="evalScripts" passthrough="NO" defaults="YES/NO"/>
    <binding name="asynchronous" passthrough="NO" defaults="YES/NO"/>
    <binding name="observeFieldFrequency" passthrough="NO"/>
 
    <validation message="'observeFieldID' must be bound">
        <unbound name="observeFieldID"/>
    </validation>
 
    <validation message="'updateContainerID' must be bound">
      <unbound name="updateContainerID"/>
    </validation>
  </wo>

Of course, you should probably make a zipped archive of your WOBuilder app 
before playing with anything. When you do make edits, don't forget to save 
and then restart WOBuilder for the changes to take effect.

One final word of advice. The AjaxUpdateContainer modifications we 
outlined here work *almost* the way we want but there are two issues. 1) 
When you first put a new AjaxUpdateContainer on the page, you'll need to 
define an "elementName" and then toggle from "Source" to "Layout" view to 
wake up WOBuilder. 2) We couldn't figure out a way for "div" to be shown 
as a default.

Happy WO Builder tinkering!
-- Aaron