wissel.net :: JavaViews in your own applications

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The R8 inbox, calendar and contacts take full advantage of the new Java views. However support for your application has been postponed to the NMFR*. Memento bene: "support for". That doesn't mean that you can't do it. After all the mailbox is just a Notes application. The biggest challenge: in the normal Designer there seems to be no way to specify the additional properties for the Java views like side preview or the business card view. Actually there is. In the R8 reviewers guide on page 155 (that would be PDF page 163) a new notes.ini parameter is documented:

Designer_ShowPropForJavaViewsUI=1

Add this parameter to your local notes.ini and designer will reveal new properties in views (the (i) tab in the view and the propeller head tab for a view column). The redpaper also mentions what you can do with this. One interesting piece: Currently we have a viewer type: "Table" and one "Tiled". You can specify both and you will get a switcher (like in contacts). The API will be documented, so you could render your very own views (Pivot anybody?). However if you add all this properties nothing happens. A few pieces are missing (and since it is not automatic, there's no support yet). Again the redpaper helps: on page 146 (PDF 158) there is a note, that reminds you that you can link a frameset to a composite. So what you need to do for your JavaView enabled views is to use a composite application. That is actually nice, since you have full backward compatibility: Prior to R8 the frameset opens. In R8 the composite opens.

These are the steps you need to take:

Create an empty composite application in your database
Open the frameset and link the composite in (Don't worry about the "Blank Page", we can take care of that later)
Edit your view and view column properties in Designer. I won't detail that here, you find all this information in the redpaper. To get the Javaview going this step anyway is optional. Just keep in mind: Split buttons are only available in shared actions (for now?).
Set the frameset as your start frame when opening the application. Close the database in designer. Switch to the R8 client and open your application
An empty composite application will show up. Use Actions - Edit Application to switch to the Composite Application Editor (CAE).
Drag 2 components on your page: the Notes Mail Navigator and the Notes Mail View

The Notes Mail Navigator and the Inbox will show up. That is OK for the moment!.
Go to the advanced properties of the components (you need to do this for both components)

The advanced properties look like this:

We are interested in the com.ibm.rcpcsiviews.viewpart.dburl. The value is actually a Notes URL pointing to a frameset in the Mail database. between notes:/// and /MailFS is a ReplicaID. There are a number of reserved numbers, that don't point to a physical database but a logical. E00 stands for current user's mail file. 0 stands for current database (You need to pad the number with left zeros to full lenght). So replace E00 with 000 and MailFS with the name of your Frameset. Do the same with the Viewpart. In the viewpart you will actually find another interesting property to experiment with: com.ibm.rcp.csiviews.viewpart.threadurl. It allows you to implement your own version of threading, something to experiment with.

Save everything, close the CAE and here you go.

*Next Mayor Feature Release

Comments

1 - Not that stupid - theres things still to be completed in this area - hence why its not supported yet. 8.0 was mail and UI focused - future releases are targetted at developers when this stuff is opened up better.

By the time things are supported some details may change - so providing the info in advance of that can cause confusion (although to be fair a couple of the documentated items such as the ini setting can add to that).

In addition theres some things that are coded to only respond to mail (because of the 8 focus) - so will not function properly - these are still being worked on.

An employees opinion - not nessarily that of the employer ;)

Posted by Steve Castledine At 18:43:07 On 01/03/2008 | - Website - |

2 - @Steve: the official R8 review guide documents all the new features once the ini variable is in place, so our employer obviously decided that this should be public knowledge.
Only the part with the composite was missing, which you can find out looking at the mail template.
Of course there are quite some steps to get things going which we all expect to be easier in future.

Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 22:15:49 On 01/05/2008 | - Website - |

3 - ahahahaha. You found some place where the documentation was public!

Good for you, man. It's been completely stupid that they've withheld this information for the last six months.

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 20:34:05 On 01/02/2008 | - Website - |

4 - Hei Stephan
I tried to do this on a contacts database we have created for internal use, but with no success... I simply just can't make the wanted view appear as java view in the composite...
Any idea where I wen't wrong?
Thanks
Ove

Posted by Ove Storholt At 07:45:14 On 12/22/2008 | - Website - |