Resource bundle for dynamic view object

We can use ADF BC API to create dynamic view objects at run-time and present the data in UI with dynamic:table, dynamic:form, "forEach" or with any other approach. The question is: how to setup correct UI hints for the VO's attributes?
The example below creates a dynamic VO VEmployees:

     String queryStmt = "select Employee_ID,  Last_Name from Employees";
     vo = createViewObjectFromQueryStmt("VEmployees", queryStmt);

By default labels of the query fields are equal to the field names. Of course, we can set the labels directly:

     AttributeDefImpl at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(0);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL, "Unique ID");

     at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(1);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL, "Last Name");
 

We can do even more. Let's take care of the locale:

     AttributeDefImpl at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(0);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL, "Unique ID");
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL+"_ukr_UA", "Iдентiфiкатор");

     at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(1);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL, "Last Name");
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL+"_ukr_UA", "Прiзвище");     

But what if we want to store UI hints in a resource bundle file (or files for different locales)? Instead of setting some value for the label directly, we have to set resource ID and set particular resource bundle for the VO's ViewDef. In the following example we call getResourceBundleDef() method to get the resource bundle of the current Application Module. This is a common practice to have one bundle per project.

     AttributeDefImpl at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(0);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL +"_ResId", 
                    "VEmployees.Id_LABEL");

     at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(1);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL +"_ResId", 
                    "VEmployees.LastName_LABEL");

     ViewDefImpl viewDef = (ViewDefImpl) ((ViewObjectImpl) vo).getDef();
     viewDef.setResourceBundleDef(getResourceBundleDef());

The resource bundle properties file has the following fragment:

VEmployees.Id_LABEL=Unique ID
VEmployees.LastName_LABEL=Last Name

In order to use a separate properties file or, probably, we want to implement our custom resource bundle, retrieving resources from let's say a database, we have to create a resource bundle definition ourselves:

     AttributeDefImpl at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(0);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL +"_ResId", 
                    "VEmployees.Id_LABEL");

     at = (AttributeDefImpl) vo.getAttributeDef(1);
     at.setProperty(AttributeDefImpl.ATTRIBUTE_LABEL +"_ResId", 
                    "VEmployees.LastName_LABEL");

     ViewDefImpl viewDef = (ViewDefImpl) ((ViewObjectImpl) vo).getDef();
     //Create custom properties bundle definition
     PropertiesBundleDef rb = new PropertiesBundleDef(viewDef);
     rb.setPropertiesFile("com.cs.blog.dynamicbundle.model.VEmployeesBundle");
     
     viewDef.setResourceBundleDef(rb);

 

That's it!

Read-only ViewObject and Declarative SQL mode

Introduction
The declarative SQL mode is considered to be one of the most valuable advantages of the entity-based view objects. In this mode the VO's SQL is generated at runtime depending on the attributes showed in UI. For example, if some page contains a table with only two columns EmployeeId and FirstName, then the query will be generated as "select  Employee_ID, First_Name from Employees".  This feature can significantly improve the performance of ADF application. But what about read-only or SQL-based view objects? JDeveloper doesn't allow you to choose the SQL mode for SQL-based VOs. Оnly "Expert" mode can be used with no chance to have the query generated on the fly. But everything is possible.

In this post we have an example of some SQL-based view object VEmployees:

Let's generate View Object Definition class:

 

We're going to override some methods:

  @Override
  public boolean isRuntimeSQLGeneration()
  {
     return true;
  }

  @Override
  public boolean isFullSql()
   {
      return false;
   }

  @Override
  //In our case we know exactly the clause FROM
  public String buildDefaultFrom(AttributeDef[] attrDefs,
                                 SQLBuilder builder,
                                 BaseViewCriteriaManagerImpl vcManager)
  {
     return "Employees";
  }

  @Override
  //Setting "Selected in Query" property for each attribute except PK
  protected void createDef()
   {
     for (AttributeDef at : getAttributeDefs()) 
      if (!at.isPrimaryKey()) 
        ((AttributeDefImpl) at).setSelected(false);   
   }


 

Actually, that's it! Let's test it.

For the page showing the full set of attributes, we have the result:

And generated query (I use ODL analyzer):

For the page with only two attributes we have the following result:

 And the query:

The sample application for this post requires JDeveloper 11.1.2.1.0 and standard HR schema.