ADF Hands-On
Contextual Events
Abstract:
Contextual Events is an ADF Framework feature that
allows developer to etsablish communication between two
independent ADF Region. In this hands-on you create a
contextual event between a region displaying a DVT
graph component and a region displaying a table. You will
set up the contextual event manually on the binding layer
and also write some Java code that helps preserving the
default click behavior on the graph.
Duration: 45 minutes
2010 / 2011
ADF Internal Enterprise 2.0 Training
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
Introduction
The contextual events framework in Oracle ADF defines a publish / subscribe mechanism that
leverages the ADF binding layer to notify ADF Regions about user interaction performed in other
regions, the parent page or a ViewPort (page fragment). Oracle JDeveloper provides declarative
help to setup contextual events for input and action components, but not yet for DVT components
like graphs. Setting up a data visualization component (DVT) to publish contextual events is more
challenging than from an input text field or a table, but it is a good use case to understand how
contextual events work.
The image below shows the application you build in this hands-on. The DVT graph component is
selectable and allows users to click on the graph bars. Clicking on a bar does set the current row
on the underlying ADF binding, making sure the read only form displays the detail information for
the selected bar. At the same time, a contextual event is raised and published to the ADF Region
containing the employee table. The contextual event payload allows a managed bean to access
the selected department Id and query the business service for employees working in it.
Note: This hands-on is created to focus on the ADF Contextual Event functionality. The UI is
functional and no time is spend on making it look beautiful.
Prerequisite and Setup
This hands-on requires a database to be available that has the HR schema installed and enabled. The
Oracle XE and Oracle enterprise database both have this schema available and no scripts need to be run.
The Oracle JDeveloper 11g starter workspace is contained in the ContextualEvent.zip file. Open the zip
file and extract its content to a local directory on your computer.
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
Open Oracle JDeveloper and choose Application | Open from the file menu. Navigate to the folder you
extracted the zip file to and select ContextualEvent| ContextualEvent.jws
To change the RDBMS connection, select View | Database | Database Navigator from the Oracle
JDeveloper menu. Select the database connection node in the "ContextualEvent" node and use the right
mouse context menu to edit its properties and change the connect information.
Setting up Contextual Events between two Regions
Using ADF, the business service implementation technology is not really important to know about for the
application developer. What's important is the functionality and data exposed by the business service as it
is displayed in the Data Controls panel.
In this hands-on we use ADF Business Components as a business service. The ADF BC model exposes
two collections (View Objects) to query a list of departments and employees. The employee list is filtered
by a View Criteria that reads the department Id from a bind variable.
To shorten the time it takes to build the hands-on sample, the two bounded task flows and managed
beans were pre-created. In addition, a Java class is provided in the adf.sample.view.ctx package that
receives and handles the event broadcasted by the event producer.
In the first section of this hands-on, you set up the contextual event producer, consumer and the event
mapping. In the second part, you go advanced and invoke the contextual event from Java.
1. Expand the adf.sample.view.pageDef package and select the BrowseDepartmentsPagedef.xml file,
which is the ADF binding file of the page fragment containing the DVT graph component. The ADF
binding file will become the event producer
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
2. Open the Structure Window (ctrl+shift+S)
3. Select the "bindings" node and choose Insert inside bindings | Generic Bindings | eventBinding to
create a new ADF event entry
4. Select the eventBinding entry you just created and choose Insert inside eventBinding | events from the
context menu. An event binding can contain multiple events that can be mapped to different event
consumers.
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
5. Select the "events" node and use the right mouse to open the context menu
6. Choose Insert inside events | event from the menu to create a new event item
7. Type "ChartEvent" as the event name into the opened dialog
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
8. Open the Property Inspector with the "ChartEvent" event selected in the Structure Window. The event
properties include "customPayLoad" and "raiseCondition".
The "customPayLoad" property allows developers to pass information other than what is contained in the
event object to the event handler. The custom payload data can be read from the binding layer, a managed
bean or a memory scope using Expression Language.
The "raiseCondition" provides control over when the event should be broadcasted to avoid unnecessary
and unwanted invocations.
9. Select the "eventBinding" node
10. The "id" property is accessible from EL and Java, as we show later. For now, just set it to
"ChartDrillEvent"
11. In the "Listener" property field, type
oracle.adf.view.faces.bi.event.ClickListener
It’s the listener class that matches the click event of the DVT component that is used in this hands-on to
invoke the contextual event producer
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
12. To configure the contextual event consumer, expand the adf.sample.view.ctx.handler package in the
JDeveloper Application Navigator
13. Select the "ContextualEventHandler.java" file and choose "Create Data Control" from the right
mouse context menu.
Contextual events are ADF binding events, which mean that event producers and event receivers must be
exposed on the ADF binding. To do so for the event handler, it must be exposed by a Data Control, the
JavaBean Data Control in this case
14. After the DataControl configuration is generated by Oracle JDeveloper, double click the
ContextualEventHandler.java file to open it
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
15. The handleEvent(Object payload) method received the click event broadcasted by the contextual
events. At runtime, the class is loaded in the context of the employees task flow and therefore has access
to the managed beans defined on this task flow. It uses this reference to invoke a method on the
"employeeBackingBean" to re-query and refresh the employees table.
16. Select the "BrowseEmployeesPageDef.xml" file in the adf.sample.view.pageDef package.
17. Open the Structure Window (ctrl+shift+S)
18. Select the "bindings" node and choose Insert inside bindings | Generic Bindings | method Action
from the right mouse context menu
19. Select the "ContextualEventHandler" Data Control.
20. Ensure the "handleEvent(Object)" method is selected
21. Press "Ok"
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
22. Double click onto the "ParentContainer.jspx"
23. Drag the "dvt-task-flow-definition.xml" task flow from the Application Navigator and drop it into the
first facet of the Panel Splitter component in the ParentContainer.jspx file
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
24. In the opened menu, select "Region" to create a static ADF Region
25. Drag the "employees-task-flow-definition.xml" task flow from the Application Navigator and drop it
into the second facet of the Panel Collection in the PanelContainer.jspx file
26. Select "Region" in the opened context menu to create a static ADF Region
27. The employees task flow requires an input parameter for the initial query of the employees. Click into
the parameter field …
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
28. … and type 10
29. Press OK. When the task flow loads the first time, its page fragment shows a list of employees
working in department 10
30. Select the ParentContainerPageDef.xml file in the adf.sample.view.pageDefs package
31. Open the Structure Window
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
32. Select the top node entry and choose Insert inside ParentContainerDef | eventMap from the right
mouse context menu. This creates the ADF binding entry to map the event produces with the event
receiver
33. Select the ParentContainerDef root entry again and choose "Edit Event Map" from the right mouse
context menu
33. In the opened Event Map Editor, press the green plus icon to create a new event mapping
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
34. Expand the producer list box
35. Select the BrowseDepartmentsPageDef.ChartDrillEvent entry and double click on it to close the list
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
36. The Event Name is automatically added as there is only a single event defined in this binding
37. Expand the Consumer list and select the "BrowseEmployeesPagedef.handleEvent" entry
38. Press the green plus icon to create a new entry in the Consumer Params
39. Define a new parameter with the Param Name payload and the Param Value ${payLoad}. Note that
the parameter name "payload" matches the name of the argument in the event handler method. The
${payload} EL access the event message, which is the event object if no custom payload was defined.
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
40. Press Ok to close the dialog
41. Press OK to finish the event mapping configuration
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
42. Select the DVT graph component in the BrowseDepartments.jsff page fragment. You can do this in
the visual page editor as shown below, or in the Structure Window after selecting the page fragment
43. Open the Property Inspector (ctrl+shift+I)
44. In the Property Inspector, note the current Expression Language string added to the "ClickListener".
When creating a DVT component graph, you can check a checkbox to make a click on a bar in the graph
to mark the underlying row as selected in the ADF binding. In response to checking the check box, the
EL string is added to the Click Listener property.
45. Select the Expression Language string as shown in the image below and copy it into the clipboard for
later use. To invoke a contextual event in response to a user clicking onto a bar in the graph, while
preserving the configured behavior to mark the underlying row as current in the binding, you will replace
the EL string with a managed bean method reference.
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
46. Click the arrow icon next to the "ClickListener" property field and choose "Edit" from the context
menu.
47. Select the departmentBackingBean entry
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
48. Press the "New" button to create a new managed bean method to handle the DVT click event
49. Name the method as "onGraphClick"
50. Press OK twice
51. Double click onto the DepartmentBackingBean.java file to open it in the code editor.
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
52. To preserve the default behavior, use the EL you saved to the clipboard and invoke it from Java. For
this type the following code into the "onGraphClick" method body
invokeDefaultClickEvent(
"#{bindings.allDepartmentsWithEmployees.graphModel.processClick}",
clickEvent);
53. Next, add code to invoke the contextual event
54. Type or copy the following code lines into the method
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
BindingContext bctx = BindingContext.getCurrent();
BindingContainer bindings = bctx.getCurrentBindingsEntry();
JUEventBinding eventBinding = null;
//get a handle to the eventBinding
eventBinding = (JUEventBinding) bindings.get("ChartDrillEvent");
ClickListener cl = (ClickListener)eventBinding.getListener();
cl.processClick(clickEvent);
Note: Oracle JDeveloper needs to import classes for the code to work. Either manually import the
classes, or copy and paste the following lines to the top of the Java file (but still below the package name)
import
import
import
import
oracle.adf.model.BindingContext;
oracle.adf.view.faces.bi.event.ClickListener;
oracle.binding.BindingContainer;
oracle.jbo.uicli.binding.JUEventBinding;
The code lines above access the ADF Binding Context to access the Binding Container at runtime. It then
looks up the "ChartDrillEvent" binding to access and invoke the ClickListener
55. Select the PageContainer.jspx file and choose "Run" from the right mouse context menu
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ADF HANDS-ON Contextual Events
56. In the opened page, click onto a graph bar and watch the read only form and the table refreshing.
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