Navigation

On 3/17/06, BoD <BoDjraf.org> wrote:
>
> Hi.
> I work for a software publisher making web applications
and we currently
> use Turbine.
> We find that our applications are hard to maintain
because of the way we
> handle the navigation: currently, we just use the
TemplateLink tool in
> velocity templates and in Action classes, to build the
URLs pointing to
> the different parts of the application.
> I've been assigned the task to see if there was a
better way to handle
> these aspects. I looked to other web frameworks and
most of them have a
> way to declare externaly the navigation rules (eg:
struts-config.xml for
> Struts, faces-config.xml for JSF, Spring Web Flow for
Spring, xwork.xml
> for Webwork). Basically, these files document the flow
of navigation in
> a single place, and that's what we'd like to have.
>
> Now my questions are:
> 1/ did I miss something (is there anything similar that
could be used in
> Turbine)?


No. Part of this is because turbine modules return void,
instead of some
other value that could be used to determine the next
template to be
rendered.
Guara modules return the Outcome object. This objects is
used by the "view"
code to determine which template to render next. if
Outcome.UNKNOWN is
returned the template from RunData is used.

2/ if not, is there any development planned in that
direction, for
> future versions of Turbine?


I donīt know.


And I guess a more general question is: how do you guys deal
with these
> problems? Do you just use the TemplateLink tool? And do
you have the
> same feeling that it's a problem to have the links at
several parts of
> the application?


I like the template tool. Sometimes is desirable to override
the value set
on RunData (think reused on modules). I have a very specific
situation where
the same module is executed by regular http requests and by
ajax requests,
but I want to return HTML or JavaScript code, depending on
the type of
request, without changing my module written in Java. Turbine
does not handle
this situation very well.


Thank you very much for your help.
>
> BoD
>


--
Leandro Rodrigo Saad Cruz
CTO - InterBusiness Technologies
sitedafesta.com.br
db.apache.org/ojb
guara-framework.sf.net
xingu.sf.net