topic Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene? in Alfresco Archive

what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:03:05 GMT

hi,i am currently changing the logic of how associations are handled so that a user can go from modifying a content's properties to modifying the association's properties with a single click.i did that by adding an action link instead of the path to the association, and gave the path as the link to

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

gavinc — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:03:06 GMT

All the logic for dialog:close is in org.alfresco.web.app.AlfrescoNavigationHandler.

Basically when JSF sees the 'dialog:close' outcome it will navigate to the last page in the view stack for the dialog. Did you open your association property edit page with a dialog:xxxx action? If not, dialog:close won't know where to go back to, or will go back to the last page that launched a dialog, this may explain why you go back to the space.

Another possiblity is that the dialog:close outcome has been overridden. If it looks something like "dialog:close:browse", then all dialogs are closed and JSF looks up and follows the navigation rule for the "browse" action.

Hope that helps!

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:03:40 GMT

thx, it helped me to understand, but it is not what you assumed.

as i said, my action link acts exactly like the details_doc action, which action is dialog:showDocDetails.

so i am launching a dialog action, but still the dialog:close does not take me back to where i wanted. dialog:close is not overridden, it is the action of the commandButton in document-details.jsp.

so my actions are actually showDocDetails –> showDocDetails –> close.
before that i navigate to a space, and it is not a dialog action, but it still goes back there and not to the first doc details.

can i see this view stack somehow so i can be sure? any other ideas?

thx again.

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

gavinc — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:44:55 GMT

Ok I see now!

Yes you can see what's going on by turning on debugging for the AlfrescoNavigationHandler i.e. add this to your log4j.properties file:

log4j.logger.org.alfresco.web.app.AlfrescoNavigationHandler=debug‍

What version of Alfresco are you using? If you're not using the latest HEAD code from SVN you will probably notice that the document details page in the view stack only gets added once, even though you have effectively launched it twice. As a result when you click Close the dialog framework goes back to the space view and not the first docs details.

One of the problems is that document details is still a "Simple Dialog" (see http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Dialog_Framework#Simple_Dialogs). So one possibility is to copy/paste the document details JSP and create a separate JSP and navigation rule for it. The dialog framework will then treat them as different dialogs.

In the latest HEAD code or nightly builds the document details page should now be a proper configured dialog which gives you more scope for overriding it.

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:05:34 GMT

great that explains everything!!

i am not using the HEAD code, but alfresco 2.1, so you actually gave me a good solution with the copied jsp, but i was wondering about the better solution of configuring the doc details as a proper dialog, how complicated is that? where do i start?

thx.

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

gavinc — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:23:56 GMT

It's generally not complicated to create/convert a proper dialog, you just define the configuration, see web-client-config-dialogs.xml for examples, define and implement a managed bean and strip out all the chrome from an existing JSP, just leaving the 'body' of the dialog.

However, in the case of the document details page, it was fairly central to a lot of functionality so it's not so easy to extract it out. To be honest I wasn't the one that converted it so I don't know all the details, I'd suggest getting the latest HEAD code and trace back the changes. As a starting point the document details dialog is defined in org.alfresco.web.bean.content.DocumentDetailsDialog

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:36:15 GMT

i didn't catch your drift about the chrome and body, but you have been a great help anyways, i will have a look at the HEAD code and see what i can come up with.

thanks a lot gavin!!

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

gavinc — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:55:58 GMT

A "simple" dialog JSP has the tags for the whole page i.e. the whole page structure, header, shelf etc. etc. A "proper" dialog JSP only needs the UI that provides the functionality for the dialog.

So I was meaning removing all the "structure" code from the old JSP page to just leave the bit that actually represents what the dialog does.

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:37:13 GMT

thanks gavin i got it now.
sounds untrivial, i haven't had a chance to look at the HEAD code yet.

i did try the copied jsp solution, and suprisingly it does not work.
i debuged AlfrescoNavigationHandler, and what i saw is that because it uses the NavigationHandler dispatchContext, even though the view stack is correctly handled, and i suspect it is the case even before i duplicated the jsp, it goes back to the docDetails of the node in the dispatchContext, and that node is the association and not it's "father". so it shows me the same screen twice.

i will try to see if i can make it a "rule" and manipulate the dispatchContext on that dialog.

please do help if you can think of something else.

thx.

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

gavinc — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:38:39 GMT

You're correct, you need to reset the context back to that of the content, this is not just the dispatch context but the context for the DocumentDetailsBean as well, you will also need to do whatever "BrowseBean.setupContentAction()" does as that "sets the scene" ready for the document details page.

If you've got a copy of the JSP now you can adjust the 'action' for the Close button to call a method on a managed bean. You can then set the context back to the correct state before the dialog closes. For example your close button will be:

<h:commandButton id="close-btn" value="#{msg.close}" action="#{YourBean.yourMethod}" styleClass="wizardButton" />‍

and in your managed bean you can do:

public String yourMethod()
{
   // reset context

   return "dialog:close";
}‍‍‍‍‍‍

Hope this helps!

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:15:52 GMT

thx again, but unfortunately it didn't help…

i tried what you said in 2 ways:


<h:commandButton id="close-btn" value="#{msg.close}" action="#{DocumentDetailsBean.handleAssociation}" styleClass="wizardButton" />
‍‍‍

and:


<h:commandButton id="close-btn" value="#{msg.close}" action="dialog:close" actionListener="#{DocumentDetailsBean.handleAssociation}" styleClass="wizardButton" />
‍‍‍

while my method is:



public String handleAssociation(){
      
      Node curNode = getDocument();
      List<ChildAssociationRef> assocs = nodeService.getParentAssocs(curNode.getNodeRef());
      if(assocs.size() != 1)
         throw new AlfrescoRuntimeException("handleAssociation: more than one parent for an association");
      NodeRef parent = assocs.get(0).getChildRef();
      browseBean.setupContentAction(parent.getId(), true);
      return "dialog:close";
   }

‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

(it differs a little on each variant but does the same)

still, it doesn't work. is there a phase in the way that overrides what BrowseBean.setupContentAction() does? what i saw from debugging seems to do ok, except for the final result… :shock:

if you can enlighten me some more i would appreciate it.
thx

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

gavinc — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:44:33 GMT

Hmm, I'm now at a loss for what to suggest 😞

What you have tried is exactly what I was suggesting and I would expect to work. When you say the everything seems to do ok apart from the final result, what is the final result? Does the details dialog still show the details of the previous node?

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:34:19 GMT

yes…

i found this link as an answer to another post of mine, and it seems to talk about this problem exactly, haven't had a chance to go over it yet.

hope it will help.

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

netos — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:22:56 GMT

ok i got it!!!!

silly me… ops:

i just gave the wrong node to the browseBean.

the correct code is:


<h:commandButton id="close-btn" value="#{msg.close}" action="#{DocumentDetailsBean.handleAssociation}" styleClass="wizardButton" /> 
‍‍‍

together with:


public String handleAssociation(){
      
      Node curNode = getDocument();
      List<AssociationRef> assocs = nodeService.getSourceAssocs(curNode.getNodeRef(), CustomModel.PROP_SCENE);
      if(assocs.size() != 1)
         throw new AlfrescoRuntimeException("handleAssociation: more than one parent for an association");
      NodeRef parent = assocs.get(0).getSourceRef();
      browseBean.setupContentAction(parent.getId(), true);
      return "dialog:close";
   }
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

thanks for all the help gavin.

Re: what does dialog:close do and how can i intervene?

gavinc — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:06:50 GMT

Your welcome, glad it's now working.