How do I use property classes?

Many of the attributes for the UI components and properties for the managed beans need to be set to instances of property classes. To illustrate how to use these property classes in an application, consider the following example.

Example

The Logon component has an attribute called logonButton. That attribute must be set to an instance of the SubmitButton class, which contains the properties that define the look and behavior of the button for the logon form. To access and manipulate these properties, the Logon component must reference a bean that instantiates the SubmitButton class. First you must configure a managed bean entry in your faces-config.xml file:

<managed-bean>

    <managed-bean-name>customLogonButton</managed-bean-name>

    <managed-bean-class>com.businessobjects.jsf.sdk.properties.SubmitButtonProps</managed-bean-class>

    <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>

    <managed-property>

        <property-name>text</property-name>

        <value>Submit logon</value>

    </managed-property>

</managed-bean>

In the example, you have created a custom logon button for your logon form, called "customLogonButton", that displays "Submit logon" as the text on the button.

Next, add a reference to this bean from the Logon component tag.

logonButton="#{customLogonButton}"

The formatting and behavior of the Logon component's logon button will now be governed by the data in the newly created bean. The bean can be further configured and its property values changed within the faces-config.xml file. All component attributes that require property classes function this way.

In addition, the EnterpriseItems and Identity beans contain properties that must be configured for property classes. A reference to a property bean can be added similar to the way components are added, by initializing the EnterpriseItem or Identity bean's property in the faces-config.xml file. For details, see How do I configure the default values of Java beans?.

A list of the component attributes and managed bean properties that require property classes is shown in the following tables.

Note:    For detailed documentation on the property classes, see the com.businessobjects.jsf.sdk.properties package in the JavaServer Faces Components for BusinessObjects Enterprise Java API Reference.

UI Component	Attribute	Property Class
Logon	authentication	AuthenticationProps
Logon	logoffButton	SubmitButtonProps
Logon	logonButton	SubmitButtonProps
Logon	system	SystemProps
ItemsGrid	alerts	AlertProps
ItemsGrid	pagerStyle	PagerProps
Path	showImages	ImagesProps

Managed Bean	Property	Property Class
EnterpriseItems	paging	PagingProps
EnterpriseItems	sortBy	SortProps