Package com.partnersoft.gui.forms

Data-aware, schema-driven GUI forms framework.

See: Description

Package com.partnersoft.gui.forms Description

Data-aware, schema-driven GUI forms framework.

Partner Forms is an attempt to accommodate both simple, script-driven forms and more complex, data- and schema-aware forms. It provides convenience methods and auto-generation based on configuration rather than code.

To accommodate more complex tasks, it also provides low-level access to underlying Swing containers and components. Developers can therefore use a mixture of auto-generated styles and hand-coded styles.

The data layer can be represented with either a simple Naming or an arbitrarily complex CogHeader structure.

There are two major concepts introduced, Form and FormField. A Form is a collection of FormFields placed in a layout with other containers and components. The Form handles events and the data layer. A FormField is an individual control like a checkbox, picklist, or text box, which is tied to a named value in the data layer. FormFields have a simpler and more consistent data-handling and event mechanism than the Swing controls typically used, but you can always access the underlying components if you need to tweak them in some specific fashion.

Forms are constructed using FormBuilder, which provides a simple API that doesn't require you to track intermediate objects or import tons of Swing classes. FormBuilder has powerful convenience methods to auto-generate a form and basic layout using CogSchema settings.

Copyright 2009 Partner Software, Inc.

Author:
Paul Reavis, Rich Stepanski