Hi list, I'm building my own customized component library so that I get a default custom look and feel and behaviour in my Tap applications. Naturally I started with the Tacos library as my main component source! :-D I also have as my goal to be able to abstract my applications from these component library's evolution, having a middle layer in with I can abstract the application from component changes but nonetheless being able to enhance and take advantage of their new features in a standard way adding default features and behaviours to my components, witch will enhance the applications without needing to be updated as much as possible.
I've been encapsulating some of the Tacos components I need setting default values to some properties, providing default listeners, renderers and datasources (HiveMind services) to them. I'm currently trying to customize AjaxForm. I'm a bit new to tapestry so forgive me if these questions are silly! :-( What I'm trying to do is, for the moment two things: 1. Change a little something in the JavaScript layer so the validation messages appear after the referenced input and not before has AjaxForm does. 2. Provide defaults to some properties like effects for instance. Well, I've successfully achieved both, but I'm not at all happy with what I had to do. I basically extended the "net.sf.tacos.ajax.components.AjaxForm" in my own abstract component class for any overriding or new features I might need (none so far). I them created my own "Form.jwc" in with I basically *sigh* COPIED the " AjaxForm.jwc" contents into! Which is.. horrible! :-( I did this because I needed to provide a new script asset overriding the default "AjaxForm.script" and couldn't think of another way to do this. I must be a newbie really. I'm sure there is a way to override this without having to do this. Can anybody give some pointers? I will need to do these things very often if I carry out my wishes to build on top of several component libraries my own customized and extended component library. If I have to do it like I did this one I will have a painful experience in maintaining it as new releases of the underlying libraries are released, having to one after another release to copy the jwc's from the sources. One other thing is the JS script. I will also have to copy this one every new version just to change the "...Before.." to "..After.." in the dojo invocation. Could we not render the JS programatically and by suppliyng a parameter decide where we want to add the validation message? I've not investigated that much the full AjaxForm code to see if it would be hard, but doing it in an extended class (as I think would be the only way possible) would keep the need to create a copy of the jwc file, right! Not good! Thanks in advance, -- Pedro Viegas
