A recent blog post mentioned that in Glimmer DSL for SWT you can data-bind a table bidirectionally in a single line of declarative code, and that this same single line of code does more now by also data-binding extra cell properties by convention in addition to their text content, such as background color, foreground color, font, and image.
Well, in the latest release of Glimmer DSL for SWT, that single line of code is ever shorter now!
So, instead of entering the following to do the table data-binding:
items <=> [@presenter, :contacts, column_attributes: [:first_name, :last_name, :email]]
You can now just enter the following:
items <=> [@presenter, :contacts]
That does the same work now thanks to Convention Over Configuration. Basically, the data-binding statement will figure out the table column model attribute names automatically by convention from the table column names. That is done by assuming underscored versions of them, so for example, for column names 'First Name', 'Last Name', and 'Email', the assumed model attributes are `first_name`, `last_name`, and `email`. This idea originated in
Glimmer DSL for LibUI (the CRuby equivalent of
Glimmer DSL for SWT) before it got ported to
Glimmer DSL for SWT.
To give you more context, including the code of the specified table column names, here is the full editable table declaration in the Glimmer GUI DSL:
table(:editable, :border) {
table_column {
text 'First Name'
width 80
}
table_column {
text 'Last Name'
width 80
}
table_column {
text 'Email'
width 200
}
items <=> [@presenter, :contacts]
}
Additionally, you can now customize attribute names only for columns that diverge from model attributes by supplying a mapping hash (instead of specifying all column attributes in an array). For example, if the `table_column` `text` is 'Email Address' instead of `Email`, then the table items (rows) data-binding declaration can map that column to the `email` model attribute, but leave the rest of the model attributes normally derived from column names by convention (e.g. `first_name` and `last_name`):
items <=> [@presenter, :contacts, column_attributes: {'Email Address' => :email}]
In other big news,
Glimmer DSL for SWT 4.24.4.0 now ships with a brand new custom widget called
`refined_table`, which enables displaying very large amounts of data by applying pagination, thus providing a more user-friendly experience for bigger tables (filtering support is coming in the future). Also, table data-binding performance has been optimized.
The idea for this custom widget originated in
Glimmer DSL for LibUI (the CRuby equivalent of
Glimmer DSL for SWT), and was
recently blogged about, including its use in
Rubio-Radio.
However, there are differences in the functionality and syntax of
`refined_table` in
Glimmer DSL for SWT. The page count is displayed in the same text field that displays the page number. When typing inside the text field, only the page number is needed, but it does not update the table until hitting ENTER or tabbing off / losing focus. Also, it was designed to be intentionally a drop-in replacement for `table`, so its syntax is as close as possible to that of `table`. That means, you simply use the keyword
`refined_table` instead of `table`, but then continue to declare `table_column`s within it, and then you perform a data-binding, but on the `model_array` custom property instead of `items` to provide the complete master model collection and leave
`refined_table` to do its own data-binding of `items` from the paginated collection of models instead of the master collection.
P.S. If you have any questions, remarks, or corrections, feel free to share under
comments.
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