Tutorial Example
tutorial_formbuilder2.xml in the
CookFormLayout Java Web Start demo.
Introduction
This is the part 2 of the <formbuilder>
tag tutorial. In this tutorial, we will see some more things that can be simplified.
1. Forget the RowSpec
One problem in all the previous tutorials is that one needs to determine the row spec before hand. When there are many rows, it becomes somewhat tedious to have "pref, 2dlu, " in the rowspec repeated over and over again. DefaultFormBuilder can automatically append "pref" part for us, we just need to specify the line gap between two rows.
<form-properties> retrieves
the internal AbstractFormBuilder being used so that its properties, in this case,
linegapsize, can be set.
<panel> <formbuilder> <formlayout columnspec="pref, 4dlu, 50dlu, 4dlu, min" rowspec="" > </formlayout> <form-properties linegapsize="DLUY2"/> </formbuilder> </panel>
It seems to me that DefaultFormBuilder behaves differently for advancing
to next line if rowspec is not manually set. <form-nextline>
becomes less necessary, in fact it can be used only to indicate the current
row of components are finished.
2. Row Grouping
DefaultFormBuilder keeps track a single active row group, which is actually sufficient for all layout purposes.
<form-properties rowgroupingenabled="true"/>
3. Other Features
As mentioned in the first tutorial, <formlayout does not support
changing row/column spec in the middle of adding components. With
<formbuilder, however, you can with the
<form-append> tag.
You can see how it works in
customareas.xml of the
CookFormLayout Java Web Start demo.
