ADF UI Components, Task Flow and Page Fragments

ADF faces rich client components

The best way to go about exploring the Oracle ADF faces rich client component is by checking out the below link.

http://jdevadf.oracle.com/adf-richclient-demo/faces/index.jspx

Things to remember when working with ADF Task Flow

1) Bounded task flow has only a single point of entry, whereas an unbounded task flow has multiple entry points.

2) Bounded task flow can be called by another task flow, whereas an unbounded task flow cannot be called by another task flow.

3) A new XML file is created every time you create a new ADF bounded or unbounded task flow.

4) XML file for an ADF unbounded task flow is by default called adfc-config.xml.This can be renamed as needed.

5) XML file for an ADF bounded task flow is by default called task-flow-definition.xml. This can be renamed as needed.

6) In both types, Bounded task flows, activities and control flow rules are defined inside the adfc-config metadata element.

7) Bounded task flows are identified within adfc-config by the <task-flow-definition> metadata element.

8) Activity defined within <default-activity> metadata element is the first activity to execute in an ADF bounded task flow. (Note: ADF unbounded task flows do not have default acitivities.).

9) The first view that gets added to ADF bounded task flow diagram automatically identified as default activity. Assuming you have multiple views/activities in your ADF bounded task flow, you can right click any view in the task flow diagram and choose "Mark Acitivity -> Default Acitivity" to change the default activity selection.

10) A single application can have mulitple ADF unbounded task flow XML source files and multiple ADF bounded task flow XML source files.

11) After you create a task flow, you can add activities, and configure the control flow between the activities by simply dragging them from the component palette. Activities defined under Components  are, Method Call, Router, Save Point Restore, Task Flow Call, URL View and View.

Things to remember when working with ADF Page Fragments

1) Page Fragments are nothing but reusable custom components.

2) Page Fragments are incomplete JSF pages. A complete JSF page must have "document" tag enclosed within a "view" tag ( <f:view><af:document>...</af:document></f:view). Whereas a page fragment represents a portion of a complete page, and does not contain the view tag and the document tag. The contents of the page framents are enclosed within a jsp:root tag.

3) The same Page Fragments can be used any number of times within a page(JSF page) or in multiple pages.

4) Page Fragments uses .jsff file extension.

5) Because Page Fragments uses a different file extension from regular JSF page, configuration entries are added to the web.xml file for recognizing and interpreting the page frament (.jsff) files within the JSF page in an application. Entries added to web.xml will look like this..

  <jsp-config>
    <jsp-property-group>
      <url-pattern>*.jsff</url-pattern>
      <is-xml>true</is-xml>
    </jsp-property-group>
  </jsp-config>


6) You can include the reusable component (or page fragment) by dragging "Include" from component palette. This is how you can include a Page Fragment inside your regular view page.
 <jsp:include page="SampleFragment.jsff"/>