Loadable Forms

OpenOffice.org Developer's Guide

Forms

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• Models and Views

• The Model-View Paradigm
• Models and Views for Form Controls
• Model-View Interaction
• Form Layer Views

• Form Elements in the Document Model

• A Hierarchy of Models

• FormComponent Service
• FormComponents Service
• Logical Forms
• Forms Container
• Form Control Models

• Control Models and Shapes

• Form Components

• Control Models
• Forms
• HTML Forms

• Data Awareness

• Forms

• Forms as Row Sets
• Loadable Forms
• Sub Forms
• Filtering and Sorting
• Parameters

• Data Aware Controls

• Control Models as Bound Components
• Committing Controls

• External Value Suppliers

• Value Bindings

• Form Controls accepting Value Bindings

• External List Sources

• Validation

• Validation in OpenOffice.org
• Validation and Bindings

• Scripting and Events
• Common Tasks

• Initializing Bound Controls
• Automatic Key Generation
• Data Validation
• Programmatic Assignment of Scripts to Events

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A major difference of data forms compared to the underlying row set is the that forms are loaded, and provide an interface to manipulate this state.

  XLoadable xLoad = (XLoadable)FLTools.getParent(aControlModel, XLoadable.class);
  xLoad.reload();

Loading is the same as executing the underlying row set, that is, invoking the <idlml>com.sun.star.sdbc.XRowSet:execute</idlml>() method. The com.sun.star.form.XLoadable is designed to fit the needs of a form document, for example, it a unloads an already loaded form.

The example above shows how to reload a form. Reloading is executing the row set again. Using reload instead of execute has the advantage of advanced listener mechanisms:

Look at the com.sun.star.form.XLoadable interface. You can add a com.sun.star.form.XLoadListener. This listener not only tells you when load-related events have occurred that is achieved by the com.sun.star.sdbc.XRowSetListener, but also when they are about to happen. In a complex scenario where different listeners are added to different aspects of a form, you use the <idlml>com.sun.star.form.XLoadable:reload</idlml>() call to disable all other listeners temporarily. Re-executing a row set is a complex process, thus it triggers a lot of events that are only an after effect of the re-execution.

Though all the functionality provided by com.sun.star.form.XLoadable can be simulated using the com.sun.star.sdbc.XRowSet interface, you should always use the former. Due to the above-mentioned, more sophisticated listener mechanisms, implementations have a chance to do loading, reloading and unloading much smoother then.

An additional difference between loading and executing is the positioning of the row set: When using <idlml>com.sun.star.sdbc.XRowSet:execute</idlml>(), the set is positioned before the first record. When you use <idlml>com.sun.star.form.XLoadable:load</idlml>(), the set is positioned on the first record, as you would expect from a form.

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