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Dynamic Data Lists II

Marcellus Tavares

Marcellus Tavares

July 25, 2011

A Minute Read

In the second post of the DDL series I would like to present two more porlets related to the Dynamic Data Lists:

The first one is the Dynamic Data List Display. Its purpose is to exhibit a determined list, that is specified through its configuration window (Figure 1). There are two possible ways to display a given list: The default view (grid view) and the Spreadsheet view (Figure 2). If you uncheck the Spreadsheet view option, the default view will be used. The editable option is used to enable/disable the edition of a list. If it is unchked, the list will be presented in a read-only mode and the user will not be able to add or edit the list records.

Figure 1 - Dynamic Data List Display Configuration

Figure 2 - Dynamic Data List Display Spreedsheet view

In adition, with this portlet the user is also able to specify templates (aditional views) for the select list. There are two types of templates: the Detail and the List template.

The Detail template is used to modify (or restrict) the data definition fields that will appear during the form edition. It is also possible to adorn those fields with other field types, such as paragraph and fieldset.

The List template is used to display the list of records, It can be used if the user needs more flexibility to display a given list. The user is able to speficy those templates on either freemarker or velocity language. I'll give more details of how to do create such templates in the next post.

The second portlet is the Dynamic Data List Form (Figure 3). The DDL Form is a Liferay plugin and it needs to be deployed in order to be available for use. The purpose of the DDL Form is to provide a simpler way for user populate a list. Among its configuration options there's also the possibibility for defining the detail template and to enable/disbale multiple form submissions per user.

Figure 3 - Dynamic Data List Form portlet

Keep tuned for more updates!

15 Comments

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Great! Thanks, Marcellus.

Will you plan to post the usage of DDL? For example, building dynamic document types based on DDL, DDM (dynamic data mappings) and metadata set?

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Seems interesting, will it be available from 6.1

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Hey Jonas, thanks emoticon

, well, it was not in my mind to write about the usage of DDM in other core portlets, maybe in the future. During this series I'll try to focus specifically on DDM/DDL.

@Nagendra, Yes, it will be available in 6.1

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Great feature Marcellus. Thanks.
One question: Does the dynamic data list form support pagination? It will be a useful enhancements for forms that have long list of fields as well as grouping of form fields in different pages. What do you think?

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Hi Pius, DDL Form portlet will just be used to render the forms, something similar to the web-form portlet. The DDL Display is the one that actually show the saved records and it supports pagination.

Thanks

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@Marcellus thanks for the feedback. I think that support for DDL Form pagination could make the portlet more elegant, tidy and even more intuitive when there are many fields per record to be captured. For example, it is not uncommon to have a registration process span through more than one web page. True enough, it is a feature that is missing in web-forms portlet.

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Hi Pius, I understand what you mean.

We do will support multiple pages in the DDL Form, I'm just not sure if it will available in 6.1. If it's not present, it will be part of a minor version.

The "pages" you are referring to, will be the Detail templates I mentioned in this post. This way, you could have a large record definition and multiple Detail templates to capture those fields and with DDL Form paginating them.

Regards

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Cool Feature..

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Thanks Marcellus! Very informative.

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Nice One !!!!!

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"... I'll give more details of how to do create such templates in the next post ..."
Please, I need information about that.
Could you provide an example of VM template?
What is the variable to iterate the records?

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Thank you Marcellus Tavares veey much.
Please, I need the example of VM template too.
when I create the template, It does not show in the configuration of the dynamic list display list.
Thank you again.

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very interesting Portlet .....
Thanks Marcellus .. Its working very fine in Liferay 6.1 GA

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Thanks once more Marcellus.

In line with my earlier comment regarding the need for ddl entry form pagination, is there a roadmap yet for the support of such feature in the detail template for entry forms? Option to organize form input fields in more than one column (or in tabs) can also make the forms more elegant where the fields are many. I suggest that the latter be included in the roadmap as well.

Is it possibile to introduce custom aui script (or custom javascript) in the ddl entry form?

I think that these feature would make ddl entry form fully functional!

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Hello, I'm new to Liferay and looking at a way to print content of Dynamic Data List Display portlet. When this portlet displays data I need to print only the data w/in this portlet not the whole portal page. Any clue anyone? Thanks.

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