I am creating a front-end for a data collection web application. Operators using the data collection application will log data for a dozen different projects, with each project requiring different fields. There are some common fields (like name, address... etc) but then each project also has custom fields for extra data that needs to be collected. Some projects require dozens of extra fields, while some projects require only 1 or 2 fields. Can anyone think of a "clean" way to handle this situation? I don't want to create an input page for each project, and some people are tossing around the idea of doing UI templates in XML. Any guidance would be much appreciated.
XML would provide a neat solution to your problem. Depending on the user choice, ask the user to fill more fields. From your problem statement its looking that you know how many projects need extra fields and which do not. If you know this data then feed this data into a database and then accordingly generate your form page. However even if the data is available dynamically with the use of an interactive javascript and ajax you can easily achieve a neat solution.
Related
I've been using Ruby Selenium-Webdriver for one of the automation scripts I'm developing and I'm being asked to use Page Objects, we use page objects a lot however for this application I am using CSV file instead, I have defined all the xpaths that I'm using in my application in a CSV file and I'm parsing that CSV file in my script to refer to those objects, I would like to know is there much of a difference in using a class for defining Page Objects or using a CSV file instead apart from performance concern? I believe using a CSV file will be an addon for us from configuration standpoint and will make it much easier to maintain, any suggestions on this?
Edit - In our use case, we're actually automating applications built on a cloud based tool, so basically all the applications share same design structure from HTML standpoint so we define xpath patterns in CSV and then we pass certain parameters to some custom methods that we've developed to generate xpath's automatically using the CSV instead of finding those manually as its overhead for us because we already know that all the applications will share similar xpath pattern for all elements.
Thanks
I think, POM is better than CSV approach. In POM, you put elements for a page in a separate class file. So, if any change is to make then it's easier to find where to change/maintain. Moreover, it won't get too messy as CSV file and you don't need to use extra utility function to parse those.
There is also a pageobjects gem that provides a set of libraries over and above webdriver/watir, simplifying the code.
Plus, why xpaths? Its one of the last recommended ways to identify an element.
As for the frameork aspect, csv should be more of a maintenance problem than PageObjects. Its the basic difference between text and code. You enforce Object oriented approach on your elements in PageObjects but that is not possible with csv.
In the best case scenario, you have created a column/separate sheets defining which page that element xpath belongs to. That sounds like an overhead. As your application / suite grows there can be thousands of elements. Imagine parsing/ manually updating a csv with that kind of data.
Instead in PageObjects, your elements will be restricted to the Page. Any changes to the app will also specify which elements may get impacted. Now, when define your element as an object in PageObject, rather than css, you also dont need to explicitly create your elements by reading the csv.
It completely depends on the application and the type of test you might perform.
Since it is an automated test script, you do not have to really worry about the performance of the script (it might take few more milli seconds to parse, which should be OK).
Maintaining all the elements identification properties & corresponding actions in a CSV file will make the maintenance easier and make the framework application independent which are nice. But maintaining your framework is bit difficult to make it more robust. Both approaches have its own pros and cons.
Refer to below posts [examples are in java - but you will get the idea]:
Keyword driven framework
Advanced Page Objects
Update:
If you like both, you can comeup with your implementation to easily integrate these too.
#ObjectRepository(src="/login.csv")
public class LoginPage{
private Map<String, WebElement> elements;
public void login(){
elements.get("username").sendKeys('');
elements.get("password").sendKeys('');
elements.get("signin").click();
}
}
Ie, define all the elements in a config file like csv/json etc. Let the page object refer to the class for the page elements. All the methods will be part of the page class.
Most of the article's talk about how to work with the forms like <form:form> Spring tags just with one bean(entity), but in my web app I have more then one bean(actually 3 of them, wich is mirror to my data model in DB(MySql)). What I want is to put values for all of the properties in my entities classes from one form(it may be a jsp or xhtml or html, whatever).
So, I'm kinda new in Spring MVC and as far as I know it has backing object which comes with <commandName> tag in <form:form> tag and I suppose to think that it may be just one commandName backing object for each form??
Q: - Could you please tell me how to easily(or direct me to any example's) to fulfil my pleasant headache.
Q: - It also may have something to get attributes in one controller class but by different methods. Do I have to store them in session or request? I'm thinking to have ModelAndView class for store multiple attributes in map and after store them in ModelAndView (in model). What you suggest?
hope you are having a wonderful day!
I'd suggest you investigate the technique detailed here:
http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?58993-Need-to-Populate-Form-data-into-multiple-java-beans
Also, I'm wondering if there could be a terminology issue here. Do you mean you actually want to have just one form on your UI, with a lot of inputs, or do you really mean you want it all on one SCREEN or page? I say that as its also possible to have multiple forms on one UI screen and go that route... which in fact might be easier, as you could then break up your processing into multiple controllers.
Another consideration on the above relates to screen design... if you are going to be populating the data for several beans from one screen, potentially that could be a LOT of data and your screen could get very cluttered and hard to read. So from that standpoint it might also be better to consider breaking your input controls up into multiple (related) screens. There is a little more about that at the bottom of the article I linked above.
You can refer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/4986410/1882833
One approach would be to have a seperate class which encapsules the required objects. And then use it as a command to set and get the data.
I'm building a multi-lingual web application using the MVC pattern as the starting position. The application has a number of forms that users will be interacting with and many of these forms will have fields that do a lookup from a database table, 'Province' for example.
If I need the options in these lists to be displayed in the users' language on the screen, I can see a couple of ways to do this:
In the model. When querying the model, I can provide the language that I desire the results to be returned in. This would allow translations to be used everywhere that data from the model is displayed without changes. However, this also means that the Province model in my example (plus all other application models) now need to know how to do language translations.
In the controller. I can query the model in the controller action as usual and then create a 'Translator' object that I can pass the results into before completing the action. This would imply that each controller action would potentially be duplicating the same translation code, violating the DRY principle.
In the view. Since the presentation of the application is generally expected to exist in the views, and the language of the user doesn't impact the business logic of the system, an argument could be made that language translations belong here. Especially considering that a page could also contain static content that will need to be translated. The downside to this is that it would complicate the views somewhat, especially for the front-end designers who will have to work around the new translation code.
Is there an accepted best-practice for where text translations belong in the MCV pattern for web applications? Does this change at all if I were to be loading the select list options via an AJAX call instead of at page load time?
Thanks for the help!
The best place to handle it is in the view. Your question only references dynamic data from the database, but you also have to handle the static information in your views as well. Best to handle both of those in the same place. A common practice in MVC for handling multiple language is resource strings, separate views for each language, or a combination of both. For information from the database resource strings would work well. You would store a token in the database for the options in the list (that token could be the English translation) and the view would get the appropriate translation from a resource for the specified country/locale. There is a good detailed explanation on this approach in this blog post.
If you need to translate part of your UI, then I would create a helper method that would read a resource file and output a translated string for that resources. E.g.
#Translate("NewUserHeading")
So regarding the UI, it makes sense to handle this in the UI.
If the data that you are going to translate at some point might be shown in a Flash client, or a mobile app, then it should be translated by a server and it should have nothing to do with your MVC application.
Honestly, any interaction with a database should be handled in the model, and that's the only thing handled in the model. Interpreting/organizing that data should be handled in the controller. I guess more information would be need as to where this translation is coming from and how that works to really give a solid answer.
The view will just display strings from a resource file. Including the correct resource file for the locale should do it. In Web applications, it's often a single language JS file defining the UI strings per locale, e.g, strings.en-us.js, strings.pt-br.js and so on.
Some strings do come from the server dynamically, the controller doesn't need to know about it, the model should just grab the localized strings and return is as part of the data request.
So it's either in the view (if it's static) or in the model, (if it's dynamic). Controllers should just translate data from the view to the model and from the model to the view
Another very important thing to consider is WHEN to Translate. Using a once-per-each-translation method like #Translate("NewUserHeading") is fine if you only have 100 translations on your page, but what if you have more?
Because think about it, translation is based upon language choice and that only happens once-per-page or even once-per-session. The way that the Kendo UI people do it in their demo is that way, when the User clicks a new language a new set of server files is loaded. That would mean having something like:
/src/html/en-us/
/src/js/en-us/
/src/html/es/
/src/js/es/
etc..
Check it out at https://demos.telerik.com/kendo-ui/grid/localization
It's a trade off of more work for better performance. The ultimate use-case of translation right now is https://www.jw.org/ with over 900 languages!
I want to offer a tumblr-like functionality where you can select a template, and optionally customize the HTML of your template in the browser and save it.
Current stack: Mongo, Sinatra (for REST API) for prototype. Will likely be moving to a compiled, statically-typed language later.
Wondering how best to accomplish this. Options I've considered:
Store the HTML in mongo, and duplicate it for all user accounts. So the HTML for the template you choose gets written into your account. Obvious cons of space inefficiency and need to update all users that use that template (if un-customized - you customize it it becomes your own and I won't ever touch it) if the template changes.
Store the templates in templates collection, and put custom templates either into this same collection or into the user collection with the owner of the template. User references a template id. This is quite clearly better than 1 I believe. Especially because I won't need to pull the template every time the user object is pulled.
Some third party library? Open to suggestions here.
File system.
I will need to package up these templates (insert js and stuff the user shouldn't be exposed to) and then serve them. Any advice on how best to approach this is greatly appreciated.
Your approach will depend on how often you foresee people customizing the template versus just going with a standard. How about a hybrid approach?
That is, have a field in the user document that is created lazily (on use) that either stores the custom template, or maybe a diff from one of the standards (not sure about the level of customization you are planning to allow).
Then you can have the template field you describe in 2 above, with a "special" setting for custom templates. While you still have the concern about pulling a template each time, you do have the advantage of knowing that these are some of your more dedicated users - saving a trip to the DB might be advantageous, or you might not care.
If you don't care about 2 trips to the DB for every user, then you take approach 2, add the custom templates to the templates collection and simply reference the new ID for each user that customizes.
It's a balancing act - is the extra data overhead in terms of pulling the template each time worth saving a round trip to the DB or do you want efficiency in terms of the data you get each time at the cost of multiple queries to the DB - only you can answer that one based on how you design your app and how people use it.
For the linked approach you might want to take a look at Database References and Schema Design in the MongoDB docs.
In an upcoming project, we will be creating forms for citizen's to fill out to start the process of applying for the requested license or permit. As one can imagine, a form tends to change often. I would prefer to plan this into the application to avoid making changes on a yearly/monthly/"the big boss want's it yesterday" basis.
My searching has shown me some examples based on the object passed to the view, but those would require coding changes. Others use XML, but never seems to go through the entire process from creating the from to storing the inputted data into the database. It isn't that I need hand holding the entire way; it's that this is something completely different for me and I want some guidance to get me in the right direction. I am thinking along the lines of how these survey sites (like SurveyMonkey) create dynamic polls.
Is there any tools, utilities, tutorials, or books that may cover this quite well?
I would imagine you would probably want to take advantage of Display / EditorTemplates. You would define an interface IQuestion or something, and then have a bunch of different form options that implement that interface. So your model would have a List<IQuestion>, and then for each question in the list, Html.EditorFor(item) or so.
Then some kind of standardized way of storing the answers into a table (perhaps a unique save / load method on IQuestion. That's my take anyways. You could define the questions via DB and then your models could have varying counts (and elements) in the List<IQuestion>. Just run a DB script (or some kind of admin page) and you could dynamically change the form displayed.