How to add a context menu in a table

In ADF11 it is possible to create context menus in a table. This is a menu that can be opened by right clicking on a table row.

In this blog is described how to add a context menu in a table.

Overview of the context menu:

Setup example application

For this blog an example application is created based on the HR schema. The example application contains an employees table with 2 detail forms, one to insert and edit an employee without department) and 1 to change the department of the employee. The detail forms are created in separate pages. For the employees table and forms a bounded task flow is created this bounded task flow is started from the menu.

Model layer

Create the following entities:

Entity name	Based on table of HR schema	Customizations made
Employee	EMPLOYEES	None

Create the following view objects:

View object name	Based on entities	Customizations made
EmployeesView	Employee	None

Create an application module HrAppModule which exposes the EmployeesView.

Task flow

Unbounded task flow

The unbounded task flow form where we start with the solution looks like this:



There are no customizations made, the task flow is created by drag and drop.

Bounded task flow

The employees task flow is a bounded task flows:



The next properties are set:

Property	Value
usePageFragments	false
Share data controls with calling task flow	true

Table page

The table pages are created by drag and drop from the Data Controls. The table is dropped as ADF Read-only table with Row Selection and Sorting checked, all columns are displayed.





The Row Selection property must be checked, this causes the following properties to be set in the table:

Property	Value
selectedRowKeys	#{bindings.EmployeesView.collectionModel.selectedRow}
selectionListener	#{bindings.EmployeesView.collectionModel.makeCurrent}
rowSelection	single

Although in the JSPX page the selectedRowKeys and selectionListener statements contains warnings that the references methods cannot be found they can be found runtime.

Form pages

The form pages are created by drag and drop from the Data Controls. The form is dropped as ADF Form.



To navigate back from the form to the table a rollback button (af:commandButton) is added by drag and drop the Rollback operation from the datacontrol palette as a button.



The submit button is created in the same way but then from the Commit operation.

The edit and insert employee page contains all fields but with department ID readOnly. The change department page contains the employee ID, first name, last name and department ID. All fields except department ID are read only.

Add the context menu

An ADF table contains a facet named contextMenu. With this facet a menu popup can be created that pops up when the user right clicks on a table row. If the table contains no rows the context menu does not popup on right click.

Insert in the table the contextMenu facet. This facet should contain a popup and in this popup a menu can be defined. Submenu entries can be created by inserting another menu tag in the menu:

<f:facet name="contextMenu">

<af:popup id="popup">

<af:menu id="menu">

<af:menu id="employeeMenu"

text="Employee">

<af:commandMenuItem text="Edit" 

id="editEmployeeMenu"

action="edit"/>

<af:commandMenuItem text="Insert"

id="insertEmployeeMenu"

action="edit"

actionListener="#{bindings.CreateInsert.execute}"/>

</af:menu>

<af:menu id="departmentMenu"

text="Department">

<af:commandMenuItem text="Change department for employee"

id="changeMenu"

action="change"/>

</af:menu>

<af:commandMenuItem text="Cancel"

id="cancelMenu"

action="cancel"/>

</af:menu>

</af:popup>

</f:facet>

The insert menu option is created by drag and drop the CreateInsert operation of the EmployeesView, the action is overridden so it navigates to the same page as edit employee:



When the user for example choses Change department for employee:



This results in:

Dynamic Buttons in Oracle ADF

Standard way to create buttons on the page, is to use drag-and-drop method and JDeveloper wizards. However, sometimes its not enough, especially when there are requirements to apply dynamic rules based on security roles or page groups. With dynamic buttons generation, you can use XML configuration files, this will allow to change displayed buttons and properties right on runtime. I'm writing this post, based on influence I got from Frank Nimphius post - ADF Faces RC - Implementation strategies for global buttons in page templates. Frank describes fundamental approach for global buttons, I'm in my post focusing on dynamic global buttons aspect.

You can download developed application - GlobalDynamicButtons.zip. This sample is based on two Entity objects - Countries and Locations, and provides two JSPX pages based on template JSPX. Button components for both pages are generated dynamically. Here is a navigation flow implemented in current sample:


Both of the pages are based on template. This template defines facet for data-bound components and empty toolbox for dynamically generated buttons:


You can notice, that toolbox contains two toolbar components, button objects will be added to those toolbars. Toolbox is binded to managed bean, this allows to initialize toolbox component on the page:


Next step is to bind BeforePhase property of f:view tag contained on the pages to the same managed bean where dynamic buttons are generated:


#{dynamicGenerator.addButtons} method generates dynamic buttons according to current page, information about current page is accessed through phaseEvent, for example:


Buttons are binded to actions defined in actual page definition using ActionListener, disabled property is also set programatically:


If button is not binded to page definition, and is is related to navigation flow, action expression is set:


Main advantage of described approach is that it allows to have the same code for the same actions in different pages - Commit action, for example. And only what you need to care about, is to define actions in page definition files. Actions for countries page:


Actions for locations page:


On runtime, all buttons specific to current page are generated:


First and Previous buttons are disabled, since first entry is shown, Locations button opens locations from current country:


Different set of buttons is generated and by default there are no locations defined for Argentina, we can create a couple:


When Save button is pressed, records are stored to database and sequence values for LocationIdcolumn are assigned:

Web Services Interoperability between Oracle WebLogic Server 11g and Microsoft.NET WCF 4.0

Recently I was asked to demonstrate the interoperability in a real life scenario between Oracle WebLogic Server 11g and Microsoft.NET Windows Communication Foundation 4.0 using secure web services. 

After a bit of research, I have found this very helpful article by Juan Carlos.

I will try to extend the above article and provide full step by step instructions on how to create a secure web service, deploy it on your integrated WebLogic Server and use Microsoft.NET WCF 4.0 and C# to consume it.

So let's start with developing the web service.

1. In the Applications Navigator, click New Application. Give your application a name (for example HelloWorldApp) and select Generic Application from the application templates. Click next.

2. Specify a project name (for example HelloWorldPrj) and click finish.

3. Create a new Java class in the newly created project by specifying a class name (HelloWorld), a package name (demo) and uncheck "Constructors from Superclass" and "Implement Abstract Methods" and click OK.

4. Copy and paste the following code below in your HelloWorld class. public String sayHello(String name){ return "Hello " + name; }

5. Once you have done this, click save all and right-click the HelloWorld.java class. From the menu, select "Create Web Service ...".

6. Select "Java EE 1.5, with support for JAX-WS Annotations" for the deployment platform and click next.

7. In the "Generation Options" step leave the defaults and click next.

8. In step 4 of the wizard, select SOAP 1.2 Binding and click next.

9. In steps 5 and 6 click next. In step 7, "Configure Policies", select "OWSM Policies" and "oracle/wss_username_token_service_policy" check box in the security policies and click finish.

10. Right-click the HelloWorld.java class and choose run. By doing so, the integrated WebLogic Server will start and the HelloWorld web service will be deployed to the server.

11. If you have followed my naming suggestions for the project and class name, you should see in the log window of the WebLogic Server a target url, http://localhost:7101/HelloWorldApp-HelloWorldPrj-context-root/HelloWorldSoap12. This is the actual web service url and JDeveloper provides you with a web service test client utility. Click on the link to test the web service.

12. In the HTTP Analyzer window, specify an input value. Make sure that you expand SOAP Headers, WS-Security:Header and check the include check box. In the username and password specify weblogic and weblogic1 respectively. If you do not include the security header, then you will get "InvalidSecurity : error in processing the WS-Security security header". Click Send Request.

13. You should see the reply back from the web service that we have developed and deployed on our WebLogic Server.

14. Before proceeding with creating a client to consume the web service, please copy the wsdl url (http://localhost:7101/HelloWorldApp-HelloWorldPrj-context-root/HelloWorldSoap12HttpPort?WSDL), as we will need it to create the proxy class from Visual Studio.

15. For creating the proxy class from our wsdl file, we will beusing the ServiceModel Metadata Utitlity Tool, called scvutil.exe.The ServiceModel Metadata Utility tool is used to generate service model code from metadata documents and metadata documents from service model code. So navigate to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows" and you should see one or more version folders. Open the latest folder (in my case i only have one, v7.0A) and then bin (the complete path is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin") and copy the path.

16. Right-click "Computer" and select "Properties". Click "Advanced System Settings" and select the "Advanced" tab. Then click "Environment variables".

17. Under "System variables", select the "Path" variable. Go to the end of the variable value and after including a semicolon (;), paste the ServiceModel Metadata Utility tool full path (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin)

18. Click "OK" on the "Edit System Variable", "Environment Variables" and "System Properties" to save and dismiss all three windows. Open a command prompt and navigate to your desired location (in my case I have created a folder called demo on my desktop). Write the following command, "svcutil , to create the proxy class from the wsdl file. Please note to replace the with your wsdl url location. In my case it is "http://localhost:7101/HelloWorldApp-HelloWorldPrj-context-root/HelloWorldSoap12HttpPort?WSDL". If you run this command as it is, it will create a C# proxy class for the web service specified in the wsdl and a configuration file. if you want to generate the class in another language, svcutil provides you with a parameter called "language" where you can specify the language code to be generated (for example, you can append after the url location /language:VB to generate the class in visual basic).

19. The svcutil utility will generate two files, HelloWorldService.cs which is the C# proxy class and the output.config file, which is the configuration file. If you see warnings about policy assertions not being imported, don't worry, we will handle the security headers later.

20. Open Microsoft Visual Studio and create a new project.

21. From the Installed Templates, expand Visual C# and select Windows.Select Console Application, give your project a name (for example, HelloWorldVS) and click Ok.

22. Before proceeding and importing the two files generated (HelloWorldService.cs and output.config), we need to add to our project references to two assemblies for our solution to work. So right-click References and click "Add Reference".

23. From the "Add Reference" window, select the .NET tab and select "System.Runtime.Serialization" and "System.Service.Model" and click OK.

24. Next, right-click your project name (HelloWorldVS) and select Add -> Existing Item from the menu.

25. Navigate to the folder where your proxy and configuration file is (generated by svcutil) and make sure that the file filter is set to "All files (*.*)" so that both files (HelloWorldService.cs and output.config) are visible. Select both files and click "Add".

26. You should see the two files now in your project. Open the Program.cs file and in the main method, copy and paste the following code: HelloWorldClient client = new HelloWorldClient(); String response = client.sayHello("Antonis Antoniou"); Console.WriteLine(response);

27. If you attempt to run the application (F5), you should see "Could not find default endpoint element that references contract 'HelloWorld' in the ServiceModel client configuration section.". This is because it is missing an application configuration file. Although we have imported the configuration file generated by svcutil, it is not recognized.

28. A simple trick to overcome this issue is to rename the output.config file to app.config. So if you rename the configuraiton file to app.config and run the application, the above error should disappear. However, a new error arises, "The CustomBinding on the ServiceEndpoint with contract 'HelloWorld' lacks a TransportBindingElement. Every binding must have at least one binding element that derives from TransportBindingElement.".

29. What this basically means is that because in our configuration file, a custom binding is specified, we need to define a transport protocol (for example, http, https). To do so, open the app.config file and just after the closing textMessageEncoding element, add the following:

30. If you run the application again, the TransportBindingElement error should be resolved. However now we have a new error, "InvalidSecurity : error in processing the WS-Security security header". As the error indicates, a security header is expected by our HelloWorld web service and we have not provided one.

31. The easiest way to provide this security header along with the username and password required to run the web service is again though the app.config configuration file. So open the app.config file and within the endpoint element add the security headers xml tags as shown in the image below.

32. Run the application again (Ctrl + F5). You should see the return statement from the HelloWorld web service