Overriding entity's default resource name in the UI

[Bob Morley]

Was working on something today and came up with an approach -- looking for feedback.

Requirement
Part of our usability review resulted in the StatusItem entities description value not being very informative.  The trouble was that ORDER_HOLD would mean something different (contextually) for a Sales Order vs. a Purchase Order.  Need to be able to dictate how the value is resolved from the UI.

Initial Approach
Give the UI the ability to override an entities default resource name.  This was done by enhancing the "display" element to have a "entity-resource-name" attribute that could be set.  ModelFormField and UelUtil were enhanced to get this and provide it (ultimately) to GenericEntity.  Minor change to LocalizedMap interface to expose the "resource" overload of get so UelUtil can do this without knowledge of the specific interface (GenericEntity in this case).

My Thoughts
- This is not a very frequent occurrence - in general you want to set what various entities attributes mean and be consistent throughout the application.
- There are several elements that this would make sense on (Display and EntityOptions are the ones I had to hit).
- It occurred to me that there may be a better way to get the resource name through the stack to the GenericEntity; but I could not find it.  :)
- There likely would be more value in being able to do an entity-extend and provide a replacement resource-name at that level (maybe you can?).  I could not think of a reasonable way to do resource extensions, but we strive to leave the Ofbiz files alone and use extension / overriding mechanisms in general.  This is one spot where we do not have a best practices and often we manipulate the entity labels file directly.

Lastly, does anyone see value of contributing this back or should I keep it as custom work?

[Jacques Le Roux-2-2]

Bob,

From: "Bob Morley" <[hidden email]>

> Was working on something today and came up with an approach -- looking for
> feedback.
>
> Requirement
> Part of our usability review resulted in the StatusItem entities description
> value not being very informative.  The trouble was that ORDER_HOLD would
> mean something different (contextually) for a Sales Order vs. a Purchase
> Order.  Need to be able to dictate how the value is resolved from the UI.
>
> Initial Approach
> Give the UI the ability to override an entities default resource name.  This
> was done by enhancing the "display" element to have a "entity-resource-name"
> attribute that could be set.  ModelFormField and UelUtil were enhanced to
> get this and provide it (ultimately) to GenericEntity.  Minor change to
> LocalizedMap interface to expose the "resource" overload of get so UelUtil
> can do this without knowledge of the specific interface (GenericEntity in
> this case).
>
> My Thoughts
> - This is not a very frequent occurrence - in general you want to set what
> various entities attributes mean and be consistent throughout the
> application.

I'd prefer to take a KISS approach. If ORDER_HOLD is the only problem, why not separate Sales Order from. Purchase Orders. For
instance introducing OOTB "ORDER_HOLD_SALES" and "ORDER_HOLD_PURCHASE"  ?

Jacques

> - There are several elements that this would make sense on (Display and
> EntityOptions are the ones I had to hit).
> - It occurred to me that there may be a better way to get the resource name
> through the stack to the GenericEntity; but I could not find it.  :)
> - There likely would be more value in being able to do an entity-extend and
> provide a replacement resource-name at that level (maybe you can?).  I could
> not think of a reasonable way to do resource extensions, but we strive to
> leave the Ofbiz files alone and use extension / overriding mechanisms in
> general.  This is one spot where we do not have a best practices and often
> we manipulate the entity labels file directly.
>
> Lastly, does anyone see value of contributing this back or should I keep it
> as custom work?
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Overriding-entity%27s-default-resource-name-in-the-UI-tp25051945p25051945.html
> Sent from the OFBiz - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>