Application Tailoring

The folowing discusses how to tailor the application appearance and contents with minimal or no programming. Refer to sample app code and java docs for more extensive customization such as custom forms.

We strongly reccommend that you consider adjusting passwords.

• Load Business Objects
• Appearance
• Data Schema
• Drop Downs
• Security
• Localization

The sql in db_init.sql installs only the default business objects with and object id (oid) of 0. You will need to load the specific data for your application.

Object manager

You can manually load objects using the corresponding object manager.

• Click admin link in the header.
• Click on the details link for the desired object.
• Edit the values
• Press the insert button. This will generate a new object with the given values.
• Repeat as needed

SQL inserts

Use your data base console client with insert statements. The create.sql has insert statements for default objects. There are also insert statements in the AppName.sql file in the stage directory. In general you will want to set oid field to null to have the database generate an oid.

Batch loads

Your database may provide a batch load utility.

For MySql, you can use the LOAD DATA statement to load tab delineated data from a spread sheet. The following would load a tab delineated lines from the file games.txt into the table wEvent.

	 use lacrosse;
	 
	 load data local infile 'games.txt'
	 	into table wEvent
	 	ignore 1 lines
	 	(oid, what, xwhen, location, name);

Cascading Style Sheets are used to determine the basic appearance. common.header.jsp inserts a style sheet called base.css. You can edit base.css or link it to one of you choosing.

Several appearances are available in the downloads. Check my site for more skins. Note that these use images in the image directory.

The following describes the styles the managers use.

The stage directory contains the source for using the zcFac code factory to generate business objects automatically. The basic steps are as follows.

1. Edit the object definitions in App-Name.txt
2. Update/create relevant include files
3. Run bin/mstage. This will create SQL, help files, and java code. The script will copy the java to the src directory.
4. Use the generated SQL to paste updated create.sql, admin.jsp, ed_main.jsp, and vuq_main.jsp as needed.

Refer to the documentation for zcFac for details.

The Object managers use entries in the vCode table for the contents of drop downs for enumerated fields. These are loaded at when the application starts. The steps are

1. Change values in the data base. For quick changes you can change/add the values using the code object manager. For more extensive changes you can change the values in db_init.sql and execute the sql.
2. Reload the table. Either use force reload using the admin page or restart the application.

The default templates come with a basic security manager that defines the following roles.

Simple changes such as new passwords or names can be made by editing the java code in src/xapp/app/myAppUserMgrBasic.java. You must then rebuild and redeploy the application.

To disable security, set _usrMgr=null the constructor in src/xapp/app/App.java.

For more robust security, consider using container based security.

Version 1.2 localization support requires programming.