Thursday, October 25, 2012

Creating an adaptive layout in ADF for desktop vs. tablet

It is often ideal to create pages tailored to be accessed on a mobile device or on the desktop, but not every company has the resources to author and maintain two web sites. What if you could define most of your pages to be the same for both devices but simply adapt the layout based on the device?

The Oracle ADF framework has the necessary tools to make this easy. For example, take an application where you desire to show a list of navigation links that is always accessible and a main content area. On the desktop, you usually have a larger screen that you can work with. There you may choose to use a splitter pane that the user can collapse that is shown on the left side of the browser. On the right would be the details of the current page. On a mobile device, you may not be able to spare the width required to show the splitter and would instead rather show the navigation links in a popup.

The solution is fairly simple in ADF, by leveraging the dynamic declarative component, facet references and JSTL tags (that are supported in either facelets or JSP), you can have a layout that easily adapts to the device.

To create such a site, first create an ADF application. You can do so by downloading a 11.1.2.3.0 JDeveloper from the JDeveloper OTN page. Open JDeveloper and create a new Fusion Web Application (ADF) and accept the defaults. Create a new Page (either JSP or facelets based on your preference). In that page, you will want to add a reference to a page fragment that defines the content for a dynamic declarative component (note that a page template will also work and will allow you to pass an ADF model page template binding if desired). In this component, you will want to pass 2 facets, one for the navigation and one for the body. Should you want the same navigation on every page, you could create a page template and include the declarative component from the page template.

The technique allows you to define the content for the navigation area and the content separately from the layout. By passing these areas as faces to a declarative component, it allows you to dynamically place the content into different locations based on the device.

Example index page showing the usage of the declarative component:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<f:view xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" xmlns:af="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/faces/rich">
  <af:document title="index.jsf" id="d1">
    <af:form id="f1">
      <af:declarativeComponent id="dc" viewId="/dynamicLayout.jsff">
        <f:facet name="navigation">
          <af:navigationPane hint="list" id="np1">
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Home" id="cni1"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 1" id="cni2"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 2" id="cni3"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 3" id="cni4"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 4" id="cni5"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 5" id="cni6"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 6" id="cni7"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 7" id="cni8"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 8" id="cni9"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 9" id="cni10"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 10" id="cni11"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 11" id="cni12"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 12" id="cni13"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 13" id="cni14"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 14" id="cni15"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 15" id="cni16"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 16" id="cni17"/>
            <af:commandNavigationItem text="Manage items 17" id="cni18"/>
          </af:navigationPane>
        </f:facet>
        <f:facet name="content">
          <af:panelGroupLayout layout="scroll" id="pgl2">
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                           id="ot1"/>
          </af:panelGroupLayout>
        </f:facet>
      </af:declarativeComponent>
    </af:form>
  </af:document>
</f:view>

In the declarative component, you will now want to use JSTL to build either a splitter or a button that shows a popup based on the device. ADF has an API for the browser agent that includes capabilities. One of the capabilities that is exposed is if the agent is a touch screen device (Android and iOS devices). By referencing this capability from JSTL, you can change what components are created. Example EL usage:

<c:if test="${adfFacesContext.agent.capabilities['touchScreen'] eq 'none' ? true : false}">

Using this you can create two layouts, each using af:facetRef to include the passed in facets. Note that JDev will report errors that the facet is used more than once, but that is only because it does not know the c:if tag will be sure to only render one set. Example code for the declarative component page fragment:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<ui:composition xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
                xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"
                xmlns:af="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/faces/rich"
                xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
  <af:componentDef var="attrs" componentVar="comp">
    <af:xmlContent>
      <component xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/faces/rich/component">
        <description>Layout dynamically adjusted based on user agent</description>
        <facet>
          <facet-name>
            navigation
          </facet-name>
        </facet>
        <facet>
          <facet-name>
            content
          </facet-name>
        </facet>
      </component>
    </af:xmlContent>
    <c:if test="${adfFacesContext.agent.capabilities['touchScreen'] eq 'none' ? true : false}">
      <af:panelSplitter id="dc_ps1" dimensionsFrom="parent">
        <f:facet name="first">
          <af:facetRef facetName="navigation" />
        </f:facet>
        <f:facet name="second">
          <af:facetRef facetName="content" />
        </f:facet>
      </af:panelSplitter>
    </c:if>
    <c:if test="${adfFacesContext.agent.capabilities['touchScreen'] eq 'none' ? false : true}">
      <af:panelStretchLayout topHeight="2em" bottomHeight="0" id="dc_psl1"
                             dimensionsFrom="children">
        <f:facet name="top">
          <af:panelGroupLayout id="dc_pgl1">
            <af:commandButton id="dc_cil1" text="Open navigation" iconPosition="trailing"
                                 icon="/afr/fusion/dropdown_ena.png">
              <af:showPopupBehavior popupId="dc_navPopup" triggerType="action" align="overlap"/>
            </af:commandButton>
          </af:panelGroupLayout>
        </f:facet>
        <f:facet name="center">
          <af:facetRef facetName="content"/>
        </f:facet>
        <f:facet name="bottom">
          <af:popup id="dc_navPopup">
            <af:facetRef facetName="navigation" />
          </af:popup>
        </f:facet>
      </af:panelStretchLayout>
    </c:if>
  </af:componentDef>
</ui:composition>

Now load the page in a browser and on an iPad and see the layout change. How it looks on the desktop:

desktop image

How it looks on an iPad:

iPad image

How it looks on an iPad with the navigation open:

iPad image

You can download the sample JDeveloper workspace for 11.1.2.3.0 here.

2 comments:

Huysmans Filip said...

Hi,
Instead of the if statement, you can use the switcher component.

HTH

Filip

Unknown said...

af:switcher would not work. af:switcher is a render-time component, meaning that the components under it are always created, which would cause errors with the af:facetRef tags. Also, af:switcher is not ideal for performance reasons as it would create the components that would not be used even if it were to work. JSTL tags are ideal for this type of work as they ensure that only one set of components are created.