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Content Server object

Beautiful WebForms views are document-class objects on Content Server.

Being standard objects, Beautiful WebForms views comply with Content Server permissions model. Upon creation, the object can be edited with the web-based IDE selecting the 'Form Builder' function in the object function menu.

Creating a Beautiful WebForms View

Beautiful WebForms views can be created in the same way as standard html views. In the 'views' tab of the 'form template', an additional 'Beautiful Form' entry will be available in the 'add view' dropdown menu.

As per standard views, the creation requires a view name be specified. Standard versioning options apply to form views.

Upon creation, the view can be edited with the web-based IDE selecting the 'Form Builder' option in the object options menu.

Understanding the view object

Beautiful WebForms views are much more than simple html-views. They are active objects that can be used to create very complex applications. In order to implement all their additional functionalities, Beautiful WebForms views are decorated with a set of information used by the Beautiful WebForms framework for determining how to render, and how to display form's data within them.

In the image above a simplified representation of the information that constitutes a Beautiful WebForms view is highlighted:

  • (A) View's versions: Beautiful WebForms views are standard FormTemplate’s views thus versioned document-class objects. Each version is, in the very end, nothing but a Velocity template document (HTML code + template expressions).

  • (B) For each version created with the FormBuilder's smart-editor the BWF framework archives the smart-editor view's "model" into an internal database table. The smart-editor view's model is constituted by the list of the configurations used for each widget that build the view.

  • (C) View's properties: Beautiful WebForms views are associated with a set of predefined properties persisted as the object's extended data. These properties are related just to the last view's version.
    The view's predefined properties are:

    1. Form Builder mode used for creating the current view's version (either "source code" or "smart editor")

    2. The list of static "css" view's dependecies dynamically determined on the basis of the widgets used to build the view

    3. The list of static "javascript" view's dependecies dynamically determined on the basis of the widgets used to build the view

    4. The number of view's columns

    5. The identifier of the library of widgets used to build the view

    6. The ID of the view template (if any) associated to the view