Only populate the null fields of a controller object about clara

[tehapo]

Interesting, I haven't really thought about this kind of use case before.

I wonder how would the place of your TestComponent be defined in the component hierarchy? Would the binding process replace an existing "placeholder" component with id="test-component" or did you have something other in mind?

[tomivirkki]

Well I think the xml structure is fine just as it is. I can currently try to define the place of my TestComponent like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<VerticalLayout xmlns="urn:package:com.vaadin.ui"
    xmlns:l="urn:vaadin:layout" xmlns:test="org.vaadin.virkki.test">

    <test:TestComponent id="test-component" l:componentAlignment="MIDDLE_CENTER" />
    <Button id="test-button" caption="Click me!" />
</VerticalLayout>

But now Clara tries to make a new instance of it and replace the existing one in my controller object with it. Before instantiating a new TestComponent, Clara could just check if one already exists and use it instead.
The rest of the inflate process (applying the attributes and so on) wouldn't really need to change at all I think.

[tehapo]

Ah, ok. Now I got it. 😃

[nfrankel]

I would go further: what's the point of bridging from Clara to Java? I can get any component and customize it at will with Clara.findComponentById(). What I would like though, is to create components in the Java world and set them during the inflating process.

Alternatively, you could provide callbacks to enhance Clara-created components after inflating, just like you provide Filters to change XML before inflating. In order to be consistent, I would change the API from Filter to Processor (very generic) and have PreProcessor & PostProcessor.

Just my 2 cents... and great work by the way!

[tehapo]

You're right, Clara.findComponentById() method does the same thing as @UiField annotation. Basically the only reason for this annotation is to save some typing.

I will definitely think what could be done to this feature before the 1.0 release.

[tehapo]

Created a new branch issue-17 for experimenting around this issue.

[tomivirkki]

The "issue-17" -version does the job. Thanks Teemu!