Need to get the context straight - xpages

Question

OK, I've posted a couple times but help me get the architecture of this straight with an app I'm trying to do. I'm a beginner xpages guy.

I have an order system for customers to make orders for products for this company. I have separate Products and Customers DBs that contain what I need. In my Order DB, how I understand it, on the main xpage, I have a section to take in Customer info and another to take in Item info. The user enters the customer ID on a type-ahead field that doesn't store on the xpage but is used to display customer info for this order. I fill in the fields with the onchange event to show the user all applicable info.

Then I have the item stuff defined. There is an area that utilizes a type ahead field to look up items to order. The type ahead takes the value and looks up the data to display. Only the item number, qty and price needs to be stored on the document1 document, and the other info needs to be displayed for the user to review, such as description, qty on hand, etc.

My question is, do I create a panel with a table with the item info on it and set those "display only" fields back to the item source document? Since I'm not storing that info on document1 but still need to display it, do I bind those fields? Also, do I use partial or full for each of the two processes above? I hope this isn't too confusing to you, just trying to get this straight in my head. If anyone has five minutes of their time to talk to me to get this straight, I'd appreciate it.

Answer 1

Mike,

There are many right answers here, and I hope you get several. For me, I prefer to bind everything to scoped variables, but primarily viewScope. Then in your button event, persist the data to your backend datasource. When I first started developing XPages, I did bind to documents, but after a while experience (and the advice of others) taught me to simply bind everything to viewScope, and then use a java method or SSJS in your event to process everything. This helps to avoid the temptation to spread business logic all through your application.

Specifically in your case, bind everything to viewScope, and populate those in your event (button, onChange, or even beforePageLoad). Be sure to include that table in a panel and include it in a partial refresh. Avoid full refresh unless absolutely necessary.