Building a Composite Application for IBM Lotus Notes V8 (7)

Course 6: Compound Application Program Connecting Components

Link components into event/Action relationships

Follow these steps to create an event/Action relationship between components:

In Lotus Notes V8, select File-open-Lotus Notes application to open the modified customer interests compound application. This composite application shows the two components added earlier.

In the menu, select actions-edit application to start the Composite Application editor feature.

In the left-side Navigation Pane, right-click the notes contacts view and select wiring. This will open the connection panel and make the notes contacts view the source component, so you can connect its attributes to other components. The Composite Application Editor interface appears, as shown in Figure 31.

Figure 31. components on the current Composite Application page are displayed on the connection interface

The connection interface displays the properties of the source component and the actions of any other component on the same page. When any attribute in the source component is selected, the actions that match the namespace and data type are highlighted, indicating that connections can be performed, as shown in Figure 31.

In the notes contacts view component (whose label is source), select the common name changed attribute.

Drag and drop the "Select User by name" action listed in the "ndforum-author threaded View" component.

Note: As shown in Figure 32, a blue arrow is displayed when you drag and drop from the selected attribute.

Figure 32. Connecting attributes to actions

As shown in Figure 33, a dotted line indicates the connection between properties and actions.

Figure 33. The connection interface displays the connection between attributes and attributes.

Click OK to save the connection definition and close the connection interface.

Note: The Lotus Notes ECL feature will cause the execution security alert dialog box to appear, prompting you that an application signed by Lukas Geiger/zetabank is trying to perform an operation. This is a feature of the Lotus Notes client. You can select the start trusting the signer option to cancel this warning. You are also prompted to create a certificate for the/zetabank organization. You may need to close and re-open the application.

Select File-finished editing and click yes to disable the Composite Application editor feature. This closes the Composite Application editor and displays the updated Composite Application in the Lotus Notes V8 client.

Tip: Select Show-preview on side to change the position of the preview panel in the Lotus Notes contact component, as shown in Figure 34.

Figure 34. Lotus Notes V8 Composite Application, Lotus Notes contacts view uses a vertical preview panel

To observe the connection results, select a row from the Lotus Notes contacts view component. The NSF component from the ndforum application will respond to this and change the row selection to the matched user name. When you select each row, the attributes are published from the Lotus Notes contacts view component. This will trigger the action to connect to this attribute, execute the defined logic, and change the row to the matched username.

In this course, we use the Composite Application editor feature to connect an attribute with one or more actions to link two NSF components into an event/Action relationship. Previously, Lotus Domino designer V8 was used to specify the released attributes and the actions performed by the NSF component. Now they are connected.