StreamingMarkBuilder makes it really very painless to create complex xml structures without a whole lot of hassle. There are some excellent examples out there already, but I couldn’t find one offhand that put all the pieces together.

This example demonstrates how to include the xml declaration, set the encoding, and incorporate namespaces. It also shows how to use iteration to create nodes in the Document. The (somewhat contrived) example code shows one possible way to template Facelet forms based on some simple parameters.

import groovy.xml.StreamingMarkupBuilder

def inputs = ['FirstName', 'LastName', 'Street', 'City', 'Country']
def controller = 'formController'
def bean = 'formBean'

def builder = new StreamingMarkupBuilder()
builder.encoding = "UTF-8"
def doc = builder.bind {
    mkp.xmlDeclaration()
    mkp.declareNamespace(ui: "http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets",
            h: "http://java.sun.com/jsf/html")
    'ui:composition'(template: '/layout/main.xhtml') {
        'h:form'(id: "${controller}_form") {
            inputs.each {input ->
                def inputId = input.toLowerCase().replaceAll(' ', '')
                'h:outputLabel'(input, id: inputId, styleClass: 'inputlabel')
                'h:inputText'(id: "${inputId}_input", value: "${bean}_$inputId", styleClass: 'inputText')
            }
        }
        'h:commandButton'(id: "${controller}_submit", action: "#{${controller}.submit}", styleClass: "submitButton",
                value: 'Submit')
    }
}

And the output looks like this.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ui:composition xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets" template="/layout/main.xhtml" xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html">
  <h:form id="formController_form">
    <h:outputLabel id="firstname" styleClass="inputlabel">FirstName</h:outputLabel>
    <h:inputText id="firstname_input" value="formBean_firstname" styleClass="inputText"/>
    <h:outputLabel id="lastname" styleClass="inputlabel">LastName</h:outputLabel>
    <h:inputText id="lastname_input" value="formBean_lastname" styleClass="inputText"/>
    <h:outputLabel id="street" styleClass="inputlabel">Street</h:outputLabel>
    <h:inputText id="street_input" value="formBean_street" styleClass="inputText"/>
    <h:outputLabel id="city" styleClass="inputlabel">City</h:outputLabel>
    <h:inputText id="city_input" value="formBean_city" styleClass="inputText"/>
    <h:outputLabel id="country" styleClass="inputlabel">Country</h:outputLabel>
    <h:inputText id="country_input" value="formBean_country" styleClass="inputText"/>
  </h:form>
  <h:commandButton id="formController_submit" action="#{formController.submit}" styleClass="submitButton" value="Submit"/>
</ui:composition>

Normally StreamingMarkupBuilder output is devoid of whitespace but for readability I rendered it using the very handy example provided here. Big thank you to Jeff Sheets for sharing that code!

Related posts:

1. Gracelets and Seam – a DSL for Facelets and Groovy with easy integration
2. Grails-UI DataTable using XML for a model
3. Groovy and Hibernate Validator for Dynamic Constraints

In order to test drive Gracelets, I took an existing Seam web-app and configured the web.xml with the GraceletsViewHandler in place of the standard SeamListener. I generally use Maven for dependency management, and I couldn’t find a repository hosting Gracelets so I installed the downloaded jars into my local repository and adding them to the web-app. The JBoss Seam Extension is also required.

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=gracelets-api-2.0.0.jar -DgroupId=gracelets -DartifactId=gracelets-api -Dversion=2.0.0 -Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true
mvn install:install-file -Dfile=gracelets-impl-2.0.0.RC2.jar -DgroupId=gracelets -DartifactId=gracelets-impl -Dversion=2.0.0.RC2 -Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true
mvn install:install-file -Dfile=jboss_seam_2.0.0_all-1.0.11.jar -DgroupId=gracelets -DartifactId=jboss-seam-extension -Dversion=1.0.11 -Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true

<dependency>
        <groupid>gracelets</groupid>
        <artifactid>jboss-seam-extension</artifactid>
        <version>1.0.11</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
        <groupid>gracelets</groupid>
        <artifactid>gracelets-api</artifactid>
        <version>2.0.0</version>
 </dependency>
 <dependency>
        <groupid>gracelets</groupid>
        <artifactid>gracelets-impl</artifactid>
        <version>2.0.0.RC2</version>
 </dependency>

The application was deployed as usual and fired up without a problem. For a test page I just created an index.groovy file in the root directory. According to the docs, a .groovy extension trumps .xhtml so that effectively replaced the front page of the app. Here’s the standard first page of a new web-app(straight from the Gracelets examples), with the xhtml builder.

xh.html {
     head { title("Hello World Example") }

     body {
         print { "Hello World @ " + new Date() }
     }
}

Not bad, let’s compare to the standard Facelets version, using a file based on the standard seam-gen created index.xhtml file. I’ve bound the instantiation of the Date object to a backing bean, since you can’t make an inline call to do it a standard Facelets view. I seem to recall seeing that Seam kept a component available to provide the present Date/Time, but I couldn’t find it offhand today.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<f:view contentType="text/html"
        xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
        xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
        xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
        xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
        xmlns:a="http://richfaces.org/a4j"
        xmlns:s="http://jboss.com/products/seam/taglib">
    <html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
        <title>Hello World Example</title>
        <ui:insert name="head"/>
    </head>
    <body>
    Hello World @ #{backingBean.date}
    </body>
    </html>
</f:view>

Notice I’ve also left the Seam and RichFaces tab library namespaces in the xml declaration. Although the Gracelets docs didn’t seem to easily confirm this, inclusion of the JBoss Seam extension also makes those libraries and their associated builders available by default for Gracelets views. Here’s a final example to leave you with that incorporates a couple of elements from those libraries and a quick and dirty use of .each for rendering, and even a couple of screenshots to show off the progression.

def loremIpsum = '''
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin tempor, mauris sed volutpat consequat, risus tellus ultrices
tortor, at sollicitudin felis erat vitae augue. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames
ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tincidunt egestas viverra. Integer ullamcorper, ipsum id malesuada sollicitudin, nisl velit
ultricies purus, eu aliquet diam mi sit amet eros. Quisque arcu orci, consequat dictum vehicula a, pellentesque eu nisl.
'''
xh.html {
     head { title("Hello World Example") }
     body {
         s.div(id:'aSeamDiv', rendered:'true') {
            r.panel(header:'A RichFaces Panel') {
                println { "Hello World @ " + new Date() }
                a('MyBlogLink', href: 'http://www.kellyrob99.com/blog')
            }
         }
         r.separator()
         r.spacer()
         r.simpleTogglePanel(header:'A RichFaces TogglePanel'){
            println loremIpsum
         }

         def tableModel = loremIpsum.tokenize()[0..10]
         def tableModel2 = loremIpsum.tokenize()[11..20]
         table {
            tr {
                td {
                    tableModel.each { println it }
                }
                td {
                    tableModel2.each { println it }
                }
            }
         }
     }
}

Not bad at all. I won’t bore you with the equivalent xml version – suffice it to say it takes up a lot more space. I haven’t even touched on the easy component/library features Gracelets provides yet, but I am already quite impressed simply by the replacement of xml with an equivalent but sparser syntax. And I don’t miss the need for closing tags much either. The documentation for the project is quite complete, rich with examples, at least for the standard jsf components(hint hint – more examples using Seam and RichFaces would be appreciated!) Give it a try and decide for yourself, but if it keeps going this way, it might become a reasonable alternative for Grails.

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Related posts:

1. StreamingMarkupBuilder for Groovy-er xml
2. Groovy and Hibernate Validator for Dynamic Constraints
3. Bamboo, Grails and Git for Continuous Integration