Preface

Devsphere Mapping Framework is a commercial product that helps you to develop Web-based applications. It frees developers of the routine tasks (such as form data handling, user error handling and dynamic form generation) and let them focus on the business logic.

This guide is organized into four parts that contain seventeen chapters.

I Overview, Application Model, Helpers

The first chapter describes the framework, enumerates the benefits of using it, defines the terms and the concepts, explains the features and provides an API overview.

The second chapter presents an application model and describes the components: data beans, forms, bean resources, handlers and processors. It also gives more information about the framework's features.

The third chapter describes a generic handler servlet, which can be extended to define bean-independent handlers. An example is provided. In addition, an error handling mechanisms is built on top of the logging framework.

II Specifications

The next three chapters give details about the mapping utilities.

The fourth chapter describes the way form data is mapped to bean objects and bean objects are mapped to HTML forms. It explains what FormUtils.formToBean() and FormUtils.beanToForm() do.

The fifth chapter describes the way bean objects are mapped to property text streams and vice-versa. It explains what TextUtils.beanToText() and TextUtils.textToBean() do.

The sixth chapter describes the way bean objects are mapped to XML documents and vice-versa. It explains what XMLUtils.beanToXML() and XMLUtils.xmlToBean() do.

III Examples

The next five chapters present examples that use the framework.

The seventh chapter exemplifies the building of the five types of components: data beans, forms, bean resources, handlers and processors. Then, it shows an equivalent example that doesn't use the framework and compares the two solutions. It also explains the advantages of using bean-independent servlets.

The eighth chapter shows how to use the framework to build a table editor. The HTML form is generated dynamically by a JSP. The framework still does the routine tasks such as form data handling, user error handling, etc. XML-based persistence is implemented for user data. A discussion about thread safety is included at the end of the chapter.

The example described in the ninth chapter uses the framework to build a server-side image map. It also shows how to do application-specific validation of the form data.

The tenth chapter presents an example that uses the framework to upload files.

The eleventh chapter shows how to build internationalized applications using the framework. The example was written in English and then it was localized in four languages: French, German, Italian and Spanish.

IV Email-based Application

The twelfth chapter provides the overview of an email-based application.

The thirteenth chapter describes a servlet that may be used to send the form data to one or more email addresses.

The fourteenth chapter presents the store connectors, which are components that communicate with a message store.

The fifteenth chapter describes the core class of the application, which invokes the connectors' methods and deals with the multithreading issues.

The sixteenth chapter presents the class that starts the mail monitor application.

The seventeenth chapter presents an example that uses the form mailer and the mail monitor.

Appendices

The first appendix describes the errors that may occur during the execution of the framework's methods. You also find out how to customize the output of the error messages and how to localize the resources.

The second appendix presents the framework's settings and the Setup utility.

The third appendix gives the list of the character encodings.