Does Smartgwt have an Anchor widget?

[jimwaschura]

I'm porting code I've written in GWT to use Smartgwt instead. In GWT, an Anchor widget allows me to set a URL such as "http://www.wikipedia.com" and a title suck as "Click here for Wikipedia", and then the title is shown on the panel with an underline, and if it is clicked-upon, a new browser tab is opened to the associated URL. I can't find any such feature in Smartgwt. Any hints you can provide on where to find this ability or how to emulate it will be greatly appreciated. I thought LinkItem would do it, but that just gets me as far as a being able to associate a click handler that will get called when the user presses on the link, it doesn't open a new tab and go to a specified URL. Thanks for answering my question. - Jim Waschura

[Isomorphic]

You can use a LinkItem as the only item of a DynamicForm.

[jimwaschura]

Whether I create an additional DynamicForm to put only this one LinkItem in it, or whether I just add the LinkItem to an existing Dynamic Form (which is what I was doing before), the behavior is the same. I do not launch another tab on my (Chrome) browser, and I don't go the URL which I've set in the LinkItem object using the setValue() method.

(1) I see the Showcase example for LinkItem but this only implements a click handler than performs an SC.say() call. Notice this is not what I want to do. I don't want a pop-up dialog message. I want a separate tab to open on my browser and to go to that URL on that new tab of the browser.

(2) In GWT, I use the following, which performs the way I want it to:

Anchor Linkto = new Anchor();
Linkto.setText("Click Me");
Linkto.setHref("http://www.wikipedia.com");

(3) In SmartGWT, I am currently using code like this, which doesn't work, though it does display the link on the screen and you can click it and most-likely if I added a Click Handler it would call the click handler when the link was pressed:

LinkItem Linkto = new LinkItem("title");
Linkto.setLinkTitle("Click Me");
Linkto.setValue("http://www.wikipedia.com");

DynamicForm form = new DynamicForm();
form.setFields(Linkto);

getPortlet().addItem( form );

(4) Do you have any example code for how to use LinkItem to open a new tab on the browser and go to a specified URL?

Thank you, Jim Waschura

[Blama]

Hi Jim,

how about a ClickHandler with com.google.gwt.user.client.Window.open("URL", "_blank", "")?
I have the same for some of my ListGridFields.

Best regards
Blama

[Isomorphic]

Start by reading the docs for LinkItem. Multiple forms of activation are supported, some of which just run event handlers and some behave like a normal HTML link.

[jimwaschura]

Blama - Very promising results, Thank you. I can make this work to go to "http:\\mercurynews.com" but I can't get this to work to go to "file:\\\c:" or "file:\\192.168.1.123\Share" which is what my ultimate objective is. Have you use the Window.open() for protocols other than http: ?

Administrator - Thank you for your advice. Maybe I am not aware of some level of documentation that I ought to be aware of. Of course I have read the entire documentation on the LinkItem class in the Javadoc format, which is what gave me the impression this would work. The class description says:

A form item that displays a URL. In the default read-only mode (canEdit is false) the URL is shown as a link; in editable mode the URL is shown in a textbox. The link to open is specified as the item value with FormItem.setValue() or FormItem.defaultValue. The link title defaults to the URL unlesslinkTitle is specified.

Based on this, I followed these instructions but it didn't work. Can you tell me please, is there more documentation available for situations like this? An overview of how to use the object - not just what the interfaces are - would be helpful. Thank you again,

Jim Waschura

[Isomorphic]

Is that intended as humor? You quoted the class description, then omitted the last sentence, which tells you what you wanted to know about what the link targets. You read only 4 of the 5 sentences then critiqued the docs?? :)

Also, what are you expecting those file URLs to do? Cause files on the end user's machine to be opened when clicked?

[jimwaschura]

Sorry I didn't include the last sentence because setTarget() does not appear to be the API to set the URL destination. I believe the setValue() is the correct API, and I am now able to make it work if I use setValue() and assign a URL prior to adding the item to the dynamic form and adding the form to the portlet and rendering the portlet. I believe my trouble stemmed from changing the URL after the portlet had been rendered, which is something I do because the URL is dynamic and I don't know it at the moment of construction. If I use setValue("http:\\mercurynews.com") at construction time, then when I click on the link, another tab is opened and it displays the mercury news website as I expect.

Two issues:

(1) Generally I don't know the URL at the moment of construction and so I'd like to change it later. Is there a way to do this, or should I remove the item and rebuild the form and portlet contents whenever I need to update the URL. - How do I change the URL after construction?

(2) Even when I create the URL contents at construction time prior to rendering the portlet, if I use setValue( "file:///C:/" ) it doesn't open a tab or display the root folder, like the browser does if you type in this URL directly (try it). On Chrome/Windows, this displays a listing of the contents of the root folder entitled, "Index of C:". Is there anything I can do to allow the use of URL's with the "file://" protocol? I tested it with a setValue("mailto://jim.waschura@gmail.com") and that launched the gmail web site as I expected. - Is there a way to specify a URL utilizing the "file://" protocol?

Attached is an example of what the browser shows when I use the file:// protocol and specify a folder, for example: "file://zorro/stash".

Thank you for helping me with this.

- Jim Waschura



Background:

I'm working on a small device that performs electronic testing. The device has an embedded SOC running embedded Linux (Fedora) which is connected to a custom hardware design that connects to high speed (54 Gbits/sec) communications channels and tests them for errors. The device also has a solid-state disk where errors can be captured to. The Linux is running a Samba server to create a network share of the folder containing the captured files. The SOC is also running apache web server and a tomcat server and it serves the website I'm building with Smartgwt as the user interface capable of supporting multiple simultaneous clients. When first connected, the website can ask a custom hardware server running on the Linux machine for its LAN IP address using the RPC features from GWT (basically AJAX). When this information is returned, I can build a string like "file://192.168.1.123/Share" which I want to provide as a link on the user interface so users can click and quickly get to a browser page that shows the contents of the share. - FYI

[Isomorphic]

1. Call setValue() again

2. Can't be done, disallowing this is a browser security feature. You need a system for returning that data via http

[DevMo]

You can use a LinkItem as the only item of a DynamicForm.

Is there a way to get the LinkItem to show an old-school "visited" style after it's clicked? (e.g., purple font?)

[Isomorphic]

For links that are actually ordinary links (not JavaScript / Java actions) you could define the :visited selector in CSS to define a color for a visited link.

[Isomorphic]

Sorry, we misspoke. For links with a target other than "javascript", the link will automatically go purple if the target has been visited, just like a normal link.

For "javascript" links, the browser does not track whether a link is "visited" or not (since such links often represent actions). If you wanted to have a notion of a "javascript" link having been visited, you'd have to track the visited state yourself, and apply CSS to the LinkItem to make it purple.