Enhancement: More methods for Velocity

[Blama]

Hi Isomorphic,

is there a list of all variables one could use in velocity expressions? I didn't find it in the docs. I'm looking for the members of $sessionAttributes (perhaps application server dependent?), $dsRequest, $dataSources and so on listed in http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwte...tySupport.html.

Most likely I'm missing "$dataSources.DSNAME.getByUniqueField(String fieldName, String value)"-API in the velocity support.

My use case is the following: See this USERS table definition:

CREATE TABLE t_login 
    ( 
     [B]id INTEGER[/B] NOT NULL, 
     [B]loginname VARCHAR2 (50 CHAR)[/B] NOT NULL, 
     passwdhash VARCHAR2 (64 CHAR) NOT NULL, 
     lastlogin DATE, 
     CONSTRAINT [B]PK_login PRIMARY KEY (id)[/B],
     CONSTRAINT [B]UC_login_loginname UNIQUE (loginname)[/B]
    );

As Tomcat does not return something else than the user name entered in j_username, I don't have the user_id I'd need here:

<DataSource schema="myschema" dbName="Oracle" tableName="othertable" ID="T_LOGIN" serverType="sql">
	<fields>
		<field primaryKey="true" hidden="true" name="ID" type="sequence"></field>
		<field name="...... />
		<field name="...... />
		<field name="...... />
		<field name="MODIFIED_BY" required="true" hidden="true" type="int" [B]foreignKey="T_LOGIN.ID"[/B]></field>
		<field name="MODIFIED_AT" required="true" type="datetime"></field>
	</fields>
	<operationBindings>
		<operationBinding operationType="add">
			<values fieldName="MODIFIED_BY" value="[B]need_id_here[/B]" />
			<values fieldName="MODIFIED_AT" value="$currentDate" />
		</operationBinding>
		<operationBinding operationType="update">
			<values fieldName="MODIFIED_BY" value="[B]need_id_here[/B]" />
			<values fieldName="MODIFIED_AT" value="$currentDate" />
		</operationBinding>
	</operationBindings>
</DataSource>

While writing this text I got an idea: I'll use a fake-ds.xml for T_LOGIN with just the loginname and id columns, but define loginname as PK there. I should be able to use

$dataSource.T_LOGIN_FAKE.fetchById($sessionAttributes.username).ID

then.

But nevertheless my questions:

Is there some detailed documentation on available velocity variables?
Could you integrate the mentioned $dataSources.DSNAME.getByUniqueField-API?
Is there some better approach for my use case than firing a velocity-fetch to the DB for each and every update/insert? Perhaps adding the user-id to the session?

Thank you,
Blama

[Isomorphic]

A variable such as $dsRequest is the DSRequest object, therefore you can use standard Velocity to access bean properties, call methods, etc - see Velocity docs for details.

Note also dsRequest.addToTemplateContext().