ADF Basics: Using contentStyle and inlineStyle property to change basic styling of component in ADF Faces

Hello All,
Again a post about ADF Basics for beginners
I have seen lots of thread on OTN about changing basic styles of component . for example,

How to change font size of inputText ?
How to change color of inputText/outputText ?
How to change color of link or button ?

and everyone starts creating a css/skin for these minor changes but there is no need of that
Skin should be used for complex styles or you have apply same style to all components of your application

If you will read API docs then you will know this, See what docs says about inlineStyle property-

The CSS styles to use for this component. This is intended for basic style changes; you should use the skinning mechanism if you require any complex style changes. The inlineStyle is a set of CSS styles that are applied to the root DOM element of the component. Be aware that because of browser CSS precedence rules, CSS rendered on a DOM element takes precedence over external stylesheets like the skin file. Therefore skins will not be able to override what you set on this attribute.

Difference between contentStyle and inlineStyle -

contentStyle property used to style content part of component like if you want to change color of inputText or any other input component then you have to specify this in contentStyle property of that component

inlineStyle is about whole component and also available in output (outputText) or collection (table, tree etc) component's property where contentStyle is not there. This can be use to set width, height ,border or color of output components etc.

So this is enough about theory , no one likes theory ;) , Everyone is looking for some code that is ready to use
Let's see some practical usage of both properties -

Change font, color, size(width), padding of input components (af:inputText, af:inputDate, af:selectOneChoice etc)-

Used this in contentStyle property of components
width:150px;color:white;font-weight:bold;font-size:small;background-color:red;padding:5px;
and check the output

you can also change input text to uppercase , lowercase, Initcap using contentStyle property, just use any of this -
text-transform:uppercase; // To change in uppercase
text-transform:lowercase; //To change in lowercase
text-transform:capitalize; //To change in initcap

Change properties of output components , color of link/button -

Output components doesn't have contentStyle property as there is not content part in component , here we make use of inlineStyle property
See what happens on applying same style in outputText and link using inlineStyle

It looks good :) , but same style doesn't work for button because button has multiple root element (we can only change width, color of text and font of button but background color and other styling can not be changed using inlineStyle property)
For more detail about button skinning check - Customize af:button (font, shape, size, color etc) using skinning -Oracle ADF (12.1.3)

Change data collection components (af:table, af:treeTable,etc) height, width -

just write in inlineStyle property like this
width:600px;height:200px;background-color:lightyellow;color:red;
background color will be applied on empty area of table and color will be applicable on column header and EmptyText
Remember to set table's height using inlineStyle ensure that autoHeightRows should be set to -1

In same way we can change color of columns too, see i have used different background colors (set background-color:colorName; in inlineStyle of af:column) for columns and it looks like this

Now it's your turn , try more combination on different components. you can do a lot using contentStyle and inlineStyle property. Remember all these changes can be done using skin also but if have some minor changes then why use skin , when framework provides these wonderful properties

Cheers :) Happy Learning

Insert and show whitespace in ADF Faces Components (panelBox, showDetailItem etc)

This post is about a small trick
How to show whitespace in ADF Faces component properly ?
Recently i found a question on OTN about this
 How can I and spaces in the text property of a showDetailItem?
so thought to document it here for future reference

There is one more post about showing whitespace , check it
Showing white-spaces properly in ADF table column- 11g & 12c

Sometimes we need to insert some whitespace in between of some text as panelBox name, tab name in showDetailItem etc
In this case space appears in page editor but it doesn't appear on page and you can not put spacer at these points because there is only one component



Suppose you have a panelBox and requirement is to show Oracle    ADF as it's header text . In this case providing space in propertyInspector doesn't work , HTML entity for space   also doesn't work because of no DOCTYPE declaration

See here i added normal spaces in property of panelBox

 But is doesn't work :(

Now what to do ?
After lots of hit and tries finally i found that it work with equivalent entity number for  
and this magic number is  -  
So tried this -

 <af:panelBox text="Oracle&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;ADF" id="pb1">
                    <f:facet name="toolbar"/>
                </af:panelBox>

and output is

This is the small trick , sometimes you may need this :)
Cheers, Happy Learning :)

Programmatically Select all values in ADF BC based selectMany (af:selectManyCheckbox, af:selectManyChoice, af:selectManyListbox, af:selectManyShuttle) component

Hello All,
Previously i have posted a lot about component that supports multiple selection in ADF Faces (af:selectManyCheckbox, af:selectManyChoice, af:selectManyListbox, af:selectManyShuttle)
- Multiple Selection in ADF Faces

This post is about selecting all values in a component programmatically on a event like button click, value change event etc.
Note that this post is designed for ADF BC (viewObject) based components , to set values in bean based component check this-
Programmatically populate values in ADF Faces multiSelect component (af:selectManyCheckbox, af:selectManyChoice, af:selectManyListbox, af:selectManyShuttle)



So for this i have just dropped Departments viewObject as multiSelect component on page
(af:selectManyCheckbox, af:selectManyChoice, af:selectManyListbox, af:selectManyShuttle)

 Page bindings section looks like this-

Now see code of Set all values as selected button-

    /**Method to get BindingContainer of current viewPort (page)
     * @return
     */
    public BindingContainer getBindings() {
        return BindingContext.getCurrent().getCurrentBindingsEntry();
    }

    /**Method to set all values as selected in SelectMany Components.
     * @param actionEvent
     */
    public void setAllValuesToSelected(ActionEvent actionEvent) {

        int arrIndex[];
        //Get the iterator binding of component
        DCIteratorBinding deptIter = (DCIteratorBinding) getBindings().get("DepartmentsView1Iterator");
        //Get viewObject from Iterator
        ViewObject deptVo = deptIter.getViewObject();
        //Get component list binding , component is directly based on this
        JUCtrlListBinding list = (JUCtrlListBinding) getBindings().get("DepartmentsView1");
        DCIteratorBinding iterList = list.getDCIteratorBinding();
        RowSetIterator rsi = deptVo.createRowSetIterator(null);
        int i = 0;
        int rowCount = (int) deptVo.getEstimatedRowCount();
        //Initialize array and set it's size (equal to number of rows in List)
        arrIndex = new int[rowCount];
        while (rsi.hasNext()) {
            //Get viewObject next row from RowSetIterator
            Row nextRow = rsi.next();
            //Set this row as page iterator's current row
            iterList.setCurrentRowWithKey(nextRow.getKey().toStringFormat(true));
            //Now get index of this row
            int indx = iterList.getCurrentRowIndexInRange();
            //Add it to array
            arrIndex[i] = indx;
            i++;
        }
        rsi.closeRowSetIterator();
        // Set as selected indices
        list.setSelectedIndices(arrIndex);
    }

All done, now run and check application , click on button and see what happens ?

Great, it's working :)
I have explained one more approach to set values in multi select component that makes use of component binding
check it - Set values in af:selectManyChoice programmatically - Oracle ADF

Sample ADF Application-Download
Cheers :) Happy Learning