Wicket Forms

This module encapsulates functionality to quickly build complex forms using Apache Wicket, Bootstrap 3, on top of JPA 2.0 entities.

It provides various types of pre-built form components, all with available validation, i18n, lists with entities, CRUD interface functionality.

The components are developed using the great project wicket-bootstrap.

Form components

• TextFieldBootstrapFormComponent - this enapsulates functionality for text fields
• TextAreasFieldBootstrapFormComponent - same as above, but for TextAreasFieldBootstrapFormComponent
• Select2ChoiceBootstrapFormComponent - this is a single select created using wicket-select2 over JPA entities.
• Select2MultiChoiceBootstrapFormComponent this is a multi-select created using wicket-select2 over JPA entities.
• PercentageFieldBootstrapFormComponent - this is a textfield that is modified for displaying/validating percentages.
• PasswordFieldBootstrapFormComponent - a textfield with a mask
• FileInputBootstrapFormComponent - a file upload component for JPA entities
• DateFieldBootstrapFormComponent - a date field component
• CheckBoxBootstrapFormComponent - a checkbox component
• TwitterFieldBootstrapFormComponent - a component for the Twitter id

For a working example, check the TestForm.java JPA entity (available under the persistence module) and its wrapping Wicket management interface: ListTestFormPage.java and EditTestFormPage.java.

A few words about packaging

This module is packaged as a fat jar. For testing purposes, the default configuration will also start the web, persistence, reporting and ui modules. These can be easily turned on or off be adding or removing in pom.xml :

       <dependency>
           <groupId>org.devgateway.toolkit</groupId>
           <artifactId>persistence</artifactId>
           <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
       </dependency>

       <dependency>
           <groupId>org.devgateway.toolkit</groupId>
           <artifactId>ui</artifactId>
           <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
       </dependency>

       <dependency>
           <groupId>org.devgateway.toolkit</groupId>
           <artifactId>reporting</artifactId>
           <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
      </dependency>

      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.devgateway.toolkit</groupId>
          <artifactId>web</artifactId>
          <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
      </dependency>

If dependencies are included, the related module will be started along with all its services. Please note it is not required to have the Forms module as the entry point, you can exclude forms+reports completely and just use dg-toolit with for example web, persistence and ui.

Running

You can run the forms module just as any module of dg-toolkit:

java -Dspring.profiles.active=dev -jar target/forms-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

This will start everything, including an embedded Tomcat Web server and all the services attached it.

Using Spring Boot Developer Tools

This spring add-on allows automatic context reload of beans when resource changes detected (classes recompiled, other files in classpath changed). This means you do not have to restart your application when you recompile classes, nor you need paid tools like jrebel for it.

Read more about it here A good howto can be found here

To enable devtools you need to start the application using java startup property spring.devtools.restart.enabled=true

Wicket integration is done according to section 20.2.6 of the documentation.