Eclipse Scout: Release Notes

After the final Eclipse Photon release, there are no more Eclipse service releases (see the Simultaneous Release Cycle FAQ for details). Scout 8.0 will continue to be maintained for a while and a new build may be released from time to time. Beside bugfixes, these releases may even contain some minor features.

The following enhancements were made after the initial 8.0 release.

Config properties based on org.eclipse.scout.rt.platform.config.IConfigProperty include a description text. This description is stored in the new description() method.

The class org.eclipse.scout.rt.platform.config.ConfigDescriptionExporter can be used to export these descriptions. By default an AsciiDoctor exporter is included.

All Scout properties have been extended with descriptions. The same text is also part of the technical documentation.

Config properties based on org.eclipse.scout.rt.platform.config.IConfigProperty include a default value. The default value is stored in the getDefaultValue() method.

The method was moved from org.eclipse.scout.rt.platform.config.AbstractConfigProperty<DATA_TYPE, RAW_TYPE> to the interface. Therefore the visibility has changed from protected to public.

The concrete implementation org.eclipse.scout.rt.platform.config.ConfigPropertyValidator which validates the configuration of config.properties files will also check if a configured value matches the default value. In case it does a info message (warn in development mode) will be logged but platform will still start. To minimize configuration files such entries should be removed from config.properties files.

The new TileGrid widget arranges Tile s in a grid by using the LogicalGridLayout. This is the same layout as used for a GroupBox, so the same GridData object may be used to configure how the individual tiles should be arranged.

A Tile directly extends Widget and is not much more than a <div> with the CSS class tile. The easiest way to use a tile is to use a HtmlTile with the displayStyle DEFAULT. If you need more control over the styling, you can just set the displayStyle to PLAIN, so that the default CSS rules are not applied, and then add your own CSS rules. If you want even more control about the layout and content you can create a custom tile instead of using the HtmlTile. Just create a JS class lets say CustomTile.js which extends from Tile.js, create a Java class CustomTile.java which extends from AbstractTile.java and add some glue code to link them together. See the code of the demo widgets on GitHub for details. You could also use existing widgets as tiles. In that case instead of extending AbstractTile you would extend AbstractWidgetTile or AbstractFormFieldTile and set the property tileWidget accordingly.

In order to add the TileGrid to a form, you can use the class TileField which is basically a simple FormField wrapping the TileGrid. You cannot use the TileGrid directly because a GroupBox only accepts FormField s.

A demo of the widget can be found here: https://scout.bsi-software.com/widgets/?dl=widget-tilefield
And here for the JS only version: https://scout.bsi-software.com/jswidgets/#tilegrid

The Accordion displays several collapsible Group s. The default behavior is to collapse every other group if one group is expanded. Because that is not in any case desired, the behavior may be disabled by setting the property exclusiveExpand to false.

The Group is a simple widget containing of a header and a body. The body may be any other widget like the new TileGrid. Because having tiles in an accordion is a typical use case, there is a widget called TileAccordion which helps creating the groups and provides some delegate methods to easily access the tiles of every group. It also takes care that selecting multiple tiles across the individual groups works as there were only one single TileGrid.

A demo of the accordion can be found here: https://scout.bsi-software.com/widgets/?dl=widget-accordionfield
And here for the JS only version: https://scout.bsi-software.com/jswidgets/#accordion

A demo of the tile accordion can be found here: https://scout.bsi-software.com/widgets/?dl=widget-tileaccordionfield
And here for the JS only version: https://scout.bsi-software.com/jswidgets/#tileaccordion

The new AbstractFileChooserButton is a value field which opens the native file chooser dialog from the browser when a user clicks on the button. The value of the field is the selected file, a BinaryResource. The API of the field is identical to IFileChooserField. The button itself does not display the selected file / value, but it is easy to do something with the value when you implement the execChangedValue method. For instance you could display an uploaded image in an ImageField on the same form.

A demo of the file chooser button can be found here: https://scout.bsi-software.com/widgets/?widget-filechooserfield

The new AbstractTagField is used to enter tags as used in typical "tag clouds". The value of the field is a Set of Strings, where each element is a unique tag. Like a SmartField the tag field has a LookupCall which returns available tag names when the user starts to type something into the text field. When the user picks a tag, it appears in the tag list on the left. The field is responsive: if the tag list is too long to fit into the field, some tags go into an overflow popup. This popup is opened by clicking on the arrow-down button on the left. When the field is enabled, each tag element has a remove icon, which removes the element from the list. When the field is disabled the user cannot enter text and elements cannot be removed. It’s a good idea to use the disabled tag field, if you only need to display tags.

Note: in Scout JS you can also use the scout.TagBar widget standalone, without the tag field. This widget renders only the tag elements and deals with responsive layout.

A demo of the tag field can be found here: https://scout.bsi-software.com/widgets/?dl=widget-tagfield

This release introduces a new field style called alternative. This is the new default style for every form field. The classic style is still available because it may be preferable in some circumstances, e.g. when used in a cell editor or on a form with background color like the search form. For these two cases the style is set to classic automatically but you can do it for your custom cases as well by setting the new property FieldStyle.

If you want to revert your whole application to the classic style you can create an extension to AbstractFormField and change the default of the FieldStyle property. For Scout JS applications you can set the variable scout.FormField.DEFAULT_FIELD_STYLE to scout.FormField.FieldStyle.CLASSIC;

Along with the new alternative field style comes a new style for top labels. Since the fields don’t have a top border anymore, it is not obvious that the label belongs to the field. With the new label style it is more clear and even looks better. Another advantage is that the height of the form field (incl. label) will be smaller, which is especially helpful on smaller screens.

The label and the input are now linked by using aria-labelledby. This allows screen readers to read the label if an input is focused.

Furthermore, clicking the label will now activate the field. This is especially helpful on mobile devices when the new alternative style is active, because the field boundaries are not obvious anymore.

The menubar now supports form field menu items (FormFieldMenu). On the model side extend AbstractFormFieldMenu with a form field as an inner class to use a form field menu in any menu supporting environment.

The menu property stackable defines if a menu is stackable or not. A stackable menu will be moved to the ellipsis dropdown menu when there is not enough space in the menubar. The ellipsis menu is placed after the last stackable menu in the menubar. Right and left aligned menus will be moved to a single ellipsis menu per menubar. The horizontal alignment of the ellipsis menu is the same as the last stackable menu in the menubar.

It is now possible to adjust the parameters of how the group box will be layouted. The following parameters may be set:

These values may be set using getConfiguredBodyLayoutConfig().

GroupBoxes got a new property called sublabel. The sublabel is displayed below the title in a very small font.

Add a INotification to a group box with the new property called notification.
Use IGroupBox.setNotification(INotification), getNotification(), removeNotification() to control it.
A notification has a IStatus which includes a severity and a message.

By default the notification is displayed at the beginning of the group box body.

A demo can be found here: https://scout.bsi-software.com/widgets/?dl=widget-groupbox
And here for the JS only version: https://scout.bsi-software.com/jswidgets/#groupbox

The menubar of a tabbox now considers the menu alignments left and right. That means you can add menus directly on the right side of the last tab item (left aligned) or at the right side of the tab box header (right aligned).

Menus in the menubar will be moved to an ellipsis menu in case there is not enough space in the tabbox header. The tab items are moved to an ellipsis menu when there is not enough space for all tabs. The collapse order is as following: all menus are collapsed first before the tabs will be collapsed from right to left. A menu can be prevented from collapsing by setting the stackable (AbstractMenu.getConfiguredStackable) property to false.

TabItems got a sublabel property which is displayed in a very small font below the title (see also Sublabel).

The marker of the selected tab is now animated and follows the user or model selection.

Several bugfixes of pixel issues due to zoom levels.

A new property gridColumnCount has been added to the radio button group. It can be used using setGridColumnCount(), getGridColumnCount() and getConfiguredGridColumnCount(). By default the columns are configured to be dependent on the height of the field to create columns as needed to show all radio buttons within the height available (this also corresponds to the existing behavior).

But it also allows to specify an exact number over how many columns radio buttons should be distributed. This is an alternative to layout the buttons using the group height and is especially useful if the number of radio buttons is unknown or dynamic. In that case the columns can be configured to e.g. 3 and the property useUiHeight to true allowing the group to vertically grow as needed to show all radio buttons within 3 columns. This property also corresponds to the layout possibilities of the group box.

The same possibilities also exist in the JavaScript only layer of Scout using the method setGridColumnCount().

The logical grid is now calculated automatically as it is done for a GroupBox or for a RadioButtonGroup in Java. This means you can only specify the width (w) and height (h) of a cell using gridDataHints, the position (x, y) will be calculated automatically.

The RadioButtonGroup now supports the value operations provided by ValueField, similar to the Java implementation. This means you can define a radioValue on each RadioButton and then use setValue() to select a button using its radioValue. When reading the value of a RadioButtonGroup, the radioValue of the selected button is returned.

In addition to specify the radio buttons explicitly, a lookup call can now be used. When defining a lookup call the radio buttons are created based on the result of that lookup call.

The Scout ListBox is based on the Scout Table. Such a list box table typically is checkable, only has one column and doesn’t have a header. Since this is true for most list boxes it is not necessary anymore to specify the table explicitly. A default table will be created if none is provided.

In order to fill the list box a LookupCall can now be used. The resulting lookup rows will be mapped to actual table rows and inserted into the list box table.

The ListBox now supports the value operations provided by ValueField, similar to the Java implementation. The value represents the keys of the checked rows specified by the corresponding lookup rows.

A new property searchRequired has been introduced for Smartfields. It is similar to the one already existing in org.eclipse.scout.rt.client.ui.desktop.outline.pages.AbstractPageWithTable and controls the Smartfield behavior if the proposal-list is opened without having a search constraint. By default (searchRequired = false) all existing proposals are shown if no search constraint has been typed. But if the property is set to true, the Smartfield only shows proposals if a search constraint is available. This is especially useful if a large data set is expected in a Smartfield lookup which usually makes no sense to present all to the user. In that case a message is shown instead informing that a search constraint is required to load data and to see proposals.

In Java the property can be set using ISmartField.setSearchRequired() or AbstractSmartField.getConfiguredSearchRequired(). In JavaScript the property can be set using smartfield.setSearchRequired().

In Scout JS a new event prepareLookupCall has been added to the SmartField. It allows to be notified when the field is about to execute a LookupCall. Because for each call a fresh LookupCall clone is executed this event allows to propagate properties to the executing LookupCall clone. These properties may then be used when the call is executed (e.g. sent to the backend).

The horizontal alignment can already be controlled for number and string fields using the horizontalAlignment property of the gridData. The property already existed for SmartFields but it had no effect, until now.

Implementations of org.eclipse.scout.rt.dataobject.enumeration.IEnum add a stringValue() method to each enumeration value, guaranteeing a constant, fixed string value for each enumeration value. The default resolver mechanism matches the given string with the available string values in the current enumeration implementation to look up the matching enumeration value. An optional static resolve() method handles the resolve of a given string value into the correct enumeration value allowing to support even string values, whose enumeration values where changed or deleted.

Implementations of org.eclipse.scout.rt.dataobject.id.IId<WRAPPED_TYPE> interface wrap an arbitrary value adding a concrete Java type to a scalar value. E.g. the key of an example entity which technically is a UUID becomes an instance of the ExampleId class. An exampleId instance may then be used as type-safe parameter for further referencing a given example entity record.

All instances of IEnum and IId may be used within data objects and automatically serialized to their JSON string representation and deserialized back to the correct Java class.