It's great to see extensions such as this. However I would very much like to see a more generic approach: support for plain html rendering of Strings!

The idea is to provide arbitrary html-markup to a (domain object's) String property, which then is rendered 'as is' by the ISIS framework.

When (in 2016) I started to work on projects using ISIS, I was wondering why there is no such feature. I implemented my own value-type to compensate for it.

To my surprise, this 'plain html rendering' integrates very well with ISIS, meaning there are no painful rendering issues. (see screenshots)

... however, there are concerns:

1) Sorting: how to provide meaningful sorting of markup text? Can maybe only done with value-types instead of Strings.
2) Export: e.g. isis-module-excel ... how to provide a human-readable/textual representation of markup text? Same here: might require value-types instead of Strings.

I apologize, if this is the wrong place for discussion.
Keep up the good work!

Hi Andi,

is there any code you could share re: this interesting idea of "as-is" HTML ?

Thx
Dan

Congrats on the 1.15. release!

I finally managed to add PR #84
https://github.com/apache/isis/pull/84/files

This does not directly solve the initial 'URLs as a link' feature, but it can be easily mimicked with the new Markup class:

@Getter @Setter @Property
private String location;

public Markup getUrl() {
	return new Markup("<a href=\""+location+"\">Link</a>");
}

Real world example of THUMBNAIL rendering.

• We have the property logo to store an Image. ISIS provides upload and download via the UI.
• With the new Markup value type, we may provide a (readonly) thumbnail preview (logoPreview), that we can use even in collection views (tables).

(Don't mind the HtmlBuilder class, it simply does the HTML formatting.)

// - LOGO
	
@PropertyLayout(labelPosition=LabelPosition.TOP, hidden=Where.ALL_TABLES)
@Column(allowsNull="true") @Persistent(defaultFetchGroup="false") 
@Getter @Setter private Blob logo;

// - LOGO PREVIEW

@NotPersistent	
public Markup getLogoPreview(){
	return new Markup(
		Optional.ofNullable(getLogo())
		.map(blob->new HtmlBuilder()
				.img()._class("img-thumb-h24")._srcEmbed(getLogo().getMimeType().toString(), blob.getBytes()).endln()
				.build().toString())
		.orElse("-")
		);
}

Real world example of rendering STATE labels with color.

• We define an enum State with title, icon and color.
• With the new Markup value type, we provide colored rendering of the state's title.
• Colors are rendered both in forms and collection views (tables).

// -- STATE ENUM WITH COLOR

public static enum State {
	pending("Pending Verification", "color: red;"), 
	verified("verified", "color: green;"), 
	;
	
	public final String title;
	public final String icon;
	public final String webStyle;
	
	private State(String title, String webStyle) { 
		this.icon = name();
		this.title=title;
		this.webStyle=webStyle;
	}
	
	public String html() {
		return "<span style=\""+webStyle+"\">"+title+"</span>";
	}
}

// -- VERIFICATION STATE PROPERTY

@Persistent @Column(allowsNull="false")
@Getter @Setter
private State verificationState;

@NotPersistent
@PropertyLayout(hidden=Where.OBJECT_FORMS, named="Verification")
public Markup getVerificationState(){
	return new Markup(verificationState.html());
}

To summarize, screenshots representing the given examples:

• Thumbnails and HTML Links Clipboard01.png
• Arbitrary HTML within Collection View Clipboard02.png
• Colored State Clipboard03.png

However, there is still an unsolved issue:

The ISIS Excel Add-on, that allows export/download of collections (of domain objects) will generate cell values for this Markup, that contain the plain html which is not an appropriate text representation of the Markup's content.

Possible solution:

• provide an explicit asText() method in Markup, that returns a String representing the HTML content in textual format
• use automated HTML to Text conversion as default
• let the Excel Add-on use the asText() method on values of type Markup

Finally and to conclude for today:

The proposed Markup value type might contradict the Naked Objects paradigm:

• In terms of the (Problem-) Domain, Markup (as a value type) has no meaningful interpretation like other value-types such as Date, Money or Color.
• Markup is more a presenting tool, which is applicable only within HTML rendering contexts.

So from this perspective, the whole idea with Markup as presented here including PR #84 is questionable.

Please feel free to comment on this!

Commit 09d46bdf48043c2fa52623fe996af6baa028d9c8 in isis's branch refs/heads/pr-84 from Dan Haywood
[ https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf?p=isis.git;h=09d46bd ]

Merge branch 'ISIS-1616_pr-84'

Commit 09d46bdf48043c2fa52623fe996af6baa028d9c8 in isis's branch refs/heads/master from Dan Haywood
[ https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf?p=isis.git;h=09d46bd ]

Merge branch 'ISIS-1616_pr-84'

Commit 2ba098ce91a1f3cd596cc3b65167f7a55050e240 in isis's branch refs/heads/master from Dan Haywood
[ https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf?p=isis.git;h=2ba098c ]

ISIS-1616: adds documentation and DataNucleus support

Commit 5ba685c1622bf74bc219f0949494cd81d24e68af in isis's branch refs/heads/master from Dan Haywood
[ https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf?p=isis.git;h=5ba685c ]

ISIS-1616: tidies up docs a little