How can I draw an activity diagram for this use case below?
User opens a closeable window to view a live update of xyz-data.
Specifically, I want to show an object flow in an activity diagram, but the object is an
observable data-storage object (i.e., the GUI control is bound to this data and thus shows a
live view of the data).
It's still an object isn't it? You can either mark it by a special class (i.e. :ObservableDataStorage) or a Stereotype or Keyword (i.e. <<Observable>> : DataStorage). Or/and you can use a relation which is named "observes" between the observer and the observable.
Related
I've edited the question to make what I want to obtain clearer.
Here's the original question:
I'm working on a class that inherits from Control which will be used in my View and includes some Dependency Properties.
One of these DPs is an IEnumerable(Of RfidTag) and will be bound to an ObservableCollection(Of RfidTag) inside the VM.
The class RfidTag is defined as public class in the same file where the VM's class resides.
The questions are:
1. is it a good practice to expose a VM-related class to a Control class?
2. is the VM source file a good place for the RfidTag class?
UPDATE 1
In my application logic (I think I could say in my Model) there is an event published throught an Eventaggregator. The event's payload is a List of ModelRfidTag (that is the model class).
My VM subscribes to this event and I made the RfidTag class to wrap my Model class and provides some additional properties related only to the VM.
When the event handler inside the VM is executed, it makes an ObservableCollection(Of RfidTag) bindable from the view.
Then in the View I've a bounch of my control instances like that
<c:RfidTagPresenter
TagPosition="1"
Collection="{Binding RfidTagList, Mode=OneWay}" />
Then in my RfidTagPresenter (the class that inherits from Control) I've a DP of type RfidTag (called RfidTagResult) that returns the object in the OC which has the Position property (property available inside the RfidTag class) equal to the value set by the TagPosition DP.
In this way, the ControlTemplate of the RfidTagPresenter can bind its elements to the desired object.
This is the simplification of what I want to make. In the actual application there are some other DPs on which the RfidTagResult selection is performed
UPDATE 2
After a bit of research, seem that I can solve one problem with an indexed property that return (in the get method) the object from the collection I want to bind.
However a problem still exist: My control need to have a DP of type of RfidTag so that the relative ControlTemplate can bind to the property declared in the RfidTag class.
So: Is it possible (read: a good practice) to have a DP of a type that is a VM related class?
In other words: Can a custom control know about the class type used by the VM?
I will try to go all over your question (if I miss something let me know) but first you should explain the purpose of binding a Collection in a control as a DP.
is it a good practice to expose a VM-related class to a Control class?
RfidTag, I suppose, is a Model. What you are really doing here is binding a Model in your control which go against the MVVM pattern. You should think about the next question... Do you really need all your RfidTag to be shown in the View ? If you need to show a name, an ID... you could just create an IEnumerable<string> as DP (which is correct) and then in your VM instead of an ObservableCollection<RfidTag> you would have an ObservableCollection<string>.
Some simple theory. In MVVM, VM adapts the Model to the View. So your VM should have everything that will be shown in your View.
is the VM source file a good place for the RfidTag class?
RfidTag is a Model so there's no better place for it :)
I Have a variable that updates every time i move my cube in the level blueprint , now i want to access this variable from multiple class blueprints , what do I do , I tried casting to gamestate but didn't succeed , I am really new to ue4 if you could explain in details please
edit: sorry for not adding details ,
The var I want to access is an integer named cube_side that tells me what side the cube is on every time I move , all of this happens in the level bp , I want to access this variable to see what side the cube is on from other class blueprints ->
here are some details in a picture
I know it's not good to code everything in the level blueprint , but it's too late now , I only need to transfer the var cube_side to other class blueprints so the other object can change depending what side the cube is on.
Create an Actor Class for your logic/functionality. Then use Get all actors of class (choose your class) -> Get a copy -> get variable
Communication with the level blueprint is rather tricky in UE4, since they are not as persistent as e.g. the GameMode, and therefore shouldn't be accessed directly (Imagine older games like Final Fantasy where a new level was loaded every time you stepped outside a boundary, so relying on it could potentially break your actors or crash the game due to nullptrs).
It's a little hacky, but works:
Move the variable inside the cube-blueprint. Add an event dispatcher to the cube, if it is moved, call it and pass the variable in.
Select the cube in the editor, open the level blueprint, right-click, "add reference to selected actor" (the cube must be part of a blueprintclass, not only a static mesh dragged in, though), and bind the event dispatcher inside the Level BP.
Create a function inside every blueprint that needs access to the variable, which does whatever it should do, depending on the variable.
The custom event of the Level Bp (that was bound to the Event Dispatcher of the cube), needs references to all actors that have to work, when the variable changes and call each Actors function (you can get the references like you got the one from the cube)
Then, every time the variable changes, the Level BP is notified, the custom Event is executed and this custom event calls all the actor's functions.
Event Dispatchers explained
This is a huge wastage of functions/code, since you only need it for this one level and may never use it again. Avoid this in the future, by not relying on the level BP so much.
You can use GameStateBP to create and store all variables that you need in game, in GameModeBP create functions to get and set this variables via Get Game State function and then function Cast To GameState and then logic. After that from any blueprint access it using Get Game Mode -> Cast to you GameMode -> use your function to set or get data from GameState.
I want to create a helper for TCustomQuery, TQuery, TTable and so on... With a LastRecordPosition property, which I will get with OnBeforeScroll setting that property from RecNo.
How do I create that trigger in that helper class to catch the event without interfere in an user's OnBeforePost if he/she needs one?
I use FireDAC or ZeosLib for older versions.
To intercept the OnBeforeScroll event without interfering with the user's OnBeforeScroll event handler, you need to override each component's virtual DoBeforeScroll() method. However, a class helper cannot override any virtual methods of the class it is helping. So, you will have to instead either:
write new classes that are derived from each base component class you want to intercept (type TMyCustomQuery = class(TCustomQuery), etc), and then the user must use those new component classes in their code instead of the originals.
(XE and later only) use Delphi's TVirtualMethodInterceptor class to hook the virtual DoBeforeScroll() method of specific component object instances (not the classes themselves) without having to write any derived classes.
The alternative is to write a class, possibly a Generic class, that the user has to instantiate for each component object instance, and the class can then subclass its associated component (possibly with RTTI) to capture and replace the user's OnBeforeScroll event handler with its own, and then its event handler can call the user's event handler when needed.
What is the best practise to update Activity state on Place change? Imagine you have an activity with view that displays list of categories and list of items in the category. If different category is selected then app goes to new place with category ID. I want then to only refresh items and not to create new activity that also re-reads category list.
My current approach is like this:
public class AppActivityMapper implements ActivityMapper {
private ItemListActivity itemListActivity;
...
public Activity getActivity(final Place place) {
final Activity activity;
if (place instanceof ItemListPlace) {
if (itemListActivity == null) {
itemListActivity = new ItemListActivity((ItemListPlace) place, clientFactory);
} else {
itemListActivity.refresh((ItemListPlace) place);
}
activity = itemListActivity;
} else {
itemListActivity = null;
}
...
return activity;
}
...
Alternatives are:
listen to PlaceChangeEvents from within the activity (you can then use a FilteredActivityMapper and CachingActivityMapper for the caching of the activity in your ActivityMapper, so that it's reduced to only create a new activity when asked). †
have some component listen to PlaceChangeEvents and translate them to business-oriented events, the activity then listens to those events rather than PlaceChangeEvents, otherwise the same as above.
decouple the activity from the "screen", make the "screen" a singleton with a reset() method and call that method from the activity's start (possibly passing the category ID as an argument in this case). The "screen" being a singleton could then make sure to load the categories list only once.
in your case, you could also simply put the categories list in a shared cache, so that you don't have to reuse your activity by can create a new one, the categories list will be retrieved once and put in the cache, subsequent activity instances will just use what's in the cache. This is similar to the above, but simpler, and the cache could be used by other parts of the application.
I'd personally rather go with your approach though (with a small exception, see below), as it's the simplest/easiest. Decoupling the activity from the "screen" is also an option; the GWT Team started exploring this approach in the Expenses sample (decoupling the activity responsibility from the presenter responsibility with using MVP) without ever finishing it unfortunately.
Other than that, I don't think any best practice has really emerged for now.
†. I don't like coupling my activities with the places they're used with (I don't quite like the coupling for the goTo calls either, but haven't yet found a clean and simple alternative), so I'd rather not go with this option; and similarly, I'd not pass the place to the activity constructor and refresh method like you did, but rather extract the information out of the place and pass it to the activity (e.g. in your case, only give the category ID to the activity, not the ItemListPlace instance; I would then simply call setCategory in all cases, and not even pass the category ID to the constructor).
In my opinion,
The role of the ActivityMapper is to give you back an Activity from a Place.
The role of the ActivityManager is to start the Activity given back from the ActivityMapper and to stop the current one if different. In your case you would like to "update/refresh" the current Activity.
So I would modify the ActivityMapper so as it will allways give me back the same instance of Activity for a given type of Place. A good way to do so could be to use GIN and use the singleton scope ...in(Singleton.class) to inject your Activity.
If you do that, when changing the url, if the place stays the same (meaning your url has the same word after # and before :) so that the Type of your place stays the same, the ActivityMapper will give you back the same instance of Activity so the ActivityManager will do nothing on the Activity. Check l.126 of ActivityManager
if (currentActivity.equals(nextActivity)) {
return;
}
For me you have 2 options there. The first one, as Thomas said , is to listen to PlaceChangeEvent in your Activity. The new Place you will receive can have new parameters inside based on the new url given and you can "update/refresh" your Activity.
The second one, that I find more in line with the Activity/Place pattern is to modify the ActivityManager so that it calls an update(Place) method on the Activity when the Activity given back by the ActivityMapper is the same that the current Activity.
I haven't tried any of these solutions yet but I will soon ... I might be able to update that post at that time.
You can find more information in this article I wrote on my blog on that topic
Here is a little schema I made to help me understand the pattern, hope it will help :
I would not do any logic in my ActiviyMapper except returning an activity, by creating a new one or giving a previous one (or null). According to me, the mapper doesn't have to know about refresh() or what activities do.
If that, then the logic of 'refresh()' would be given to the activy through the place which holds a token. That token should be holding the information about either what is the state of the request (a new page, reload, an id, etc).
In the activity, first, it asks for the View, the one related to this activity (tip : a singleton given by a 'ClientFactory' is good practice), then it creates a presenter for that view, and bind them together.
Lastly, the activity will use the token from the place to provide any information about state to the presenter. And then, it adds the view in the page.
It's good to know by default, with places and activies, going to the same place doesn't do anything (no reload). But you can take care of it with token and activity-mapper easily.
Hope you'll find an adapted solution for you case. Goodluck.
I am currently implementing an Eclipse-Plugin which is using the standard properties view, connected to a Navigator. It also features a textual editor, which is able to connect regions within its' document to certain objects that can supply properties to the PropertiesView (i.e. the same objects, that are displayed in the Navigator).
However, the Tuturials I found only dealt with Views that used a pre-implemented Viewer, which already supported passing on the selected element to the Properties View.
The TextEditor does not do that (I am using jface and a subclass of the AbstractTextEditor class), because it's SelectionProvider returns informations about the offset and the length of the selection only.
How do I have to modify the SelectionProvider of my TextEditor, such that it provides information usable to the Properties View?
Thank you in advance
Okay, I have managed to find the solution myself.
First of all, I had to implement the getAdapter() method in my subclass of TextEditor such that it returns an Adapter for IPropertySourceProvider, that can deal with the type of elements that are selected in my AbstractTextEditor.
Then, I implemented an ISelection that extended TextSelection, in order to not interfere with any selection-specific mechanism supplied by the AbstractTextEditor, and implements the interface IStructuredSelection, because the Properties View works with this interface of ISelection only.
An IStructuredSelection features basic methods of an array, however, in my case it is only possible to ever select only a single element, so implementation of these methods were trivial.
The last step was to get my ISelection to the right place. Overwriting the getSelection()-method of the ISelectionProvider of the AbstractTextEditor did not suffice, because obviously, the methods of firing SelectionChangedEvents does not use this method.
Thus, instead of using a standard SourceViewer, I used my own implementation in which I basically overrid the methods fireSelectionChanged(int offset, int length) and firePostSelectionChanged(int offset, int lenght), such that they use events containing my ISelection.
The rest is implementing the handling of my Objects in the Adapter for IPropertySourceProvider in a way that it returns an IPropertySource for the given Object, as it is shown in various tutorials.