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!important CSS Declarations: How and when to use in ADF Skin

While designing in ADF skin.I came across of significance of !important. ADF developer always afraid of CSS like me. 😛

now we should understand meaning of this

What it says; that ‘this is important, ignore subsequent rules, and any usual specificity issues, apply this rule!’

In normal use a rule defined in an external stylesheet is overruled by a style defined in the head of the document, which, in turn, is overruled by an in-line style within the element itself (assuming equal specificity of the selectors). Defining a rule with the !important ‘attribute’ (?) discards the normal concerns as regards the ‘later’ rule overriding the ‘earlier’ ones.

Also, ordinarily, a more specific rule will override a less-specific rule. So:

a {
    /* css */
}

Is normally overruled by:

body div #elementID ul li a {
    /* css */
}

As the latter selector is more specific (and it doesn’t, normally, matter where the more-specific selector is found (in the head or the external stylesheet) it will still override the less-specific selector (in-line style attributes will always override the ‘more-‘, or the ‘less-‘, specific selector as it’s always more specific.
If, however, you add !important to the less-specific selector’s CSS declaration, it will have priority.
Using !important has its purposes (though I struggle to think of them), but it’s much like using a nuclear explosion to stop the foxes killing your chickens; yes, the foxes will be killed, but so will the chickens. And the neighbourhood.
It also makes debugging your CSS a nightmare (from personal, empirical, experience).

Lets take an example of ADF skinning.

af|inputText::label
{
background-color: transparent  !important;
background: transparent ;
color : White;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: small;
 margin: 0px;
padding:0px 4px !important; 
}

We will define now an style class for using inputText anywhere other place with different layout like 

.AfInputSizeBig af|inputText::label
{
background-color: Blue;  // see this
background: transparent ;
color : White;
font-weight: bold;
}

If you use AfInputSizeBig style class any where else but back ground color of input label is always transparent because if !important definition earlier.
You should be very careful while creating ADF skin.If you are very sure about cascading of style then use this !important .

I will post more on ADF Skinning.

Till than happy learning with Vinay in Techartifact….

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How to perform addition for attribute of Number type in expression language

When adding two attributes of oracle.jbo.domain.Number type in Expression Language like EmpSal and EmpBonus as below  :

#{bindings.bindings.EmpSal.inputValue + bindings.EmpBonus.inputValue}

or adding number 1000 to EmpSal as  :

#{bindings.bindings.EmpSal.inputValue + 1000}

You may get below exception :

Unexpected exception caught: java.util.MissingResourceException, msg=Can’t find resource for bundle java.util.PropertyResourceBundle, key el.convert

To Eliminate this Exception, Add EmpSal and EmpBonus as below :

#{bindings.EmpSal.inputValue.value + bindings.EmpBonus.inputValue.value}

Add ‘value’ to inputValue to remove the exception.

Happy learning in TechArtifact. 🙂

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How to check ifdirty (is modified) for View Object?

Requirement – Checking if data modified in viewobject ADF

Solution-You can use isDirty() method provided by API to get status 

 DCBindingContainer bind =(DCBindingContainer)BindingContext.getCurrent().getCurrentBindingsEntry();
        JUCtrlHierBinding object = (JUCtrlHierBinding)bind.findCtrlBinding("DepartmentVO1"); // or get ViewObject form Iterator in ADFUtils.
        ViewObject deptVo = object.getViewObject(); 
        Boolean b = deptVo.getApplicationModule().getTransaction().isDirty();This gives Boolean value of True/False.

another way

DCBindingContainer dcBindingContainer=(DCBindingContainer)
BindingContext.getCurrent().getCurrentBindingsEntry();
if(dcBindingContainer.getDataControl().isTransactionModified()){
//Code goes here...
}

few more use case i found on internet i.e http://oracleadfhowto.blogspot.de/2012/03/iterator-uncommitted-data-availability.html, so thought of sharing that as well –

1. If you are using iterator based UI component like table:
Expression #{row.row.entities[0].entityState} will return state viz. (0 – New, Modified – 2, Unmodified – 1, Initialized – -1 where row refers to the table node and row.row is the instance of row in the iterator/table.

The following expression also notify that there is dirty data available –

-> #{!bindings.EmployeesView1Iterator.dataControl.TransactionDirty}   // this statment will notify that there is uncommitted or unsaved data in the iterator
-> #{!bindings.Commit.enabled}
-> #{!controllerContext.currentRootViewPort.dataDirty}
-> #{!controllerContext.currentViewPort.dataDirty}

Happy ADF learning with Vinay in techartifact….