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Slick way to validate before navigate?

Tony Smith

24 Apr, 2011 06:48 PM via web

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After revisiting this issue many times and making very little progress, I thought I would ask the community. The set-up is easy: I have a module with multiple views, each view with one or more forms, and a "global" navigation control for Next and Previous. I set up a base class, ValidationContainer, that implements an IValidatable interface defined by one getter "validators" which is an array of, you guessed it, validators.

When the Next button fires a NavigationEvent.NEXT event, I need to be sure all "viable" validators pass before firing the NavigationEvent.NEXT_COMPLETED that updates the view.

My thought is to "register" any ValidatableContainer that is added to the stage but how can I do this without creating a mediator for each instance? My hope is to do this so that if any other dev adds a new ValidatableContainer-form to a given view and includes, the architecture will handle validating on Next/Previous.

Any thoughts? Including, "I think you are doing this like a crazy person and you should consider Dentistry".

1. Support Staff 2 Posted by Joel Hooks on 25 Apr, 2011 02:48 AM

   

   You could make a "ViewValidationMap" or a "ValidatingViewMediatorMap" of sorts. The MediatorMap is already looking at views as they are added to stage, what if it dispatched an event if it was of a certain type and those views were cached in a model?

   https://github.com/epologee/navigator-as3

   Sort of related, not really, but this navigation lib has a lot of promise.

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2. 3 Posted by Tony Smith on 25 Apr, 2011 03:56 AM

   

   Exactly!! I get so excited when people actually understand my questions. I am going to check out the MediatorMap and see what kind of magic I can perform there. I am guessing it would work well for "unregistering" validatable views as well. I think that is a great idea.

   I saw that lib posted on a previous thread but never got a chance to check it out. Sounds like now might be a good time. I played around with Cairngorm 3's navigation lib a while back but I am really over the whole Scottish mountain range metaphor.

   Also, the 4.5 was released and I am pretty sure it has some new form components.

   Thanks man.

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3. 4 Posted by Tony Smith on 25 Apr, 2011 02:52 PM

   

   Sorry, somewhat new to RL, does the MediatorMap introspect every view added to the stage regardless of whether or not it is mapped? Where does that take place?

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4. 5 Posted by Tony Smith on 25 Apr, 2011 02:57 PM

   

   The other option I was considering was to just "register" the validator from the abstract class but how can a base abstract communicate with the event bus since it has no mediator?

   package com.verical.checkout.view.components
   {

   import com.verical.common.interfaces.IValidatable;
   import spark.components.Group;
   
   public class ValidatableContainer extends Group implements IValidatable
   {
       public function ValidatableContainer()
       {
           super();
       }
   
       public function get validators():Array
       {
           return null;
       }
   }
   

   }

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5. 6 Posted by Tony Smith on 27 Apr, 2011 10:13 PM

   

   In case someone is interested, I ended up bubbling an event when the base class, ValidatableContainer, was initialized, FlexEvent.INITIALIZE. At the application level, or my case the module level, I added a capture-only listener for the bubbled event in the module's mediator:

    eventMap.mapListener(view, 
                   ValidationEvent.REGISTER, 
                   validationRegisterHandler,
                   ValidationEvent,
                   true);
   

   I ended up having to put that line in the preRegister override because of a race condition. From there I was back into Robotlegs world and dispatched a context event:

    eventDispatcher.dispatchEvent(new ValidationEvent(ValidationEvent.REGISTER, 
                                               event.validatableItem));
   

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6. Tony Smith closed this discussion on 27 Apr, 2011 10:14 PM.

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