Overview

The Path component allows you to create a visual, "breadcrumb trail" representation of the path from a selected item, such as a folder or category, to its root item. For example, you may wish to use this component when the user is drilling down into folders and subfolders to find a report to view. In this example, the path can be visually displayed and updated as the user navigates down the path, showing how the root folder leads to the first subfolder which leads to the second subfolder, and so on until the report is reached.

rootItemID and rootText are the two key attributes that determine the first node in the path. Set the rootItemID attribute to the identifier of the item that will be displayed as the root (first) item in the path. This value this attribute is set to will create an upper limit on where the user can navigate to within the hierarchy of BusinessObjects Enterprise items. The actual text representing this top item in the path can be customized using the rootText attribute.

Use the repeatDirection attribute to specify whether to display the path to the user in a left-to-right fashion, by setting the horizontal option, or a top-to-bottom fashion, by setting the vertical option. The repeatDirection attribute must be set to fields of the com.businessobjects.jsf.sdk.properties.RepeatDirection class.Use the separatorText attribute to specify which characters to use to separate the items in the path. For example, you may wish to construct an arrow ("->") to represent the path leading from one element to the next. By default, this attribute is set to the greater-than character (">"). The showSelectedItem attribute can be set to show or hide the selected item as the last element in the path. By default, this attribute is set to true. If set to false, the parent item of the selected item is shown as the last element in the path.

In addition to the general attributes of the component, the showImages attribute accesses the ImagesProps class that contains further properties:

Note:    For more information on property classes, see How do I use property classes?

To customize the appearance of the Path component, set the style attributes of the different parts of the component.

Style AttributeDescriptionStyle Class

itemStyle

The style of all items in the path.

The string name of the style class defined in a style sheet and linked to from a JSP page or specified directly in a JSP page.

selectedItemStyle

The style of an individually selected item.

The string name of the style class defined in a style sheet and linked to from a JSP page or specified directly in a JSP page.

separatorStyle

The style of the characters that separate individual items in the path.

The string name of the style class defined in a style sheet and linked to from a JSP page or specified directly in a JSP page.

Event Handling

To enable the automatic event handling capabilities of the Path component, set the autoHandleEvents attribute to true. When set to true, this attribute implements default behavior on action events that are triggered when the user interacts with the component. For example:

EventDefault Behavior

ItemClicked

When an item in the component is clicked, the data bound EnterpriseItem or EnterpriseItems bean is set to display the items under the parentItemID specified for that item.

If the autoHandleEvents attribute is set to false, this event will not be handled automatically. If you set autoHandleEvents to false, you may write your own event handler.

Data Binding

The Path component supports data binding to an EnterpriseItem bean or an EnterpriseItems bean. These beans provide the source for the item or items to display in the Path component. Use the itemSource attribute to bind the component to the desired bean.



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