Create the list

Now that we have our Pod in place we can add content to it. The PodBuilder class provides an addContent(...) method to add the content to a Pod. In our movies example we are going to delegate to the list widget which can generate a HTML table.

To start we will need to provide the movies for our list. Appendix A.1 contains a full program-listing for a Java class that will act as a simple read-only DB of our favourite movies. Add this class to a package in the project where it can be accessed by our PodLoader.

Next we will create a list in our PodLoader and populate it with our favourite movies. In the PodLoader add the following code to the createPod method before the return statement.

Figure 1. Adding a list to a Pod

001  public Node createPod(Document document, Map<String,Object> contexts) {
002    try{
003      PodBuilder moviesPod =
004        PodBuilder.newPod(document, PODTYPE.MYFAVMOVIES);
005      moviesPod.setTitle("My Favourite Movies");
006
007      MoviesDB moviesDB = new MoviesDB();
008
009      Collection<MoviesDB.Movie> favMovieCollection =
010        moviesDB.getAllMovies();
011      Iterator<MoviesDB.Movie> movieList =
012        favMovieCollection.iterator();
013
014      // Create the list
015      ListBuilder myFavouriteMovies =
016        ListBuilder.createList(1, document);
017
018      int row = 1;
019      while(movieList.hasNext()) {
020        Movie movie = movieList.next();
021        String movieName = movie.title;
022        myFavouriteMovies.addRow();
023        myFavouriteMovies.addEntry(1, row++, movieName);
024      }
025
026      RendererConfig contentRenderer = new RendererConfig(
027          RendererConfigType.STYLE, "single-list");
028      moviesPod.addContent(myFavouriteMovies, contentRenderer);
029
030      return moviesPod.getWidgetRootNode();
031    }catch(Exception e){
032      throw new RuntimeException(e);
033    }

Compile your PodLoader class and reload the Pod page. The 'My Favourite Movies' Pod will be updated with the list of our favourite movies.

In the next section we will look in more detail at how the list was created.