Confused about FormPanel and nested containers...

[patniemeyer]

The JavaDoc on FormPanel says the following:

"FormPanel supports nested layout containers."

But it doesn't really... You have to use AdapterField or MultiField to nest anything, right?
It took me a while to figure this out as there seems to be absolutely no documentation or example of this anywhere.

Or am I missing some more direct way to nest containers in a form?

...

Also, is the only way to hide the label on a field to add a style to it? This seems very awkward... why not simply have a hideLabel() method on field?


thanks,
Pat

[darrellmeyer]

I have added some info in the javadocs about only using fields with a form layout. Also, in 1.1 you can hide the labels of fields. See the screen shot of a form using anchor positioning. The text area is hiding its label.

public AnchorLayoutExample() {
    setLayout(new FlowLayout(10));
    
    final Window w = new Window();
    w.setPlain(true);
    w.setSize(500, 300);
    w.setHeading("Resize Me");
    w.setLayout(new FitLayout());
    
    FormPanel panel = new FormPanel();
    panel.setBorders(false);
    panel.setBodyBorder(false);
    panel.setLabelWidth(55);
    panel.setHeaderVisible(false);
    
    TextField<String> field = new TextField<String>();
    field.setFieldLabel("Sent To");
    panel.add(field, new FormData("100%"));
    
    field = new TextField<String>();
    field.setFieldLabel("Subject");
    panel.add(field, new FormData("100%"));
    
    TextArea area = new TextArea();
    area.setHideLabel(true);
    panel.add(area, new FormData("100% -53"));
    
    w.addButton(new Button("Send"));
    w.addButton(new Button("Cancel"));
    w.add(panel);
    
    Button b = new Button("Open", new SelectionListener<ButtonEvent>() {
    
      @Override
      public void componentSelected(ButtonEvent ce) {
        w.show();
      }
    
    });
    add(b);
  }

[rmemoria]

Great example and I'm trying to apply it, but:

I'm using version 1.0.4 and I didn't find the FormData constructor used in your example, which allows the width to be passed as a string. I found the constructors bellow

FormData(int width, int height);
FormData();

Was it removed from this version?

Actually I found the string arg interesting when passing it as "100%" and resizing the dialog window the control size is automatically adjusted.

Regards,
Ricardo

[gslender]

darrell's example is based on 1.1 in svn