Designing business objects, and gui actions
- by fozz
Developing a product ordering system using Java SE 6. The previous implementations used combo boxes, text fields, and check boxes. Preforming validation on action events from the GUI. The validation includes limiting existing combo boxes items, or even availability. The issue in the old system was that the action was received and all rules were applied to the entire business object. This resulted in a huge event change as options were changed multiple times. To be honest I have no idea how an infinite loop wasn't produced.
Through the next iteration I stepped in and attempted to limit the chaos by controlling the order in which the selections could be made. Making configuration of BO's a top down approach. I implemented custom box models, action events, beans/binding, and an MVC pattern. However I still am unable to fully isolate action even chains. I'm thinking that I've approached the whole concept backwards in an attempt to stay closest to what was already in place.
So the question becomes what do I design instead? I'm currently considering an implementation of Interfaces, Beans, Property Change Listeners to manage the back and forth. Other thoughts were validation exceptions, dynamic proxies.... I'm sure there are a ton of different ways. To say that one way is right is crazy, and I'm sure it will take a blending of multiple patterns. My knowledge of swing/awt validation is limited, previously I did backend logic only. Other considerations are were some sort of binding(jgoodies or otherwise) to directly bind GUI state to BO's.
