Interface Relationships

Interfaces such as Transformable, Transform, TransformInstance and MarkupOutput play an important role in rendering the data by supporting the transform functionality. They define methods for adding, accessing, and executing transforms. Callers can add transforms to a bean using this interface and identify which transform should be executed. Transforms can be added by supplying a reference to a transform or by specifying the fully qualified path name to the transform. Transforms can also be added using a style name.

Every Transformable object (generally a Web Bean) contains a number of methods that support working with the Web Transforms Layer to render itself:

• getType()— specifies the type of Web Bean for which a given transform is valid.  

• addTransform— Collection of methods that allow a Web Bean to build a collection of transforms from which one can be chosen to produce output.

  To use addTransformByStyle(styleName:string), a BeanContext has to be set.  

• hasTransform— Collection of methods that specify whether any transforms have been added to a Web Bean. 

• getTransformInstance— Collection of methods that return a TransformInstance that can be used to access the Transform object it represents. 

• transform— Collection of methods that apply a transform’s rules to the data in a Web Bean and store the results in a MarkupOutput object. 

• getBeanContext— Collection of methods that retrieve a BeanContext object, which is used primarily to point to a Style Catalog definition which enables Web Beans to be aware of ‘style’ definitions.

Refer to the ReportBean Code Sample and PromptsBean Code Sample to understand how these interface methods are used to provide the ability to render WebBeans.