[Seaside] Help understanding WATableReport

[Avi Bryant]

On Aug 24, 2004, at 4:01 PM, Dan Winkler wrote:

> 4.  Create a #children method of FactorialTableComponent:
>
> children
> 	^Array with: report.
>
> This lets Seaside know what the subcomponents of 
> FactorialTableComponent are, in this case just the one 
> WATableComponent.  (I'm not sure why this is required by the Seaside 
> framework -- it seems it would know when you call render: what your 
> subcomponents are?)

This is a bit of a FAQ.  The problem is that Seaside knows to know what 
your subcomponents are *before* you call #render: with them.  You can 
think of #children as sort of a sneak-preview of the render pass: "I'm 
going to be rendering these subcomponents, so be prepared".

> And that's it.  Now you can see your application in your web browser 
> and click column headings to change the sort order.  (Note: I wish the 
> framework would make each new sort also subsort by the previous sort 
> so that for example if I have a table of dates and times I could sort 
> first by time and then by date to get chronological order.  I can 
> simulate most of this behavior by passing in sortblocks but it gets 
> messy and doesn't really do what you want when columns are sorted in 
> reverse order.)

Yes, that would be a good addition.  To be honest, I haven't used 
TableReport for quite a while and so it's been stagnating.  If someone 
is actually using it and wants to improve it, I'd be happy to integrate 
some patches.

Avi