[Seaside] #call: #show: #home

[Lukas Renggli]

> I assume that #home should return you to the first component in a chain
> of called components. So component 1, calls component 2, calls component
> 3, and executing `self home` from component 3 should return you to
> component 1. Is that correct ?

No, #home removes all the delegation-decorations. This means if you
want to go back to component 1 you have to call home on component 1.
On component 3 it has no effect, after all it wouldn't know how far it
should go back in the chain of called-components, so call #home on the
component you want to show again.

> #show appears to be behaving exactly like #call. I assumed that show
> would replace the current component with the shown component but it
> appears to   delegate. Turning on halos show this.

In most cases #show: works similar to #call:, but there is an
important difference: #call captures a continuation before actually
#show-ing the called component. This makes it possible to have a flow
of pages where you call each component and get the result.

   a := self call: aFirstComp.
   b := self call: aSecondComp.
   c := self call: aThirdComp.
   ...

#show does not return a result (from #answer). However you can do
basically the same using continuation passing style with
#show:onAnswer:, but this is less natural and starts to become
complicated if you have flows with loops and conditions.

   self show: aFirstComp onAnswer: [ :a |
      self show: aSecondComp onAnswer: [ :b |
          self show: aThirdComp onAnswer: [ :c |
              ... ] ] ]

I suggest that you always use #call:, it works as expected in all cases.

> Instead of calling and  delegating to another component (presumably to
> wait for an answer) I would like to replace the current component with
> the called one. I could do this by putting my main navigation element
> outside of the called component but in this case it is not the most
> fitting approach.

Store a reference to the parent component in you child and do a call
on the parent, as you can see in WAParentTest.

HTH,
Lukas

--
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch