Avoiding the Blank Row Issue in ADF Business Components Web Applications

Using JDeveloper 9.0.5.2, Oracle ADF users lamented that when building a basic browse-and-CRUD-style web application and performing steps like:

• From the browse page, click a button to create a new record (which invoked the built-in ADF binding-layer Create action)
• Without submitting the "Create a New XXXX" page, the user changes their mind and presses the browser back button to return to the browse page (or alternatively clicks a link to return to that browse page).

they would end up with a (typically undesireable) "blank row" in the browse screen. In JDeveloper 10.1.2, we've introduced a new feature for ADF Business Components-based applications that allows you to avoid the blank row in this case. ADF applications using other business service layer technologies do not benefit from this enhancement.

This issue was caused in 9.0.5.2 by the fact that the built-in Create action actually was performing both a createRow() and an insertRow() operation, leaving the newly created row in the rowset. We've kept this behavior as is for 10.1.2 so that behavior of existing applications is not changed when migrating to 10.1.2, but for additional clarity we've changed the label that appears in the design time Action Binding Editor to be "CreateInsert" in 10.1.2 to better reflect what this built-in action is doing. The action binding id code that appears in the UIModel.xml file stays the same. It's just now called CreateInsert in the design time instead of just Create.

Why did we rename the 9.0.5.2 Create built-in action to CreateInsert you ask? So that we could repurpose the name Create for a new built-in action (with newly introduced action id) in 10.1.2 that only performs the createRow, but not the insertRow. In the JDeveloper 10.1.2 release, applications based on ADF Business Components use this new Create(-but-don't-immediately-Insert) action to avoid the "blank row" issue.

When using the new Create action that does not perform the insert immediately, the ADF Business Components runtime has been enhanced in 10.1.2 to insert the row into the rowset in a delayed fashion when it is subsequently posted-back for the first time instead. If the row is never submitted, it will just get garbaged collected later and is never added to any rowset. This avoids the blank row issue users experienced in 9.0.5.2. Once the initialized row is submitted and is added to the rowset, as was the case in 9.0.5.2 with the "Create-and-Insert-immediately" behavior, the developer needs to explicitly remove the row if the user decides that they don't want it anymore.

In JDeveloper 10.1.2:

• For newly developed pages, when you drop a "Create" action from the Data Control Palette for a datasource based on an ADF view object, the design time will automatically create a "Create" action binding in the current page's UI Model that is bound to the new built-in Create action (which does not insert the blank row immediately).

  If you want to retain the CreateInsert-style behavior — which would be required if you are implementing a UI in which you perform in-line editing in the context of a table display, for example — then see the What's New in 10.1.2 section of the JDeveloper 10.1.2 release notes for the steps to follow to rebind your new "Create" action binding to use the CreateInsert built-in action instead of the Create action using the Action Binding Editor. The basic steps are:

  1. With your web page or struts page flow diagram open in the editor, go to the UI model tab in the structure window.
  2. Edit the action binding named "Create" by clicking on it in the UI Model tab and selecting Edit... in the right-mouse context menu.
  3. In the Action Binding Editor, find the Select an Action dropdown list and select the CreateInsert action instead of the Create action which is shown by default.

• After opening your existing 9.0.5.2 applications in JDeveloper 10.1.2, if you want to avoid the blank row issue by leveraging the new Create action instead of the existing CreateInsert action, do the following:

  1. With your web page or struts page flow diagram open in the editor, go to the UI model tab in the structure window.
  2. Edit the action binding named "Create" (or whatever you've currently named it) by clicking on it in the UI Model tab and selecting Edit... in the right-mouse context menu.
  3. In the Action Binding Editor, find the Select an Action dropdown list and select the Create action instead of the CreateInsert action which will be shown by default.