Finding a model node in runtime

Question

Hi, I'm presently migrating a old application to webdynpro.
In that application, I have a FieldDescriptor, which has the information of which table to search in order to find the info to be displayed.
Concretely I have:
A class called BapiInfoField. This class has an attribute which is the name of a table. I need to retrieve the node associated to that table.
To resolve this, I thought about making a mapping between the old table name and the new one compatible to webdynpro.
On the other hand, I don't know how to fetch an node at runtime in webdynpro. The only way I do usually, is by using the "wdContect.node*" way. I know how to fetch elements in a node dynamically, but not the node itself.
I also found a function called "getChildNode(String arg0, int arg1)" in the wdContext class. Unfortunately, the function is undocumented.
If there's no appropriate getter function in webdynpro for my problem, I'll resolve by making a mapping between the string of the old table name, and a Method Object linked to the proper "node*" method.
Anyone has any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Alexis

Answer 1

Brrr...
I do not understand your requirements completely, but can provide some hints regarding getting nodes information at runtime.
First, you are misinformed: getChildNode is documented. First parameter is node name, second is index of parent element of subnode (i.e. index within "this" node).
Next, there are 2 different situations: you need only meta-information or you need physical data.
For first case:
  void traverse(final IWDNodeInfo parent)
       for (final Iterator i = parent.iterateChildren(); i.hasNext(); )
            final IWDNodeInfo child = (IWDNodeInfo)i.next();
            traverse( child );
  traverse( wdContext.getNodeInfo() );
For second case:
  void traverse(final IWDNodeElement parent)
       final IWDNode     nParent   = parent.node();
       final IWDNodeInfo niParent  = nParent.getNodeInfo();
       final int         idxParent = parent.index();
       for (final Iterator i = niParent.iterateChildren(); i.hasNext(); )
            final IWDNodeInfo child = (IWDNodeInfo)i.next();
            traverse( nParent.getChildNode( child.getName(), idxParent ) );
  void traverse(final IWDNode parent)
       for (int i = parent.size() - 1; i>= 0; i--)
            final IWDNodeElement element = parent.getElementAt( i );
                /* Workaround for singleton nodes */
                /* parent.setLeadSelection( i ) */
            traverse( element ); 
  traverse( wdContext.currentContextElement() );
Second case is quite "interesting": first, it will fails for singleton nodes with cardinality 0..n or 1..n (see commented workaround); second, it quite resource-consuming, namely, invokes all supply functions and populating all elements during traverse.
Hope this will serve you as good starting point
VS