Questions/comments on "How to Use BC4J HTML Field Renderers"

Question

BTW thanks for getting this HOWTO on custom renderers up. Good stuff. Probably one of the first things someone should read after getting past the first BC4J-JSP tutorial.
But after having just read it, I have some questions and comments.
What would be the best way to localize the YES|NO values from the first example? I know I can create property files for resource bundles and get the values from there, but where do I get the users Locale? And given that BC4J has a place for localized field labels, is there some better place (for JDev/BC4J integration) than going off and creating my own property files?
I was hoping to see examples of actually writing the HTML so I can add properties for validation, etc. The examples were about custom data for the renders rather than custom HTML. I assume that I just output HTML in the renderToString() method and it would just start with "<select" or "<input" not TDs or spans or anything, right? But in such cases, what can I extend / not extend? In the case of lists, I would have to handle all the different control types, right?
I am confused on control types. There's a control type on the control hints tab and in the HOWTO creates a new propery called MY_CONTROL_TYPE. Why? How do they relate? (and is that question about the RADIOGROUP suppose to be in the HOWTO doc?)
Can we not get the list control types as options on control hints tab? Or if we are creating our own renders, say for a boolean, I could create different renderers for the different control types (checkbox, select, radio, maybe selectYesNo, selectTrueFalse,...) or create one with a control type setting for them all. Which should I do when? And is there a way to expose these control types in the control hints tab?
BTW do these custom renders work the same in UIX-JSP and UIX-XML?
Since we are extending Oracle's classes we need more complete JavaDocs, not just the public methods. For example the HOWTO uses "ds" from PickList. BTW I have to give my opinion on Java style, maybe consider coding like "this.ds" for clarity. But anyway....
thanks for all the help!

Answer 1

Some comments:
1. the provided renderers read the properties every time becuase they are meant to be 'generic' and there are possible parameter differences between one attribute and another. You can easily hard-code the property values into the renderer implementation and 'never' look at the properties for parameters. The same applies for the dynamic renderer.
2. The set of renderers applis to both UIX JSP and JSP. There some bugs in the UIX JSP that prevent this in 9.0.2, but they will be fixed in Jdev 9.0.3.
3. The 'control type' is a shortcut way to select some of the default renderers. If you specify the 'Renderer' properties, they take precedence over any control types selected at design-time.
4. A cool way to re-use renderers is to create a new domain class and setup the renderer properties at that level. You can then use tihs domain type in your entity objects. all the rendering selection will happen automatically.
5. You can retrieve the current locale by using the ApplicationModule.getSession().getLocale() , make sure you use this method instead of the default locale since a single web application may be used by different users with different locale settings. We take the http locale information and map it into the application module's locale. If you need locale specific values, use resource bundles.