How to develop a Mood Rating Form Field

In this tutorial, you will follow the Guideline for Developing a Plugin to develop your Mood Rating Form Field plugin. Please also refer to the very first tutorial How to develop a Bean Shell Hash Variable for more detailed steps.

1. What is the problem?

You would like to have a rating field with some smiley images that can be reused for other forms.

2. How to solve the problem?

You will develop a Form Field Element Plugin to render your mood rating field.

3. What is the input needed for your plugin?

To develop a Mood Rating Form Field plugin, you will need to provide some standard inputs for a Form Field element.

Field Id
Field Label
Validator
Readonly
Workflow Variable

4. What is the output and expected outcome of your plugin?

A form field shows a selection of smiley images and its radio button.

5. Are there any resources/API that can be reused?

To develop the Mood Rating Form Field plugin, you can extend the Radio field in the core product and replace its template and plugin properties options.

6. Prepare your development environment

You need to always have your Joget DX Source Code ready and built by following this guideline.

The following tutorial is prepared with a Macbook Pro and the Joget Source Code is version 8.0-Snapshot. Please refer to the Guideline for Developing a Plugin article for other platform commands.

Let's say your folder directory is as follows.

- Home
  - joget
    - plugins
    - jw-community

The plugins directory is the folder you will create and store all your plugins and the jw-community directory is where the Joget DX Source code is stored.

Run the following command to create a Apache Maven project in plugins directory.

cd joget/plugins/
~/joget/jw-community/wflow-plugin-archetype/create-plugin.sh org.joget mood_rating 8.0-Snapshot

Then, the shell script will ask us to key in a version number for the plugin and ask us for a confirmation before it generates the Apache Maven project.

Define value for property 'version':  1.0-SNAPSHOT: : 8.0-Snapshot
[INFO] Using property: package = org.joget
Confirm properties configuration:
groupId: org.joget
artifactId: mood_rating
version: 5.0.0
package: org.joget
Y: : y

You should get a "BUILD SUCCESS" message shown in your terminal and a mood_rating folder created in the plugins folder.

Open the Apache Maven project with your IDE of choice. This tutorial uses NetBeans.

7. Just code it!

a. Extending the abstract class of a plugin type

Create a MoodRatingField class under the org.joget package. Then, extend the class with org.joget.apps.form.lib.Radio class. The org.joget.apps.form.lib.Radio class is an implementation of the org.joget.apps.form.model.Element abstract class. Please refer to Form Field Element Plugin.

b. Implement all the abstract methods

As usual, you have to implement all the abstract methods. You will use the AppPluginUtil.getMessage method to support i18n and use the MESSAGE_PATH constant variable for the message resource bundle directory.

Implementation of all basic abstract methods

package org.joget;
  
import java.util.Map;
import org.joget.apps.app.service.AppPluginUtil;
import org.joget.apps.app.service.AppUtil;
import org.joget.apps.form.lib.Radio;
import org.joget.apps.form.model.FormBuilderPalette;
  
public class MoodRatingField extends Radio {
     
    private final static String MESSAGE_PATH = "message/form/MoodRatingField";
     
    @Override
    public String getName() {
        return "Mood Rating";
    }
 
    @Override
    public String getVersion() {
        return "5.0.0";
    }
     
    @Override
    public String getClassName() {
        return getClass().getName();
    }
     
    @Override
    public String getFormBuilderCategory() {
        return FormBuilderPalette.CATEGORY_CUSTOM;
    }
     
    @Override
    public String getLabel() {
        //support i18n
        return AppPluginUtil.getMessage("org.joget.MoodRatingField.pluginLabel", getClassName(), MESSAGE_PATH);
    }
  
    @Override
    public String getDescription() {
        //support i18n
        return AppPluginUtil.getMessage("org.joget.MoodRatingField.pluginDesc", getClassName(), MESSAGE_PATH);
    }
     
    @Override
    public String getPropertyOptions() {
        return AppUtil.readPluginResource(getClass().getName(), "/properties/form/moodRatingField.json", null, true, MESSAGE_PATH);
    }
     
    @Override
    public String getFormBuilderTemplate() {
        return "<label class='label'>"+getLabel()+"</label>";
    }
}

Now, you have to create a UI for the admin user to provide inputs for your plugin. In the getPropertyOptions method, you already specify your Plugin Properties Options definition file is located at "/properties/form/moodRatingField.json". let's create a resources/properties/form directory under the mood_rating/src/main directory. After creating the directory, create a file named moodRatingField.json in the properties folder.

In the properties definition options file, you will need to provide options as below. Please note that you can use the @@message.key@@ syntax to support i18n in your properties options.

[{
    title : '@@form.moodRating.config@@',
    properties : [{
        name : 'id',
        label : '@@form.radio.id@@',
        type : 'textfield',
        required : 'True',
        regex_validation : '^[a-zA-Z0-9_]+$',
        validation_message : '@@form.radio.invalidId@@'
    },
    {
        name : 'label',
        label : '@@form.radio.label@@',
        type : 'textfield',
        value : '@@org.joget.MoodRatingField.pluginLabel@@'
    }]
},
{
    title : '@@form.radio.advancedOptions@@',
    properties : [{
        label : '@@form.radio.data@@',
        type : 'header'
    },
    {
        name : 'validator',
        label : '@@form.radio.validator@@',
        type : 'elementselect',
        options_ajax : '[CONTEXT_PATH]/web/property/json/getElements?classname=org.joget.apps.form.model.FormValidator',
        url : '[CONTEXT_PATH]/web/property/json[APP_PATH]/getPropertyOptions'
    },
    {
        label : '@@form.radio.ui@@',
        type : 'header'
    },
    {
        name : 'readonly',
        label : '@@form.radio.readonly@@',
        type : 'checkbox',
        value : 'False',
        options : [{
            value : 'true',
            label : ''
        }]
    },
    {
        label : '@@form.radio.workflow@@',
        type : 'header'
    },
    {
        name : 'workflowVariable',
        label : '@@form.radio.workflowVariable@@',
        type : 'textfield'
    }]
}]
After completing the properties option to collect input, you can work on the main methods of the plugin which are the renderTemplate and formatData method. Since you the extends Radio class, you do not need to implement the formatData method.

@Override
public String renderTemplate(FormData formData, Map dataModel) {
    String template = "moodRatingField.ftl";
     
    // set value
    String value = FormUtil.getElementPropertyValue(this, formData);
    dataModel.put("value", value);
    String html = FormUtil.generateElementHtml(this, formData, template, dataModel);
    return html;
}

In the renderTemplate, you specify the template file to moodRatingField.ftl. Let's create this file under mood_rating/src/main/resources/templates directory. Then, use FreeMaker syntax to construct your template as below:

<div class="form-cell mood_rating" ${elementMetaData!}>
    <label class="label">${element.properties.label} <span class="form-cell-validator">${decoration}</span><#if error??> <span class="form-error-message">${error}</span></#if></label>
    <div class="form-cell-value" id="${elementParamName!}${element.properties.elementUniqueKey!}">
    <#if !(request.getAttribute("org.joget.MoodRatingField")??) >
        <style>
            .mood_rating .tdstyle {text-align:center;width:20%;border:0px none transparent !important;}
        </style>
    </#if>   
    <table style="width:150px">
        <tbody>
            <tr>
                <td class="tdstyle"><img height="25" width="25" src="${request.contextPath}/plugin/org.joget.MoodRatingField/images/smiley5.png"></td>
                <td class="tdstyle"><img height="25" width="25" src="${request.contextPath}/plugin/org.joget.MoodRatingField/images/smiley4.png"></td>
                <td class="tdstyle"><img height="25" width="25" src="${request.contextPath}/plugin/org.joget.MoodRatingField/images/smiley3.png"></td>
                <td class="tdstyle"><img height="25" width="25" src="${request.contextPath}/plugin/org.joget.MoodRatingField/images/smiley2.png"></td>
                <td class="tdstyle"><img height="25" width="25" src="${request.contextPath}/plugin/org.joget.MoodRatingField/images/smiley1.png"></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <#list ['5', '4', '3', '2', '1'] as i>
                    <td class="tdstyle">
                        <input grouping="${elementParamName!}" id="${elementParamName!}" name="${elementParamName!}" type="radio" value="${i}" <#if error??>class="form-error-cell"</#if> <#if element.properties.readonly! == 'true'> disabled</#if> <#if value?? && value == i>checked</#if> />
                    </td>
                </#list>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
    </table>
    </div>
    <div style="clear:both;"></div>
</div>

There are some smiley image files wthat ill be used by the template, let put those image files under the mood_rating/src/main/resources/resources/image directory.

c. Manage the dependency libraries of your plugin

There are no additional libraries needed.

d. Make your plugin internationalization (i18n) ready you

are using the i18n message key in the getLabel and getDescription method. You will use the i18n message key in your properties options definition as well. Then, you will need to create a message resource bundle properties file for your plugin.

Create a resources/message/form directory, under the mood_rating/src/main directory. Then, create a MoodRatingField.properties file in the folder. In the properties file, add all the message keys and their labels as below.

org.joget.MoodRatingField.pluginLabel=Mood Rating
org.joget.MoodRatingField.pluginDesc=Form Field for rating mood
form.moodRating.config=Edit Mood Rating

e. Register your plugin to the Felix Framework

Next, you will have to register your plugin class in the Activator class (auto generated in the same class package) to tell the Felix Framework that this is a plugin.

public void start(BundleContext context) {
    registrationList = new ArrayList<ServiceRegistration>();
    //Register plugin here
    registrationList.add(context.registerService(MoodRatingField.class.getName(), new MoodRatingField(), null));
}

f. Build it and test

Let's build your plugin. Once the building process is done, you will find a mood_rating-5.0.0.jar file created under mood_rating/target directory.

Then, let's upload the plugin jar to Manage Plugins. After uploading the jar file, double-check that the plugin is uploaded and activated correctly.

Then, check if the Mood Rating field is shown in the Form Builder.

Drag it to the Form Builder Canvas and set its properties.

Save the properties and check the field is rendered in the canvas as follows.

Check and test the field in the form.

8. Take a step further, share it or sell it

You can download the source code from mood_rating_src.zip.

To download the ready-to-use plugin jar, please find it in Mood Rating Plugin.