Adding a Data Action to the Page Flow Diagram

If you are using the Page Flow Diagram to add an action that forwards either to another action or directly to a databound web page, you can add a data action.

When you want to work with Oracle ADF data controls to create databound client applications, you will use the Oracle ADF class oracle.adf.controller.struts.actions.DataAction. This is the first step to create the action mappings for your page flow. At runtime, an Oracle ADF data action instance prepares the data for the web page to render.

To create a data action:

If your project does not already contain the WEB-INF folder with the struts-config.xml file, add Struts support to your project and open the Struts Page Flow Diagram.
Open the Struts Page Flow Diagram and display the Component Palette.
Select Data Action in the Component Palette.
In the empty page flow diagram, click anywhere to insert the new data action.

The icon you insert into the Page Flow Diagram diagram will appear with a yellow warning icon overlaid. This indicates that you have not yet defined the data action class name. You can define the data action class by double-clicking to display the definition dialog. After this, the icon will appear without the warning overlay.
Click the label of the /dataAction1 icon in the diagram and edit the name. For example, you might name the action that initiates your web application /MainDataAction .

Note: Do not double-click the new data action element in the page flow diagram. This will display a dialog that lets you subclass the oracle.adf.controller.struts.actions.DataAction class. If you display the dialog, click Cancel to exit without creating a subclass.
Define an action forward for the data action.

The struts-config.xml file is updated with the definition for the action:

<action path="/MyMainDataAction" className="oracle.adf.controller.struts.actions.DataActionMapping" type="oracle.adf.controller.struts.actions.DataAction" name="DataForm"/>

Although the class DataAction.java does not appear in your client project, you can view its source code by right-clicking the data action element in the page flow diagram and pressing Ctrl and - (minus key). This data action class calls request.setAttribute("bindings", bindings); to publish the Oracle ADF binding context on the HTTP Request object and make it available to the databound page at runtime.

Before you can run an Oracle ADF data action from the page flow diagram, you must first create a page forward to set the Oracle ADF model reference on the action class.