About Table Structure and Stamps

Note: For layouts requiring a table-like appearance, consider using tableLayout instead.

Table components in ADF UIX are elements for displaying and updating tabular data that are similar in nature.

Tabular data items are described in a two-dimensional format. In other words, the data items being compared exist in rows, and the number of facets or actions to take on the items exist as columns. Each intersection of a data item row and column is a cell. Thus, a table is made up of many cells, with a row of cells and a given number of columns for each data item, and with each column of cells representing one item facet being compared across many data items.

For a single table, the number of rows (i.e., number of data items) is likely to vary over time, but the number of columns (i.e., the number of facets on the items) will not. For example, in a table representing a shopping cart, the columns could be price and quantity of an item and the number of rows (items) is zero at the onset of shopping. At the end of shopping, there could be multiple items or rows in the table, but the number of facets (columns) remain the same.

The main table components used to create tabular data are table and column. A data table is created by a series of column elements as indexed children of table. By themselves, table and column do not display anything visible until data is configured or "stamped" in the table cells. A table has one stamp per column. Each column stamp gets its visible contents to stamp (or render) from the indexed children of column. The indexed children can be text, buttons, or any other components.

For each column stamp, UIX automatically repeats or stamps the indexed children once in all the cells of the table column. The number of rows UIX knows to stamp down a column is determined by the length of a DataObjectList. That DataObjectList is bound to the tableData attribute of table. Each DataObject in the DataObjectList corresponds to a row of data. UIX renders each column stamp once for every DataObject in the DataObjectList.

For example, using inline data the following UIX XML code renders a table with two columns and three rows. The tableData attribute is bound to inline data under tha name "demoTableData". The "demoRowData" DataObjectList comprises three DataObjects. Each cell in the first table column is stamped by a text child. Each cell in the second column is stamped by a button child.


Example:

<dataScope xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/uix/ui">
  <provider>
    <!-- all the data used by the table demo -->
    <data name="demoTableData">
      <inline>
        <!-- all the row DataObjects used by the table for tableData -->
        <demoRowData/>
        <demoRowData/>
        <demoRowData/>
      </inline>
    </data>
  </provider>
  <contents>
    <table name="table1"
           tableData="${uix.data.demoTableData.demoRowData}">
      <contents>
        <column>
          <contents>
            <!-- first column stamp -->
            <text text="Sample text"/>
          </contents>
        </column>
        <column>
          <contents>
            <!-- second column stamp -->
            <button text="Push Me"/>
          </contents>
        </column>
      </contents>
    </table>
  </contents>
</dataScope>

The code above produces the following table:

Table with 2 columns, 3 rows