Is it possible to reuse GWT UIBinder panels?

Question

I have a layout in Google Web Toolkit using UIBinder involving a TabLayoutPanel. This layout has the superset of all tabs that will be used by my app (think of it as an admin view).

I now need to create a new layout, using a subset of these tabs (eg, for regular users).

Is it possible to import panels from my admin layout in my user layout? Or perhaps define them all in a third file, and import from both layouts?

Answer 1

You can definitely import views you've written, both UIBinder templates and regular Widgets, into another UIBinder template.

From the UIBinder docs:

<ui:UiBinder xmlns:ui='urn:ui:com.google.gwt.uibinder'
    xmlns:g='urn:import:com.google.gwt.user.client.ui'
    xmlns:my='urn:import:com.my.app.widgets' >

  <g:HTMLPanel>
    <my:WeatherReport ui:field='weather'/>

    <my:Stocks ui:field='stocks'/>
    <my:CricketScores ui:field='scores' />
  </g:HTMLPanel>
</ui:UiBinder>

Notice how the Stocks and CricketScores widgets are imported from your own package.

You won't necessarily need to do this just to show/hide tabs based on user privileges, you can just show/hide your tabs in your GWT code based on access levels.

Answer 2

Define each tab content as a separate UiBinder template. Since UiBinder classes are Composites you can add them to any container just like any other widget.

You can assemble your TabLayoutPanel in code by adding each UiBinder templeted object into a tab in the TabPanel or define another UiBinder Template with the TabPanel and all the Tabs defined.

If you go the UiBinder route for templating the TabLayoutPanel, import the tab panel contents (Composites you defined earlier using UiBinder) into the UiBinder by defining a new 'namespace' pointing to the package where all your composites reside. You then refer to your composites as namespace:ClassName in the UiBinder template.

if com.project.package is where you keep all your composites which you want embeded in individual tabs then define a new namespace f as xmlns:f= 'com.project.package' soon after xmlns:g declaration.

You refer to individual composites in your UiBinder as

<f:Composite1 /> 
<f:Composite2 />