About Views
Within each portlet or web application you create, you can create one or more views that define the user interface for the portlet. You define the views as View Declaration Language (VDL) files. Composite Application Framework (CAF) supports two types of VDL files:
A VDL file implemented as a .view file structured with a proprietary
Software AG XML schema. By default,
Software AG Designer creates new view pages using the .view format.
VDL files in .xhtml format for JSF Facelets projects. To enable JSF Facelets support for new view pages, you can set the
Prefer JSF 2.x xhtml Facelet Templates for New Pages preference on the UI Development preferences page, or specify a .view or .xhtml file name extension when creating a view page. For more information about enabling JSF Facelets support, see
Enabling the JSF Facelets Functionality for
New Projects and Views.
A view represents a page in an application, defining the structure of the controls for the user interface. Typically, CAF has associated a single page managed bean as the primary server-side backing model for every page. However, this is not required. A VDL file can reference any managed bean, and it may be easier for some use cases to not use a page managed bean at all.
You can open a VDL file in the CAF editor, enabling you to modify the view to your custom requirements. You can:
Drag CAF controls from the Palette view directly on to the design canvas.
Specify properties for controls, for example, isVisible, isRendered, isDisabled.
Bind controls to managed beans.
Import portal resources into your view.
