View with UiHandlers

Bottom-Top Communication: ViewWithUiHandlers

In any MVP application, there will be a time when a user event needs to trigger some kind of computation or succession of other events. The way to link a view event to a Presenter is with the Bottom-Top Communication pattern.

When the need of a View-To-Presenter communication arises, it is now time to have the View implement HasUiHandlers. In GWTP, there's an abstract class that does that already, it is called ViewWithUiHandlers.

The first step is to define an interface that extends UiHandlers that describes what actions the current Presenter can do. Let's imagine a View-Presenter couple of a screen where a user can save a user's information on the system. First declare the UiHandlers:

interface UserEditUiHandlers extends UiHandlers {
  void onSave(String username);
}

Then let the Presenter know it'll have to handle this action:

class UserEditPresenter extends Presenter<UserEditPresenter.MyView> implements UserEditUiHandlers {
    // This Presenter now has to implement the onSave method
    @Override
    public void onSave(String username) {
        // call server with this username
    }
}

It is also necessary to let the View know it has access to the UiHandlers. So at the View interface declaration :

interface MyView extends View, HasUiHandlers<UserEditUiHandlers> {
    // declare view methods as usual
}

Finally, when implementing the view, the class signature changes a little bit as well.

class UserEditView extends ViewWithUiHandlers<UserEditUiHandlers> implements MyView {
 // normal view implementation
}

So now the class structure is well established. To get it working in a real case though, the Presenter has to set itself as the view's UiHandler at runtime by calling the setUiHandlers method in its constructor.

class UserEditPresenter extends Presenter<UserEditPresenter.MyView> implements UserEditUiHandlers {
    @Inject
    UserEditPresenter(....) {
        getView().setUiHandlers(this);
    }
}

Voila! The view can then communicate with its Presenter and send whatever data it needs to:

class UserEditView // ..... {
    @UiHandler("saveButton")
    void onSaveButtonClick(ClickEvent event) {
        String username = ... ; // Get the username from a UI element like a textbox

        // and send the information to the Presenter
        getUiHandlers().onSave(username);
    }
}