Form Extensibility for APS Stencil

Application Development Framework ADF Documentation User guideForm Extensibility for APS Stencil

Form Extensibility for APS Stencil

This page describes how you can customize ADF forms to your own specification.

Replace default form widgets with custom components

This is an example of replacing the standard Text widget with a custom component for all APS forms rendered within the <adf-form> component.

Create a simple form with some Text widgets:

Every custom widget must inherit the WidgetComponent class in order to function properly:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { WidgetComponent } from '@alfresco/adf-core';

@Component({
    selector: 'custom-editor',
    template: `
        <div style="color: red">Look, I'm a custom editor!</div>
    `
})
class CustomEditorComponent extends WidgetComponent {}

Add it to the application module or any custom module that is imported into the application one:

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { CustomEditorComponent } from './custom-editor.component';

@NgModule({
    declarations: [ CustomEditorComponent ],
    exports: [ CustomEditorComponent ]
})
class CustomEditorsModule {}

Every custom widget should be added into the collections: declarations and exports. If you decided to store custom widgets in a separate dedicated module (and optionally as a separate re-distributable library), don't forget to import it into the main application:

@NgModule({
    imports: [
        // ...
        CustomEditorsModule
        // ...
    ],
    providers: [],
    bootstrap: [ AppComponent ]
})
class AppModule {}

Import the FormRenderingService in any of your Views and override the default mapping, for example:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { CustomEditorComponent } from './custom-editor.component';

@Component({...})
class MyView {

    constructor(formRenderingService: FormRenderingService) {
        formRenderingService.setComponentTypeResolver('text', () => CustomEditorComponent, true);
    }

}

At runtime it should look similar to the following:

Replace custom stencils with custom components

This is an example of rendering custom APS stencils using custom Angular components.

Create a custom stencil

Create a basic stencil and call it Custom Stencil 01:
Note: the internal identifier is important as it will become the field type when the form is rendered.

Create a simple html layout for the Formruntime template and Formeditor template fields:

<div style="color: blue">Custom activiti stencil</div>

Create a test form based on your custom stencil:
Create a task using the test form. It will look similar to the following:

Create a custom widget

Load the form created in the previous steps into the ADF <adf-form> component:

Create an Angular component to render the missing content:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { WidgetComponent } from '@alfresco/adf-core';

@Component({
    selector: 'custom-stencil-01',
    template: `<div style="color: green">ADF version of custom Activiti stencil</div>`
})
class CustomStencil01 extends WidgetComponent {}

Place it inside a custom module:

import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
import { CustomStencil01 } from './custom-stencil-01.component';

@NgModule({
    declarations: [ CustomStencil01 ],
    exports: [ CustomStencil01 ]
})
class CustomEditorsModule {}

Import it into your Application Module:

@NgModule({
    imports: [
        // ...
        CustomEditorsModule
        // ...
    ],
    providers: [],
    bootstrap: [ AppComponent ]
})
class AppModule {}

Import the FormRenderingService in any of your Views and provide the new mapping:

import { Component } from '@angular/core';
import { CustomStencil01 } from './custom-stencil-01.component';

@Component({...})
class MyView {

    constructor(formRenderingService: FormRenderingService) {
        formRenderingService.setComponentTypeResolver('custom_stencil_01', () => CustomStencil01, true);
    }

}

At runtime you should now see your custom Angular component rendered in place of the stencils: