(ATS04-PLAT00) Building Widgets for the Accelrys ELN Home Page

David Pirkle

Principal Software Engineer, R & D

david.pirkle@accelrys.com

The information on the roadmap and future software development efforts are intended to outline general product direction and should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision.

• A quick overview of the home page and out-of-the-box widgets

Demo

Home Page

• The Home Page is a container of widgets

• Handles widget layout and persistence of widget settings

HomePageWidget

• To start developing a custom widget, extend HomePageWidget

• Subclass is responsible for returning factory classes that create:

– widget view

– widget settings view

• Subclass must also manage widget settings

• First example: RSS Feed Widget, Part 1

Demo

Widget View

• The widget view is the user control that appears on the home page

• Create your view by extending UserControlWidgetView

Publishing a Widget

• See the sample code in the PublishWidgetToVault project

• Command line utility takes 6 parameters:

– Server

– Username

– Password

– Vault path of widget folder

– Widget title

– Assembly-qualified name of the main widget class

• Second example: RSS Feed Widget, Part 2

Demo

Refreshing the Widget View

• View may need to periodically refresh (ex., inbox widget)

• Manual refresh supported by refresh button in widget title bar

• Refresh button triggers call to RefreshView

• If you want auto-refresh, your view must handle this

• Use ShowBusySpinner and HideBusySpinner while view is updating

Widget View

• Use DisplayMessage for messages such as errors

• Override Dispose to dispose of resources

• Third example: RSS Feed Widget, Part 3

Demo

Adding Widget Settings - Overview

• Extend WidgetMemento to persist settings

• Extend UserControlConfigurationView for settings UI

• Extend ConfigurationViewBuilder as a factory for the settings UI

• Modify the widget view to respond to settings

Settings Persistence

• Extend Widget.WidgetMemento

• Implement properties for settings in the memento

• Add serialization decorators (DataContract and DataMember)

• Use your memento in the main widget class by overriding SaveToMemento and RestoreFromMemento

• Implement properties for settings in the main widget

• Also override ResetDefaultValues so the Reset button works OK

Settings UI

• Extend UserControlConfigurationView

• Override OnWidgetSet or use Widget property to access the main widget and its state

• Override SetConfigurationView, and update the UI based on the state of the main widget

• Add event handlers to set the state of the main widget as UI is manipulated

• Widget view subscribes to ConfigurationChanged event of the main widget in its override of OnWidgetSet

ConfigurationViewBuilder

• ConfigurationViewBuilder is a factory that creates the settings UI

• Extend ConfigurationViewBuilder, overriding CreateConfigurationView and CreateConfigurationView

• Override ConfigurationViewBuilders in the main widget to return this new class

• Fourth example: Structure Search Widget

Demo

Widgets that Search

• Work in Progress widget is an example of a widget that presents search results

• Extend QueryWidget to implement the main widget class for a query-based widget

• QueryWidgetViewBuilder can be used as is to create widget views that execute a query and present the results in a grid

• Auto-refresh also handled for you • Extend QueryWidgetConfigurationView to implement the settings

UI • The configuration view sets the main widget’s Query property,

when the settings UI is changed

• Fifth example: Pipeline Pilot Protocol Widget

Demo

ProtocolWidget

• ProtocolWidget can be configured to run a Pipeline Pilot protocol that produces HTML

• Views the result in the WebBrowser control • Modify the PipelinePilot | RunProtocol application permission

to add a new configuration key that specifies the location in the protocol tree where you will publish widget protocols – Name: WidgetProtocolRoot – Value: Protocols/Web Services/Accelrys/Notebook Widgets

• If you need to pass parameters to a protocol, override the GenerateProtocolParameters method

Performance Considerations

• Performance and memory profiling are critical • Widgets that refresh periodically can have a significant negative

impact on performance • Consider adding random amount to refresh interval to avoid

simultaneous refreshes (QueryWidgetView will handle this for you) • Notebook has 2 connections to Vault, so Widgets that refresh and

talk to Vault have the biggest potential to degrade system performance

• QueryWidgetView handles connection limitation for you (VaultObjectGrid.GridLoader set to a KeyedAsynchronousGridLoadStrategy that uses "share" as a key)

• Learned how to build custom widgets

– Extend base classes in Symyx.Notebook.Applications.HomePage and Symyx.Notebook.HomePage

– QueryWidget base classes can be extended for widgets that search

– Performance and memory considerations

• Sample widgets and documentation in the Notebook SDK

• Administration of widgets covered in session ATS4-APP02

Summary