Custom Widgets

Custom Widgets

When creating XML content the input methods available with the existing widget types might not suffice for the desired content.

By subclassing A_CmsWidget you can easily create your own widget types. In order to make use of it it can be referenced from XSD files by its FQCN or by a alias name for the class in opencms-vfs.xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE opencms SYSTEM "http://www.opencms.org/dtd/6.0/opencms-vfs.dtd">
<opencms>
  <vfs>
     ...
     <xmlcontent>
       ...
       <widgets>
         ...
         <widget class="com.acme.widgets.AcmeEmployeeSelectionWidget"
           alias="AcmeEmployeeSelectionWidget" />
       </widgets>
       ...
     </xmlcontent>
  </vfs>
</opencms>

You need to restart OpenCms to activate the change. If such an alias has been defined, the widget can be used as shown in the next listing.

<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
  elementFormDefault="qualified">
  <xsd:include schemaLocation="opencms://opencms-xmlcontent.xsd" />
  ...
  ... your complexType definitions which include an element Employee
  ...
   <xsd:annotation>
     <xsd:appinfo>
       <layouts>
         <layout element="Employee" widget="AcmeEmployeeSelectionWidget" />
       </layouts>
     </xsd:appinfo>
  </xsd:annotation> 
</xsd:schema>