wicket-autowire

Apache Wicket is a great framework for web applications, and the decoupling of logic and layout is good, with one limitation: You have to "rebuild" the component hierarchy of your markup in your java code. Using this library makes your life easier:

• You don't have to add a component to its parent yourself.
• You can skip a component in the markup if you want to.
• You can simply have differenty styles with completely different component positions.
• You dont have to call the constructor of the component and pass the id as a string.

How to use:

Add the following lines to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
	<groupId>com.github.wicket-acc</groupId>
	<artifactId>wicket-autowire</artifactId>
	<version>1.0.0</version>
</dependency>

To enable auto-wire in your wicket application, install wicket-autowire in your application's init() method:

AutoWire.install(this);

Now components are built and added to page automatically and at the right place. The wicket id is taken from the field's name:

public class BasicPanel extends Panel {

	@AutoComponent
	Label label;

	public BasicPanel(final String id) {
		super(id);
	}

}

How it works:

Wicket auto-wire works in two phases:

1. On construction, it injects components to the annotated fields
2. On initiation, it adds each component of an annoated field to its parent, corresponding to the html markup.

Customizing

If you want to create and assign components manually (for example if there is no suitable constructor), disable injection:

@AutoComponent(inject=false)
Link<?> link;

Sometimes the component id is not a valid java identifier. No problem, just annotate the id:

@AutoComponent(id="like-button")
LikeButton likeButton;

Limitations

• Each auto-wired component must be a direct child of the declaring component or must have an auto-wired parent, that is also declared in the same component.
• It is not possible to access a field of the enclosing class in the constructor of an auto-wired non-static inner class.
• Injected components need a constructor with wicket id as the only parameter. For Links, that are typically anonymous inner classes, you can use regular inner classes.