Page History

A custom MVC UI theme can be created if the use of default Blueriq themes is not desired. This could be the case if for example you want to create your own client application and Extending themes is not sufficient.

Introduction

The MVC UI has two default themes (Forms theme and Dashboard theme) and bootstrap3 and bootcards) and has support for custom made themes. A theme is basically a set of files and some configuration that consists of the following components:

...

...

...

...

...

Getting started

The base of a theme is the index file from which the main page is buildbuilt. Blueriq uses a template engine called StringTemplate to  to make server properties available in the client.

A default Blueriq index page is injected with a template context that features the following properties:

context.sessionId

string

When creating a custom theme you need to provide a StringTemplate index file.

context.theme

string

context.webResourcesBasePath

string

context.apiBasePath

string

context.currentPage

{ [elementKey: string]: Element }

context.developmentMode

boolean

context.sessionTimeout

integer

Creating the index file

The index file is the starting point of a custom theme and is a StringTemplate template that follows a certain structure. For full details on the StringTemplate syntax and usage please check the official official documentation. The purpose of the initial page is to load all the required resources (e.g. JavaScript or CSS files) and to provide a base layout.

...

First the delimiters to use around StringTemplate variables are set to "$" instead of the default "<" ">" delimiters to be able to use variables within HTML. StringTemplate uses a function call to generate the template: main(context). The context object that is passed with this function call contains all properties as described above. In the function body (between "<<" and ">>") the actual index page is placed, which is a full HTML page.

...

Save the custom index file as a a .stg file  file so it is recognized by StringTemplate.

...

Installing your custom theme is easily done by putting all files in the 

Java

1. Create a a UI/mvc folder in  folder in 

   Include Page
   _HomeFolderConfigLocation _HomeFolderConfigLocation

    and put the custom index file (for example example custom_dashboard.stg) here.
2. Create a webresources/mvc folder in 

   Include Page
   _HomeFolderConfigLocation _HomeFolderConfigLocation

    and put the JavaScript and CSS files here (optionally in /js and  and /css subfolders sub folders).
3. Add a configuration section for your custom theme to aquima.properties in to 

   Include Page
   _HomeFolderPropertiesFileJava _HomeFolder

    root, as described in the Configuration section below.

.NET

1. PropertiesFileJava

    in 

   Include Page
   _ConfigLocation _ConfigLocation

    root
2. Create a UI/mvc folder in the Configuration folder in the .NET webapp installation and put the custom index file (for example custom_dashboard.stg) here.
3. Create a webresources/mvc folder in the Configuration folder and put the JavaScript and CSS files here (optionally in /js and /css subfolders).
4. Add a configuration section for your custom theme to Web.config in the wwwroot folder, as described in the Configuration section below.

Configuration

In order to configure your theme so it will be known by the Runtime several properties must be set. The following example shows properties for registering a theme named "custom_dashboard" in both Java and .NET:

...

blueriq.mvc.themes=custom_dashboard
blueriq.mvc.custom_dashboard.templateGroupFile=UI/mvc/custom_dashboard.stg
blueriq.mvc.custom_dashboard.templateName=main

.NET

The mvc.themes or  or name property specifies the name for the theme which will be displayed in the Runtime theme selector. The other two properties specify which StringTemplate index file should be used and which StringTemplate function should be called to render the index page (see "Creating the index file" above). The path to the index file is relative to either the JAR/DLL or the