Refresh the parent view when a taskflow displayed in a popup returns

This post discusses an interesting use case on refreshing the parent view when an in-line popup taskflow returns. There are two taskflows, both work with separate transaction contexts(Transaction attribute is set as new-transaction). Second taskflow is invoked from the first one as a dialog. The requirement here is to refresh the 'executables' of calling page(from first taskflow) when the second taskflow returns. This scenario usually arises when the second task flow updates tables used by the first one from a different transaction context.

To learn more on taskflow, please refer Part III Creating ADF Task Flows in Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle ADF.

Cool, now back to the use case. One possible solution for the above scenario is to define a returnListener for secondary window on the command button (which invokes second taskflow as dialog) and add the custom logic to refresh the underlying IteratorBindings used by the parent page. Last step is to manually refresh the parent view by adding it as PartialTarget - RequestContext.getCurrentInstance().addPartialTarget(returnEvent.getComponent().getParent().getParent());
That's it, job is done. I'm copying the relevant code snippet below for your reference.

<af:commandMenuItem text="Create" id="cmi1" action="create"
useWindow="true"
windowEmbedStyle="inlineDocument"
windowModalityType="applicationModal"
returnListener="#{viewScope.RefreshBean.dialogReturnListener}"
windowHeight="250" windowWidth="500"/>

public void dialogReturnListener(ReturnEvent returnEvent) {
  BindingContext bc = BindingContext.getCurrent();
  DCBindingContainer dcb =
    (DCBindingContainer)bc.getCurrentBindingsEntry();
  DCIteratorBinding iter =
    dcb.findIteratorBinding("DepartmentsView1Iterator");
  iter.executeQuery();
  RequestContext.getCurrentInstance().addPartialTarget(returnEvent.getComponent().getParent().getParent());

}

You can download the sample workspace from here.
[Runs with Oracle JDeveloper 11g R1 PS2 + HR Schema]

How to run this sample?

Run the main.jspx. This page contains 'outer-task-flow-definition' which displays Departments details on a table. Select the 'create' menu item from the toolbar, which opens up 'inner-task-flow-definition' in a popup. Key in the new department details and click on Save. This action closes the popup and then refreshes the parent view to display new record.


Learn More ...

There are a lot more points like this. If  you are curious to learn the internals of the ADF Business Components and ADF Binding Layer,  the following book is for you - Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide.
More details about this book can be found in this post- http://jobinesh.blogspot.in/2012/07/pre-order-your-copy-of-oracle-adf-real.html