Oracle ADF: Duplicating a ViewObject's current row

I wanted to add a Create Like functionality that would allow a new row to be inserted in a ViewObject then drive the user to an edit page where he or she would make ant changes required for valid insertion of the new row to the database and avoid having to re-enter everything from scratch.

In order to accomplish this I created the following method in the ViewObject's implementation class.

import oracle.jbo.AttributeDef;
import oracle.jbo.Row;
import oracle.jbo.ReadOnlyAttrException;
import oracle.jbo.TooManyObjectsException;

. . .

    /**
     * create and insert a row similar to the current
     */
    public void createLike()
    {
        // get the current row to dublicate
        Row currentRow = getCurrentRow();
        if (currentRow == null)
            return;
            
        // create new one
        Row newRow = createRow();
        
        // get the attribute values for the current attribute
        Object[] myValues = currentRow.getAttributeValues();
        
        for (int i = 0; i < currentRow.getAttributeCount(); i++)
            try {
                AttributeDef d = getAttributeDef(i);
                    
                if (d.getUpdateableFlag() != AttributeDef.READONLY)                
                    newRow.setAttribute( i, myValues[i]);                
            }    
            catch (ReadOnlyAttrException roe) {
                continue;
            }
            catch (Exception e) {
                // it is almost certain that the primary key will be
                // violated so the user must do something in the 
                // page following execution of the method.
                if (!(e instanceof TooManyObjectsException))
                    System.out.println(e.toString());
            }
            
        insertRow(newRow);        
    }

The code works fine and copies the values all columns from the current row into a new one except that of the last column that constitutes the primary key. That way the user will have to make the appropriate changes to the new record, so it can be inserted correctly.

There are a few points worth mentioning in this apprach

• if your view object contains attributes from multiple entity objects then the the key attributes of the referenced entities that gets inserted by the framework appear to be updatable -- hence the catch (ReadOnlyAttrException roe) line. I have brought this to the JDeveloper forum but got no suggestions.
• Using the above technique requires that you expose the createLike() method to the ViewObject's client interface. See the previous post for details.
• The most probable use of this method will be to place a command button into an <af:tableSelectOne> facet in order to drive your users to an edit page with values already set. On most occasions the edit page will contain a commit button that will perform the final post. My suggestion is to use a backing bean to invoke the commit action like I discuss in a previous article named ADF/JSF Avoiding uncaught exceptions after commit that will prevent the controller layer to change back to the browse page in case of any errors.