So this is article is to expand a little on the post I shared on Friday about my demo failure at IBMConnect. I will demonstrate why the problem occurred and what you can do about it. ALL thanks go to Simon Reid who pointed me at the reason once I had found the fix.

The Problem

I had a demonstration http://demo.xomino.com database which shows how some jQuery plugins can be used in XPages. The links within the menu “were” constructed as follows:

isExternal:=@If(@Right(Link; "http")!=""; @True; @False);

theLink:="<a href=\""+@If(isExternal; Link; "/"+@WebDbName+Link)+"\">"+LinkTitle+"</a>";

"<p>" + theLink+"</p>"+@NewLine

The point of this was to open up a link to an external site correctly and point a link to this database appropriately. The use of “/”+@WebDbName is to ensure that the database would still work when it was download and put on someone else’s server.

Works like a charm in the web
FAILED in XPinc

The Reason

As Simon Stated in his reply to my previous post – the XPiNC browser adds a /xsp/ to the front of the url.

To prove this I created a very simple link in an XPage:

<a href="javascript: alert(location.href)>Click Me</a>

And when I clicked the link in the XPiNC browser I got this…

And look at that “/xsp/xomino/jQinX.nsf” – there it is the xsp added to the URL

that is NOT what @WebDBName returns (/xomino/jQinX.nsf) and that is the root cause of the fail.

The Solution

There are a number of solutions and it really depends on what works for you – the fact that you are reading this you know about the issue and you need to work out which solution is best for you – here are some options if you need XPiNC support:

1. Don’t user @WebDbName to get the database path – plain and simple.
2. If you are able to – compute the links to the other XPages using the link control. I personally despise the link control because it is limiting and does not slot well into jQuery plugins – but it is an option.

The following code creates a link to the LongPress demo page – this works in XPiNC and on the Web

	<xp:link escape="true" text="Long Press Link" id="link2" value="/xLongPress.xsp" title="Long Press Link"></xp:link>

The link created looks like this in XPiNC

	<a id="view:_id1:_id2:_id52:link2" href="/xsp/xomino%5CjQinX.nsf/xLongPress.xsp" class="xspLink" title="Long Press Link">Long Press Link</a>

And looks like this in a browser

	<a id="view:_id1:_id2:_id52:link2" href="/xomino/jQinX.nsf/xLongPress.xsp" class="xspLink" title="Long Press Link">Long Press Link</a><br>

Unfortunately I want my links in documents in a view so that I can look them up – so I can’t use the xp:link

Here are some other options

1. Use links which are not relative to the databasePath on the server. In my case I changed the menu links to be relative to each other “xPageSlide.xsp” rather than /xomino/jQinX.nsf/xPageSlide.xsp
2. Use jQuery or dojo to do some form of XPiNC detection and manipulate the links after they have been sent to the page. You could do this by detecting if /xsp/ was the start of your location.path variable and adding it to all the link you cared about – this is dangerous and risky – not favorite which is also why I have no example.

 

Conclusion

The XPiNC browser adds /xsp/ to the front of all URLs – be aware of it

The solution depends on your needs – but for normal links to other XPages use the xp:link control which will do the link figuring out on it’s own

If I had not presented this and FAILED at IBMConnect I would not have had the conversation about it – and would not have learned something very important like this – AWESOME!

 

General Comment

How you deal with failure says a lot about your personality – if it drives you to be better then good for you.

This failure is a learning experience which was handled on stage by laughter, and I hope by this blog post as a learning experience for all 🙂