The HelpProvider abstract class provides flexible mechanism for enabling context-sensitive help from applications created with the UIX UI Components or UIX language. HelpProvider is a bean that defines two standard Map and a set of standard keys.
Similar to most UI frameworks, context sensitive help in the UIX Framework is topic-id based. Developers use topic-ids in their pages and components, and these topic-ids are passed to the help technology which resolves the topic-id at runtime and displays the desired help topic. In UIX, developers will be able to use topic-ids as keys to the "helpTopic" Map when data-binding the destination attribute of various components (links, buttons, global buttons). In addition, the developer will be able to use the standard HelpProvider constant keys (like FRONT_PAGE_KEY) when data-binding destinations using the "helpSystem" Map to display navigation and system pages in the help system.
HelpProvider can be extended to support a variety of different help technologies. Subclasses only need to implement the getHelpSystemValue() method and the getHelpTopicValue() method. Implementations can use various schemes to create the value returned for a given topic-id or system key (remember that the value will be used as a destination).
For example, a simple getHelpTopicValue() implementation would simply map the topic-ID to the URL of a static webpage, and return that string URL as the value. A HelpProvider subclass for a web-based help system, like the OracleHelpProvider, may choose to generate a URL off to a separate servlet and simply pass the topic-id as a parameter.
Most HelpProvider subclasses will wish to return a javascript pseudo URL that will launch a secondary window for displaying the help topic. See the SecondaryWindowHelpProvider abstract class for more information.
@version $Name: $ ($Revision: adfrt/faces/adf-faces-impl/src/main/java/oracle/adfinternal/view/faces/el/HelpProvider.java#0 $) $Date: 10-nov-2005.19:06:18 $
@author The Oracle ADF Faces Team