Target Skill:

Describe the role of front-end objects, and how to customize them 

Application Logic (Front-End)

The BillerXpert front-end provides a stencil for creating industry-specific applications, built using the five types of objects illustrated in the following diagram: 

Presentation

Presentation objects are implemented as NAS appLogics. They field incoming requests and act as a dispatch mechanism that creates and then calls a related Business Logic object to do the real work. Presentation objects leverage the load balancing capability of appLogics and have a one-to-one mapping with BillerXpert features (14 in telco stencil). The following are examples of Presentation objects: 

  • BXAccountCenterAL--presents account and services 
  • BXBillDocAL--displays a statement 
  • BXBillDocSearchAL--searches statements 
  • BXBillingCenterAL--presents billing summary info
  • BXPaymentAL--adds or changes payments 
  • BXSignOnAL--logs into system 
  • BXSignUpAL--registers a customer to the site 
  • BXUserProfileAL--changes user profile info. 
Templates

Template objects receive data from the Output objects (Template Data or Template Map) and are populated by appLogic’s displayTemplate(). The following are examples of Template objects: 

  • billing_center.htm--billing center display 
  • error_msg.html--error template 
  • statement_current.html--current statement 
Validation

Validation objects check input data from HTML forms on behalf of appLogics. Validation classes are subclasses of BXValidateView and are instantiated by an appLogic. They have two important methods: 

  • validate()--called from appLogic to perform input checking 
  • setError()--called by validate() if an error occurs 
The following are examples: 
  • BXValidateSignUpView--checks registration 
  • BxValidateSighOnView--checks logon 
  • BXValidatePwdView--checks password 
  • BXValidateAcctView--checks customer acct
  • BXValidatePayView--checks payment 
Business Logic 

Business Logic objects contain business rules that specify what data is needed. They are also instantiated by an appLogic and may be shared among multiple appLogics. Business Logic objects instantiate and call component business objects to actually get the data. The following are examples: 

  • BXBillingActivity--manipulates billing activity info. 
  • BXCustomerAcctView--retrieves customer account info. 
  • BXPaymentView--manipulates payment info like payment methods 
  • BXStatementView--retrieves statement summary and detailed info
Output

Output objects create dynamic data to be displayed in a template. There are two kinds of output objects: 

  • Template Data--for hierarchical data with multiply occurring rows 
  • Template Map--simple name-value pairs to substitute into the placeholder in a template 
The following are examples: 
  • BXBillDocTemplateData/BXBillDocTemplateMap--sets up data for billing statement template 
  • BXPayViewTemplateData/BXPayViewTemplateMap--sets up data for payment template
     
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