Customizing LiftWeb’s error/warning/notice messages
After some CRUD experiments with LiftWeb, I’m really in love with the “view first” paradigm. Specially because the XHTML bindings are very webdesigner-friendly.
One big limitation is the <lift:msgs> snippet - it produces a mandatory “Error” title. This obligatory text is unacceptable when developing enterprise applications. Hopefully, there’s an workaround: you can create a snippet named “Msgs” with a “render” method. Your snippet will “override” the builtin (without overriding the class), like this:
package mypkg.snippets
class Msgs {
def msgs(cls : String, ms : List[NodeSeq]) = ms match {
case Nil => Nil
case x => <div class={ cls }>{ ms.flatMap(m => <p>{ m }</p>) }</ul>
}
def render(xml : NodeSeq) : NodeSeq =
<div id={ LiftRules.noticesContainerId }>
{ msgs("msgError", noIdMessages(errors)) }
{ msgs("msgWarning", noIdMessages(warnings)) }
{ msgs("msgNotice", noIdMessages(notices)) }
</div>
}
This little snippet will emit messages using <div> and <p> instead of <ul> and <li> (with that hardcoded title block). And, since you have the control over the snippet, you can put stub code inside <lift:msgs/> and allow your webdesigner use their favorite WYSIWYG editor:
<lift:msgs> <div class="msgError"> <p>name must have 3 charactes</p> </div> </lift:msgs>