The bean dataprovider is able to just provide data to the user that is supplied by rules or another wrapper around an application. The bean dataprovider contains no means of saving data, but it can serve as a base for other dataproviders. It just creates, update or delete beans based on the use interaction. XuluxPart rules should take care of the saving and retrieving of data. If you want to integrate xulux into your current application, then this is the easiest way to get started. When you are using tools like OJB, Hibernate and others : it is on the list to create dataproviders for them, but we have not yet started to create them.
The dictionary class is the main entry for connecting all magic that is related to dictionary processing. In the final version of the dataprovider, the Dictionary class, will be the container for dictionary processing.
The dictionary handler is the xml parser that constructs a valid dictionary out of xml. The format of the bean dictionary is described here.
The mapping groups fields together and gives information about how
to set and get data. Also it takes care of aliases, so you can limit
the exposure of your data or make it different.
The current implementation of a Mapping is BeanMapping, which takes
care of storing and getting data from the specified bean(s).
Through the dictionary.xml you can currently specify how to get and
set the data in case there is no default constructor and no default
getters and setters.
Nyx has a interface that represent fields, which to gui can use to get and set data through. The IField interface already represents partially what the dataprovider API will consist off. Currently there is only one implementation of the IField interface used and that is BeanField, which handles setting and getting data in beans. Since the dataprovider API still needs to be defined, not storage of the actual beans is done. You have to handle that manually in form rules.
Converters are responsible for converting an object to a representable format for the user. Converters also take care of converting the user input back to the object in a bean. This used with objects like Date, Double and Integer.