Introduction

Vaadin provides a useful concept of data model. It consists of three levels: property, item, and container. Container is composed of items. Item is composed of properties. And each property is defined by type and value. The data model is realized as a set of interfaces: Property, Item, and Container.

We will learn how to bind each level of the data model to UI components. One of the most complex UI components is a table. We'll show how to bind this component to the container, how to add actions to the context menu, and how to use custom filter values in the table. We'll also describe Converters. It's a new feature in Vaadin 7. It is used to convert between the UI and the data model type. At the end we'll learn how to read and write cookies in the web browser.