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I want to create a form for an entity which has a many attributes. To ensure the ease of data entry, I want to split that form in multiple pages (for example 2 or 3 pages).
Let's take the ad entity example:
In page 1, the user will enter the ad text
In page 2, the user will enter his contact
In page 3, the user will provide the (X,Y) position of the ad
This split will require saving the available data (inserting in the database) in the 1st page before moving to the next page. Unfortunately, This is not possible due to constraints.
The question is: Is any documentations or any examples that solve this issue?
If no documentation is available, do you think it is better to split my entity in n entities in order to have one entity per page?
Thanks for you help.
You probably should use CraueFormFlowBundle. It provides facilities for building multi-step forms.
You can create one form type for an entire flow, or one form type per step.
It's very easy to setup. Everything is explained here.
You don't have to split your entity, but your form : create 3 forms, each containing the property needed from the ad entity.
You'll need to :
persist (and not flush) the $ad object at every step inside your controller
pass the $ad object as an argument when forwarding inside your controller
flush the $ad object in the last step
In pseudo-code, your controller would look like this :
public function newAdStep1() {
new Ad() // New instance of $ad
new formStep1($ad) // The first form containing only the ad text field
// The form was filled, manage it...
form->isValid()? {
persist($ad); // Persist the first part of your ad object
forward(newAdStep2, $ad) // Go on to step 2, your $ad object as an argument
}
// ... or display step1 to user
createView createAdStep1.html.twig('form' => $form);
}
public function newAdStep2($ad) {
new formStep2($ad); // Now the second form, containing the "contact" fields
isValid ? {
persist($ad)
forward(newAdStep3, $ad)
}
createView createAdStep2($form, $ad); // Your $ad object needs to be sent to the view
}
public function newAdStep3($ad) {
new formStep3($ad); // Third and last form, containing the (X,Y) fields
isValid ? {
$em->persist($ad);
$em->flush(); // Your instance of $ad can be stored in database now
return('success !');
}
return view createAdStep3($form, $ad);
}
You could store all the submitted data in a session or temporary table, then persist it all together at the end. However, I do my best to avoid extra work like this.
I think it may well be that your form steps follow the order by which the constraints dictate.
Saying that, sometimes I think this kind of problem can be solved by making a better design or process decision. i.e. limit the number of questions or only ask the vital ones at first. Without knowing the ins and outs it's hard to know whether this can be done.
When you create a Data Extender for a CME list – for instance to add a column for the Schema as in this example – it all works fine and dandy whenever you do actions that force a List reload.
However, some actions don’t force a list reload (like editing a component in a folder, then saving & closing) and it looks like Anguilla is loading the data for the item that changed using a different mechanism that loads only the data for the item in question (which makes sense).
If I would want my extended list view to behave properly and also load my additional attributes whenever a given item changes (instead of only when the list view is reloaded) what else do I need to do?
I found how Anguilla takes care of this. When you implement a Data Extender, you are extending the information regarding the items displayed in the list, which basically means that you are extending the Data (Model) behind the item in question.
Each Item in Tridion has its own class in the Anguilla Framework, for example a Component has its own Tridion.ContentManager.Component javascript "class".
Having said this, and going back to the example that shows the schema name of the component, we are not actually extending the model, since that information is already available in the component. However, we need to overwrite the methods exposed on each used for displaying information in the lists the item is in, in this case a Component.
So, when we deal with a Data Extender, if we want a full implementation of this functionality, we not only need to define the data extender:
<ext:dataextender
name="IntelligentDataExtender"
type="Com.Tridion.PS.Extensions.IntelligentDataExtender,PS.GUI.Extensions">
<ext:description>Shows extra info</ext:description>
</ext:dataextender>
But also we need to define what's the column we are adding:
<ext:lists>
<ext:add>
<ext:extension name="IntelligentColumnExtender"
assignid="IntelligentDataColumnExtender">
<ext:listDefinition>
<ext:selectornamespaces/>
<ext:columns>
<column
xmlns="http://www.sdltridion.com/2009/GUI/extensions/List"
id="IntelligentData"
type="data"
title="Additional Info"
selector="#ExtendedInfo"
translate="String"/>
</ext:columns>
</ext:listDefinition>
<ext:apply>
<ext:view name="DashboardView" />
</ext:apply>
</ext:extension>
</ext:add>
</ext:lists>
Once we have this, the GUI will display the column we just added: "Additional Info"
Well, now we need to achieve the list refreshing when the item is edited/checked-out and in, etc...
For that, we need to extend the model and implement a few methods in the Object we are extending. In this example I am extending the Page object, so whenever a page is edited, the row in the list we want to update gets refreshed, together with the rest of the cells in the table.
To extend the model we need to define what types are we extending, in this example I am going to use the "Page" class as an example. First of all you need to define the model extension in the config file of your Editor:
<cfg:group name="Com.Tridion.PS.Extensions.UI.Model"
merger="Tridion.Web.UI.Core.Configuration.Resources.DomainModelProcessor"
merge="always">
<cfg:domainmodel name="Com.Tridion.PS.Extensions.UI.Model">
<cfg:fileset>
<cfg:file type="script">/Scripts/PSPage.js</cfg:file>
</cfg:fileset>
<cfg:services />
</cfg:domainmodel>
</cfg:group>
and
<ext:modelextensions>
<cfg:itemtypes>
<cfg:itemtype id="tcm:64" implementation="Com.Tridion.PS.Extensions.UI.PSPage" />
</cfg:itemtypes>
</ext:modelextensions>
As you can see I am extending the Page by using the "Com.Tridion.PS.Extensions.UI.PSPage" class that is defined in the Javascript file "/Scripts/PSPage.js".
The only method that handles the row refreshing is the following:
Com.Tridion.PS.Extensions.UI.PSPage.prototype.getListItemXmlAttributes
= function PSPage$getListItemXmlAttributes(customAttributes) {
var attribs = {};
var p = this.properties;
if (customAttributes) {
for (var attr in customAttributes) {
attribs[attr] = customAttributes[attr];
}
}
//This adds my custom column back when the item is updated
attribs["ExtendedInfo"] = p.extendedInfo;
return this.callBase(
"Tridion.ContentManager.Page",
"getListItemXmlAttributes",
[attribs])
};
As you can see I am implementing the "ExtendedInfo" attribute which is the one displayed in my additional column.
There's more than just adding a Data Extender when dealing with adding a column to our lists. I will write a post in my blog here to provide with a fully working example.
I hope it makes sense.
Well, Jaime correctly described how CME updates changed items in Lists. But I want to add some additional information on how List controls, domain model List and Items are interact with each other. This might help you building your own extension with similar functionality.
Most of the domain model List items inherit from Tridion.ContentManager.ListTcmItems class. On the moment when any List item, based on mentioned class, is loaded it will be registered in Lists Registry (and un-registered when the List is unloaded). This will allow Model to use registered Lists as source of static data for Items and to update changed Items data in these Lists.
Update Item static data
For example, we have loaded ListCategories and there is only one Category in the List:
var pub = $models.getItem("tcm:0-1-1");
var list = pub.getListCategories();
list.load();
// After list is loaded
list.getXml();
That getXml() returns an XML like (simplified):
<tcm:ListCategories>
<tcm:Item ID="tcm:1-4-512" Type="512" Title="Keys" />
</tcm:ListCategories>
After that, if you try to get some static data for Category "Keys" it will be already set:
var category = $models.getItem("tcm:1-4-512");
category.isLoaded(); // return false
category.isStaticLoaded(); // return false
category.getTitle(); // return undefined
category.getStaticTitle(); // return "Keys"!
That is possible because $models.getItem call will do two things: it will return an existing (or create a new) domain model object and call $models.updateItemData method with it. This method call will go through all registered Lists in the Lists Registry and for all Lists whose TimeStamp bigger than Item's Last Update TimeStamp will call list.updateItemData with the model object.
The updateItemData method will check if the passed Item is in the list and if it is, then the Item will be updated with the static data that is available from the List.
Updating data of changed Items in the List
When a domain model Item is modified (updated, removed, created new) one of these methods is called:
$models.itemUpdated
$models.itemRemoved
These methods will go through the Lists in Lists Registry and call list.itemUpdated (or list.itemRemoved). These methods will check is passed Item is contained in their List and if so they will update the List xml from the Item data.
For that purpose there is a getListItemXmlNode method in the Tridion.ContentManager.Item class. This method will build List xml node based on the array of attributes, provided by getListItemXmlAttributes method on the Item. That's what Jaime mentioned in his answer.
If the List xml was updated, one of these events will be fired on List object:
itemadd
itemupdate
itemremove
Listening to these events on a List object in your view will allow you to timely update your List Control.
So if you want this mechanism to work with your extension, stick to these rules:
If you are creating new domain model List object - it should inherit Tridion.ContentManager.ListTcmItems class or it should implement the getId(), itemUpdated(item), itemsUpdated(item), itemRemoved(item) and updateItemData(item) methods
If you want to see changes in List control - attach handlers to corresponding events on the domain model List object and update your List control
If you are creating new domain model Item - it should inherit Tridion.ContentManager.Item class and you should improve getListItemXmlAttributes method to return correct array of attributes for the List
The CME will indeed update the items in the list dynamically after the save occurs, without going to the server.
To do so, it calls a method named "getListItemXml" which returns the update XML element for the list. It will then update or add this element, which will update or add the item in the list view.
getListItemXml is a method of the different Model objects.
So how do you take advantage of this? I'm not sure.
Perhaps you could overwrite the method (or maybe getListItemXmlAttributes is best) with your own to add the additional data?
There is also an "itemupdate" event fired whenever an item is updated in the list.
You can hook into that by doing something like this:
var myEventHandler = function(event)
{
$log.message("Item updated. TridionEvent object passed: " + event);
}
var view = $display.getView();
var list = view.getListObject("uri-of-Folder");
list.addEventListener("itemupdate", myEventHandler);
I suppose you could use that to update the list entry for the item after the fact.
Be sure to call removeEventHandler at some point too.
None of this is optimal, obviously.
But I don't know of any extension point that would solve this particular problem.
I think I would (attempt to) implement this by monitoring the items in a folder periodically and updating that list after this polling mechanism had detected a change in that folder.
For example, I would write some javascript timeout or interval that runs in the background and checks the items in the current folder. If it detects a change, it triggers the update of the list.
Alternatively, you could also try to intercept the action that changed your list (e.g. the creation of a new item), maybe by means of an event system, and as such update your list. I don't think this is much different than the first approach, as I think it still implies some level of polling from the GUI side.
I will try to be as concise as possible. I'm using Flex/Hibernate technologies for my app. I also use Cairngorm micro-architecture for Flex. Because i'm beginner, i have probably misunderstand something about Caringorm's ModelLocator purpose. I have following problem...
Suppose that we have next data model:
USER ----------------> TOPIC -------------> COMMENT
1 M 1 M
User can start many topics, topics can have many comments etc. It is pretty simple model, just for example. In hibernate, i use EAGER fetching strategy for unidirectional USER->TOPIC and TOPIC->COMMENT relations(here is no question about best practices etc, this is just example of problem).
My ModelLocator looks like this:
...
public class ModelLocator ....
{
//private instance, private constructor, getInstance() etc...
...
//app state
public var users:ArrayCollection;
public var selectedUser:UserVO;
public var selectedTopic:TopicVO;
}
Because i use eager fetching, i can 'walk' through all object graph on my Flex client without hitting the database. This is ok as long as i don't need to insert, update, or delete some of the domain instances. But when that comes, problems with synchronization arise.
For example, if i want to show details about some user from some UserListView, when user(actor) select that user in list, i will take selected index in UserList, get element from users ArrayCollection in ModelLocator at selected index and show details about selected user.
When i want to insert new User, ok, I will save that user in database and in IResponder result method i will add that user in ModelLocator.users ArrayCollection.
But, when i want to add new topic for some user, if i still want to use convenience of EAGER fetching, i need to reload user list again... And to add topic to selected user... And if user is in some other location(indirectly), i need to insert topic there also.
Update is even worst. In that case i need to write even some logic...
My question: is this good way of using ModelLocator in Cairngorm? It seems to me that, because of mentioned, EAGER fetching is somehow pointless. In case of using EAGER fetching, synchronization on Flex client can become big problem. Should I always hit database in order to manipulate with my domain model?
EDIT:
It seems that i didn't make myself clear enough. Excuse me for that.
Ok, i use Spring in technology stack also and DTO(DVO) pattern with flex/spring (de)serializer, but i just wanted to stay out of that because i'm trying to point out how do you stay synchronized with database state in your flex app. I don't even mention multi-user scenario and poling/pushing topic which is, maybe, my solution because i use standard request-response mechanism. I didn't provide some concrete code, because this seems conceptual problem for me, and i use standard Cairngorm terms in order to explain pseudo-names which i use for class names, var names etc.
I'll try to 'simplify' again: you have flex client for administration of above mentioned domain(CRUD for each of domain classes), you have ListOfUsersView(shows list of users with basic infos about them), UserDetailsView(shows user details and list of user topics with delete option for each of topic), InsertNewUserTopicView(form to insert new topic) etc.
Each of view which displays some infos is synchronized with ModelLocator state variables, for example:
ListOfUsersView ------binded to------> users:ArrayCollection in ModelLocator
UserDetailsView ------binded to------> selectedUser:UserVO in ModelLocator
etc.
View state transition look like this:
ListOfUsersView----detailsClick---->UserDetailsView---insertTopic--->InsertTopicView
So when i click on "Details" button in ListOfUsersView, in my logic, i get index of selected row in ListOfUsers, after that i take UserVO object from users:ArrayCollection in ModelLocator at mentioned index, after that i set that UserVO object as selectedUser:UserVO in ModelLocator and after that i change view state to UserDetailsView(it shows user details and selectedUser.topics) which is synchronized with selectedUser:UserVO in ModelLocator.
Now, i click "Insert new topic" button on UserDetailsView which results in InsertTopicView form. I enter some data, click "Save topic"(after successful save, UserDetailsView is shown again) and problem arise.
Because of my EAGER-ly fetched objects, i didn't hit the database in mentioned transitions and because of that there are two places for which i need to be concerned when insert new topic for selected user: one is instance of selectedUser object in users:ArrayCollection (because my logic select users from that collection and shows them in UserDetailsView), and second is selectedUser:UserVO(in order to sync UserDetailsView which comes after successfull save operation).
So, again my question arises... Should i hit database in every transition, should i reload users:ArrayCollection and selectedUser:UserVO after save in order to synchronize database state with flex client, should i take saved topic and on client side, without hitting the database, programmatically pass all places which i need to update or...?
It seems to me that EAGER-ly fetched object with their associations is not good idea. Am i wrong?
Or, to 'simplify' :) again, what should you do in the mentioned scenario? So, you need to handle click on "Save topic" button, and now what...?
Again, i really try to explain this as plastic as possible because i'm confused with this. So, please forgive me for my long post.
From my point of view the point isn't in fetching mode itself but in client/server interaction. From my previous experience with it I've finally found some disadvantages of using pure domain objects (especially with eager fetching) for client/server interaction:
You have to pass all the child collections maybe without necessity to use them on a client side. In your case it is very likely you'll display topics and comments not for all users you get from server. The most like situation you need to display user list then display topics for one of the selected users and then comments for one of the selected topics. But in current implementation you receive all the topics and comments even if they are not needed to display. It is very possible you'll receive all your DB in a single query.
Another problem is it can be very insecure to get all the user data (or some other data) with all fields (emails, addresses, passwords, credit card numbers etc).
I think there can be other reasons not to use pure domain objects especially with eager fetching.
I suggest you to introduce some Mapper (or Assembler) layer to convert your domain objects to Data Transfer Objects aka DTO. So every query to your service layer will receive data from your DAO or Active Record and then convert it to corresponding DTO using corresponding Mapper. So you can get user list without private data and query some additional user details with a separate query.
On a client side you can use these DTOs directly or convert them into client domain objects. You can do it in your Cairngorm responders.
This way you can avoid a lot of your client side problems which you described.
For a Mapper layer you can use Dozer library or create your own lightweight mappers.
Hope this helps!
EDIT
What about your details I'd prefer to get user list with necessary displayable fields like first name and last name (to display in list). Say a list of SimpleUserRepresentationDTO.
Then if user requests user details for editing you request UserDetailsDTO for that user and fill tour selectedUser fields in model with it. The same is for topics.
The only problem is displaying list of users after user details editing. You can:
Request the whole list again. The advantage is you can display changes performed by other users. But if the list is too long it can be very ineffective to query all the users each time even if they are SimpleUserRepresentationDTO with minimal data.
When you get success from server on user details saving you can find corresponding user in model's user list and replace changed details there.
Tell you the truth, there's no good way of using Cairngorm. It's a crap framework.
I'm not too sure exactly what you mean by eager fetching (or what exactly is your problem), but whatever it is, it's still a request/response kind of deal and this shouldn't be a problem per say unless you're not doing something right; in which case I can't see your code.
As for frameworks, I recommend you look at RobotLegs or Parsley.
Look at the "dpHibernate" project. It implements "lazy loading" on the Flex client.
Grails offers the ability to automatically create and bind domain objects to a hasMany List, as described in the grails user guide.
So, for example, if my domain object "Author" has a List of many "Book" objects, I could create and bind these using the following markup (from the user guide):
<g:textField name="books[0].title" value="the Stand" />
<g:textField name="books[1].title" value="the Shining" />
<g:textField name="books[2].title" value="Red Madder" />
In this case, if any of the books specified don't already exist, Grails will create them and set their titles appropriately. If there are already books in the specified indices, their titles will be updated and they will be saved. My question is: is there some easy way to tell Grails to remove one of those books from the 'books' association on data bind?
The most obvious way to do this would be to omit the form element that corresponds to the domain instance you want to delete; unfortunately, this does not work, as per the user guide:
Then Grails will automatically create
a new instance for you at the defined
position. If you "skipped" a few
elements in the middle ... Then Grails
will automatically create instances in
between.
I realize that a specific solution could be engineered as part of a command object, or as part of a particular controller- however, the need for this functionality appears repeatedly throughout my application, across multiple domain objects and for associations of many different types of objects. A general solution, therefore, would be ideal. Does anyone know if there is something like this included in Grails?
removeFrom*
Opposite of the addTo method in that it removes instances from an association.
Examples
def author = Author.findByName("Stephen King")
def book = author.books.find { it.title = 'The Stand' }
author.removeFromBooks(book)
Just ran into this issue myself. It's easy to solve. Grails uses java.util.Set to represent lists. You can just use the clear() method to wipe the data, and then add in the ones you want.
//clear all documents
bidRequest.documents.clear()
//add the selected ones back
params.documentId.each() {
def Document document = Document.get(it)
bidRequest.documents.add(document)
log.debug("in associateDocuments: added " + document)
};
//try to save the changes
if (!bidRequest.save(flush: true)) {
return error()
} else {
flash.message = "Successfully associated documents"
}
I bet you can do the same thing by using the "remove()" method in the case that you don't want to "clear()" all the data.
For a good explanation of deleting a collection of child objects with GORM have a look at the Deleting Children section of this blog post - GORM gotchas part 2
It's recommended reading, as are parts 1 and 3 of the series.
I am just starting to learn Grails myself and saw your question as an interesting research exercise for me. I do not think you can use the conventional data binding mechanism - as it fills in the blanks using some kind of Lazy map behind the scenes. So for you to achieve your goal your "save" method (or is it a function?) is unlikely to contain anything like:
def Book = new Book(params)
You need a mechanism to modify your controller's "save" method.
After some research, I understand you can modify your scaffolding template which is responsible for generating your controller code or runtime methods. You can get a copy of all the templates used by Grails by running "grails install-templates" and the template file you would need to modify is called "Controller.groovy".
So in theory, you could modify the "save" method for your whole application this way.
Great! You would think that all you need to do now is modify your save method in the template so that it iterates through the object entries (e.g. books) in the params map, saving and deleting as you go.
However, I think your required solution could still be quite problematic to achieve. My instinct tells me that there are many reasons why the mechanism you suggest is a bad idea.
For one reason, off the top of my head, imagine you had a paginated list of books. Could that mean your "save" could delete the entire database table except the currently visible page? Okay, let us say you manage to work out how many items are displayed on each page, what if the list was sorted so it was no longer in numerical order - what do you delete now?
Maybe multiple submit buttons in your form would be a better approach (e.g. save changes, add, delete). I have not tried this kind of thing in Grails but understand actionSubmit should help you achieve multiple submit buttons. I certainly used to do this kind of thing in Struts!
HTH
I'm just running into this same issue.
My application's domain is quite simple: it has Stub objects which have a hasMany relationship with Header objects. Since the Header objects have no life of their own, they're entirely managed by the Stub controller and views.
The domain class definitions:
class Stub {
List headers = new ArrayList();
static hasMany = [headers:Header]
static mapping = {headers lazy: false}
}
class Header {
String value
static belongsTo = Stub
}
I've tried the "clear and bind" method but the end result is that the "cleared" objects are left over in the database and grails will just create new instances for the ones that were not removed from the relationship. It does seem to work from an user's perspective, but it will leave lots of garbage objects in the database.
The code in the controller's update() method is:
stubInstance.headers.clear()
stubInstance.properties = params
An example: while editing the -many side of this relationship I have (for a given Stub with id=1):
<g:textField name="headers[0].value" value="zero" id=1 />
<g:textField name="headers[1].value" value="one" id=2 />
<g:textField name="headers[2].value" value="two" id=3 />
in the database there are 3 Header instances:
id=1;value="zero"
id=2;value="one"
id=3;value"two"
after removing header "one" and saving the Stub object the database will have headers:
id=1;value="zero"
id=2;value="one"
id=3;value"two"
id=4;value="zero"
id=5;value="two"
and the Stub object will now have an association with Headers with id=4 and id=5...
Furthermore, without the clearing of the list, if an index is not present in the submitted request.headers list, on data binding grails will keep the existing object at that location unchanged.
The solution that occurs to me is to bind the data, then check the Stub's headers for elements that are not present in the submitted list and remove them.
This looks like a pretty simple scenario, isn't there any built-in functionality to address it?
It's a bit overkill to have to write your own synchronization logic for maintaining relationships, especially when the quirks that make it non-trivial are caused by grails itself.
What about deletion, shouldn't the clear()'ed elements be gone from the database? Am I missing something in the relationship or domain object definitions?
class Stub {
List headers = new ArrayList();
static hasMany = [headers:Header]
static mapping = {
headers lazy: false
**headers cascade: "all-delete-orphan"**
}
}
class Header {
String value
static belongsTo = Stub
}
I have added the cascade property on the owning side of relationship and Now if you try to save the stub, it will take care of removing deleted items from the collection and delete them from the DataBase.
I'm currently building the client side of a Flex/PHP project using the Presentation Model pattern.
What I'm trying to achieve:
I currently have a view displaying non-editable information about a domain object called Node. Depending on if the Node is editable and the user has the right privileges, an additional view becomes available where it's possible to make changes to this object. Any changes made are only committed to the server once the user decides to "Save Changes". If changes are made to a NodeA and the user navigates away to a different NodeB without saving them, NodeA is reverted to its original state.
Design:
I have a PM for the info view holding a reference to the current Node. The PM for the edit view is extended from this info PM, adding methods to make changes to the wrapped Node object. Both PMs has the same Node reference injected into them and all fields in the info/edit views are bound to the Node via their PMs.
The problem:
When the user makes changes to NodeA but doesn't commit them, I can't seem to think of an elegant solution to revert back to the original state. Basically, what I've thought of so far is to hold separate value copies on the edit PM, either clone-creating a new Node reference or through an identical set of Node properties. Of these two the former seems like the better idea because the Node already houses domain logic, but I wonder whether creating clones of unique domain objects is a bad practice, even if it's used in a limited scope.
I handle similar cases by storing the original data in an XML property of the Value Object ("VO"), and reset all of the other property values when the VO is needed.
So, when it is first needed to be viewed, I go get the XML:
<Node>
<prop1>value</prop1>
<prop2>value</prop2>
<prop3>value</prop3>
<prop4>value</prop4>
</Node>
When I retrieve the XML, in my result handler, the first thing I do is create an instance of my VO, and set the XML property, and then call a public function in a separate class to set the VO's properties:
private function getNodeResultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void
{
var myNode:Node = new Node();
myNode.xmlData = new XML(event.result);
nodeUtils.setNodeProperties(myNode);
}
public class nodeUtils
{
public function setNodeProperties(node:Node):void
{
var nodeXmlData:XML = node.xmlData;
myNode.prop1 = nodeXmlData.prop1;
myNode.prop2 = nodeXmlData.prop2;
myNode.prop3 = nodeXmlData.prop3;
myNode.prop4 = nodeXmlData.prop4;
}
}
Then, any time you switch your view to edit mode, you call that same function to reset the properties to the values stored in the XML.
The only other thing you need to do is reset that XML any time the user commits changes to the VO. I usually handle this by passing back the VO's data in the same format on a Save and Get, and then saving the XML just as above.
I usually do this in a Cairngorm MVC application, so I have event/command chains to handle all of this, but you can put this functionality in any number of classes, or in the VO class itself, whichever is easiest for you to maintain.
Each view should have it's own instance of your Presentation Model class. Just maintain it in memory if the user has not saved it when moving to another view. Cloning accomplishes basically the same thing through a more convoluted process.