XPages: Returning to the Prior Page

I read this post from Brad Balassaitis and shared that "I should have blogged that last year when I did it".  A couple of people encouraged me to blog it just for a different perspective, so here we go.

I have a button in my left navigator that opens an XPage for processing documents with a bar code scanner. That XPage does not include the navigator; it's like a new document. Once the user is done processing, they click a Finished button and I wanted them to go back where they came from.

My method of saving the page is the same as Brad's: a sessionScope variable.  This is the code in an Execute Script action in the button before it opens the new page:

var curURL = context.getUrl().toString();
sessionScope.put("bundleProcReturn",@RightBack(curURL,"/"));

As I look at it, perhaps view.getPageName() would be more efficient, but I didn't know about it at the time and I can't argue with success. :)

In the Finished button, the Open Page action computes the Page Name value as:

sessionScope.get("bundleProcReturn");

It's really handy that so many things in XPages can be computed.  Once you understand that, you can use that feature to have your applications do exactly what you want.  It takes a little more time to keep track of things like the page you were on when you launched an action, but the user experience can be so much better - and easier for users transitioning from a Notes client app to the XPages version of the app.

That isn't to say I want to make my XPages apps look and behave like a Notes client app, but there are times when those behaviors are "expected" or "normal".