From this question (Hyperlink inside label field in Vaadin 12) I was able to use Vaadin's HTML component to create custom html code (and it worked fine, including putting in ahref links etc.)
However, Vaadin provides the "Anchor" component which appears to be the far more powerful (and potentially more secure) way of creating links that can be used to navigate to either other classes I built or to external website (or even to download dynamically generated data in a streaming fashion).
However, what if I want to have both normal "label-like" text and an achor link all appear in a single paragraph? For example, in "normal html", I could just do this:
<p>
This is my normal text.
Download <a href="/resources/excelTemplate.xlsx" download> this Excel file</a>
and follow the instructions therein
</p>
and it would create the link somewhere within my <p>...</p>
paragraph. How can I do this in Vaadin with the Anchor object? The best I came up with thus far is to use Horizontal Layout and then add a label, an achor, and then another label -- but that is really really ugly and doesn't technically have the same effect (it won't wrap properly.) The other option is to NOT use "Anchor" but instead just use "HTML" component and just create ahref links everywhere, but that seems a tiny big ugly too (though I suppose it's an ok workaround.). (I'm assuming I can call any UI I build by sticking the url links in the ahref calls....) Thoughts on the "right Java Vaadin" way to do this?
Vaadin 10+ offers you (atleast) three ways to handle this kind of case. You mentioned two of the..
Make composition of components in Java. Instead of VerticalLayout you could wrap the content in Div and using Text component also in Div instead of Label. You can make this kind of custom component by extending Composite.
The second alternative is to use HTML component as you mentioned.
The third alternative is to create custom html polymer template and connect to it with PolymerTemplate class. That will result in custom component that behaves like the custom component of the first option. It is just different way of implementation.
Which one of the three is a correct way. From framework perspective all of them. Which one is correct for you depends on your preference and application.