Are there any resources on how to design frameworks, i.e. tips and tricks, best practices, etc..
For .NET there's
Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries
http://www.amazon.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines-Conventions-Libraries/dp/0321545613
You can also study frameworks like Spring.
The google tech talk lecture How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters provides many insights on how to design a good API.
In regards to PHP ehre are some Tips from me:
Use MVC as your framework type.
MVC (Model-View-Controller) is the best way to create a framework, keeping your Logic and Models separate to your Views etc is the best way to accomplish a fresh clean application.
I believe thatStack Overflow uses a MVC pattern, Not sure if its PHP / ASP tho.
Make your code as open as possible.
Meaning that practically any object is accessible throughout the application.
A way i achive this is by creating a static class that as a global scope to overcome the problem, for example:
class Registry{....}
Registry::add('Database',New Database);
Registry::add('Input',New Input);
Registry::add('Output',New Output);
then anywhere throughout the application you can easily get objects like so:
Regsitry::get('Database')->query('Select .... LIMI 10')->fetchObject();
Do not use template engines
In my eyes template engines are not the best as PHP is itself a template engine, there's no need to create a lot of code to parse your templates and then have PHP parse it again, its logical.
Instead create an system where the user will tell the View what template file to output and check the catch for that, if its not in the cache then that object will transfer it to another object called lets say ViewLoader, Witch within the __Construct it includes the php template file, but also has other methods like url() and escape() etc so in tempalte fiels you can then use
$this->url('controller','method',$this->params);
Hope this helps you!
Related
Does Node/Express have a JSON templating engine like RABL (https://github.com/nesquena/rabl) or JBuilder? (http://railscasts.com/episodes/320-jbuilder?view=asciicast). I don't mean an HTML templating engine like Handlebars, Jade, or Underscore.js. I mean a JSON templating engine. These libraries simplify picking and choosing the elements and associations of your JSON.
Looks like there's one finally!
Here is the link to it https://www.npmjs.com/package/javelin
Also this is in the experimental stage so its not production ready yet.
Here's an extract from the link
javelin sets out with a few main goals in mind:
An easy, familiar, way to separate the view logic from your data within RESTful APIs
A simple, lightweight templating language that makes sense for application data
Ability to serve your API data in different formats from the same view
Lastly, this is heavily inspired from RABL.
Hope that helps!
I am new to spring mvc. I have a lot of doubts to be cleared before i can continue.
I want to create a simple application wherein an employee details such as name age phone etc is entered and through ajax call the form data has to be to sent to server using json. For server side i am using spring. And the submitted data has to be shown in a jquery data table. And again to retrieve data an ajax call has to be used to get the data as a json. And no binding tool like jackson should be used.
1.) how do i go about creating an application in eclipse. If i should do a simpel java project or a dynamic web project?
2.) Could any one pls provide a sample code of each of the steps.
Thank you in advance
First, I think it's easier to start with Maven, create a WAR project, and use that to generate the Eclipse project files, which you can then import. This has the advantage of allowing Maven to not only create the correct folder structure, but also let it manage your dependencies. There are plugins for Eclipse that help you work with Maven, and you should be able to find lots of How-Tos using Google. Otherwise, you would have to create a project type that generates the WAR, one of which I believe is a Web Project, and layout the folder structure manually.
After you have the proper folder layout, you will need to setup your web.xml to enable Spring, add your Java classes and view files (html, jsps, whatever), and build a WAR. The final step would be to deploy that WAR to a web container of some sort, like maybe Tomcat or Jetty. You can ether run it externally, or configure Eclipse to deploy and launch your WAR in the IDE directly. I prefer the latter approach, as it makes it easier to setup debugging, not that running it external makes it impossible.
In addition, I would recommend adding the Spring pluggins to Eclipse, or just download their STS (Spring Tool Suite), which is just Eclipse with all the Spring plugins already added and configured. STS has the bonus of already having tcServer available, which is Spring Source's flavor of Tomcat. Again, loads of how-tos available on how to do all of this.
Edit to answer first comment
I don't know if I can address your comment here fully, as it's a very broad request. You are basically asking how do I write a full application using jQuery and Spring MVC. The volumes of books dedicated to this subject, as well as many websites you could visit that give tutorials on how to start developing. In fact, I think the Spring website has a tutorial for building their demo Pet Clinic site using Spring MVC. What I will try to do is give you some direction on what you should be asking.
Spring MVC, as the name suggests, is a Model-View-Controller framework that leverages the Spring Framework. I will not attempt to go into any great detail, as again there are volumes of books out there on the subject of Spring and all its wonders, but in general Spring MVC wants an application broken into the following chunks:
1. The Model
These are the objects you are using to represent your "data". This can be data from a Database, flat file, some other web service call, or maybe just passed around in your Controller. You will hear them commonly referred to as domain objects or entities to name a few. But, no matter how you refer to them they are typically POJO (Plain Old Java Objects) Java Beans with no real business logic, who's only existence is to represent some "data" and how it relates to other "data".
Some people prefer to have this object know how to read/write itself to its data store, some people like to have an external object that is only used to handle the read/writes. These are sometime referred to as a DAO (Data Access Object) or a Repository. There are also frameworks you can use for dealing with this stuff, like Hibernate or JPA for databases.
2. The Service Layer
This isn't represented in the MVC acronym, and one might argue this is part of the "Controller", but it's usually a good idea to put your business logic into a service layer. This is typically a POJO class that has methods to do the things you need to do with your Model objects. It houses your business logic so all the business rules are in one place. These are usually split to represent business functions. For instance, if you had an application dealing with car purchases you might have one service class to deal with the User related functions (create a user, update a password, get his preferences), one to deal with inventory (what is in stock, what is on its way, what is the current sales price), and one to deal with making a purchase (validate the customer's credit, start the tag process, etc). Its also common for these services to have reference to each other. For instance, the User service above might use the Inventory service to get a list of VIN numbers for cars Bill sold last week.
3. The Controller
The controller is what glues the "view" to the service layer. It provides the mapping of the URLs in your app to the function(s) they perform in the service layer. Most people try not to clutter the Controller object with too much code, and try to push as much down into the Service layer as they can. But, as long as it's simple logic I personally don't mind having a tad bit of code in the Controller.
4. The View
This is what you are sending to the user. It may be a web page backed by a JSP. It may be an Excel spreadsheet report generated from user input. It may be a simple JSON response to a REST call. It's sort of "the sky's the limit" here. But, for the most part this is either a JSP view or a JSON or XML response from a web service call.
Now to address your comment more directly...
Since you are a novice, I would recommend one of 3 approaches:
Go get a book...do what the book says to do. There are tons out there. Find one that has a good walk-through of a project, and copy/paste their procedures. A good book will usually have a chapter on how to setup all the necessary tools (Eclipse, Tomcat/Jetty, etc)
Find a good how-to on the Internet. There are lots of people that have tutorials. Find one and copy/paste their procedures.
Use something like Spring Roo. Spring Roo is a code generation tool that can be used to build a fully working site with little to no code. I am a big fan of Roo, especially for lone developers not working in a team, as it can generate a TON of the boiler plate code most developers hate to write. It also does things in a very Spring-like fashion, since after all it was created by the Spring folks.
These will get you past the "how do I create the project in Eclipse" problem. Part 2 of question one is a little more tricky. I would say, for now, don't focus on AJAX and stuff. Focus on simply understanding how Spring MVC works. The problem is, you are basically trying to cram 10 things down at once. Spring MVC is hard enough to get your head wrapped around (the annotations, JSTL, EL, and the Spring custom tag libraries, not to mention all the other things you will probably be touching like Spring Data, etc), but then you want to add dynamic web pages, which is JavaScript (and most likely some framework like jQuery), and to cap it off you don't want to use anything like Jackson (not sure why, but ok...) to help ease the transition from Java to JavaScript. That's a tall order. Again, I would cut out AJAX/JavaScript stuff at first, get a good handle on how a SIMPLE application is built, and then you can jump into all the dynamic stuff.
For the last question, providing code samples, I would point you to mkyong's fantastic blog full of Spring-related tutorials as well as Spring's own Tutorial site and Spring's Sample site as a good starting point.
I want the Roo-generated JSON controller stuff. I don't want the full HTML scaffolding stuff.
As far as I can see, I can only generate the former as an aspect on the latter. Is it possible to generate them separately? I have a whole set of view controllers I'm writing of my own. Is there an annotation I can put on my controller to have Roo give me REST functions?
I figured it out.
The annotation #RooWebScaffold is the answer. I can't find a roo command to install those, but putting that annotation on my classes makes it generate the web scaffolding for the REST interface.
EDIT: Actually that completely doesn't answer my question. It DOES generate the REST access code, but it ALSO generates all the web scaffolding stuff. I've submitted a ticket on the JIRA for this feature.
I have a function in one of my views that formats data coming from the DB before displaying it. Since I use this function in many views, I'd like to make a global function that would be accessible from every view. How would I do that ?
As mentioned in the other answers, creating a helper is probably what you are looking for. See the cookbook entry for more information.
To make your helper available in all your views, add the helper to the $helpers array of your AppController (app/Controller/AppController.php).
Creating a helper (as Headshota and preinheimer explained) is the best idea if the function is complex..
But if your function is simple,
you can open the file app/config/bootstrap.php
write your function in this file and that's it..
the function will be accessible anywhere (models, controllers, views, etc)
hope that helps...
I think you want to create a view helper, here's an example one: Minify Helper
Yes you have to create your owns View Helpers.
You will find the documentation in the Section "View > Helpers" of the cook book : here
But the section "Core Libraries > Helpers" just explains how to use the ready-to-use cakephp Helpers like HtmlHelper or FormHelper: here
Likewise you can note that this is the same logic with firstly controllers and components, and secondly model and behaviours.
Then the cook book presents the core components in core-libraries/toc-components
How to create your own is explained in controllers/components
The core behaviours are presented in core-libraries/toc-behaviors
The how to create your own is in models/behaviours
This system is really efficient and makes cakePHP a handy framework (thank you the great documentation) that implement efficiently the Model-View-Controller design pattern.
If you understand that question correctly, you never ask yourself this kind of issue about cakePHP and by the same time, about the MVC pattern.
I'm starting to use Dojo; this is (essentially) my introduction to AJAX. We have a Java backend (torque / turbine / velocity) and are using the jabsorb JSON-RPC library to bridge Java and Javascript.
What do I need to know? What is the big picture of Dojo and JSON, and what are the nasty little details that will catch me up? What did you spend a couple of days tracking down, when you started with Dojo, that you now take for granted? Thanks for any and all tips.
The first thing to do is get familiar with the Dojo Object Model. JavaScript does not have a class system so the Dojo toolkit has created a sort of "by convention" object model that works rather well but is very different to how it works in Java for example.
The reason I suggest getting familiar with it is so you can dig into the code base whenever you start experiencing issues. The documentation available has improved significantly over the past year, but every now and then I find myself having to work out a bug in my code by learning exactly how the Dojo code involved works.
Another tip is to make use of the custom build feature which will significantly improve performance once your application is ready.
As a general tip on DHTML programming, use firebug (a plug-in for Firefox). It allows JavaScript debugging, DOM inspection, HTML editing in real-time and a whole lot more. I've become totally reliant on it now when I'm working in DHTML!
Good luck!
I too just dove head first into Dojo, they have a good API documentation at http://api.dojotoolkit.org/. Even Dojo Campus has some good examples of the plug ins.
If you ask me O'Reilly's Dojo: The Definitive Guide is the best Dojo book on the market.
I also would like any tips and pointers from the Dojo masters.
Cheers
Make sure documentation you read pertains to as recent a release as possible, since a lot has changed very quickly in the Dojo architecture.
Also a great way to see how some Dojo or Dijit widget is used is to look at the source code for the tests - for example, the DataGrid has poor documentation but the tests show a lot of use cases and configurations.
Sitepen is a good resource for Dojo articles.
Also, read up on Deferred (andDeferredList), as well as hitch() - two extremely flexible and powerful features of Dojo. SitePen has a great article on demystifying Deferreds.
Check out plugd, a collection of Dojo extensions that make some things more convenient or adds some clever functionalities to the language. It's made by one of the core Dojo authors so it's rather reliable. It even brings some jQuery niceties into the framework.
Some more things: look into data stores, they're very useful and a much cleaner way to handle Ajax. DojoX has a lot of nice ones too, just remember that DojoX ranges in how well documented or how experimental the components are. Learn the differences between dojo.byId and dijit.byId, as well as the HTML attributes id versus jsId (again, Sitepen has an article).
A couple of things that caught me when I started writing widgets where:
[Understand what dojoAttachPoint, dojoAttachEvent, containerNode and widgitsInTemplate do][1]
have a firm grasp of closures,
Get your head around deferreds
understand ItemFileReadStore, ItemFileWriteStore and stores in general
You can look at stores like a ResultSet (sort of) as well you can data bind them to widgets.
With these major concepts you can start to put together some compelling applications.
Generally what I do is I build a JavaScript facade around my service calls and then I will scrub the response into a store by attaching the first callback in the facade, that call back converts the results into a store and then returns it. This allows me to not hard bind my services to Dojo constructs (so I can support mobile, etc.) while also retuning the data from the facade in a format that data aware widgets expect.
As well if you are doing Java service development you my want to look into JAX-RS. I started out using JSON-RPC which became JABS-ORB but after working with JAX-RS I prefer it, as it integrates well with JPA-EJB and JAXB.
First read how to configure Dojo in your application. Try to understand basic structure of Dojo like if we are writing dijit.form.Button or dijit/form/Button it means Button.js resides in dijit/form folder. Try to understand require, define, declare modules of Dojo. This is enough to start Dojo Toolkit.
Very important fact, indulge with your own sample project using Dojo.