[Moo] Re: A "controller" class? How to design really complex functionality.

[Daniel Lohse]

Thanks! I'm also having a hard time keeping up with my client's  
demands. I'm at around 10 JavaScript files, a few 'shared' files with  
all the classes in it and because the client decided he might be  
including all (!) of the js files as he pleases it's crashing  
everywhere. Bad. Really bad.

So, today I stumbled over $Uses: http://blog.citycrawler.com/?p=47 and  
now you're also talking about something that could make it easier to  
manage this 'class hell'. I'm all for MooTools but the HTML shackles  
are shining through. :) "this.element is undefined" anyone? :D

Cheers, Daniel

On 2009-11-05, at 5/November, 1:15 AM, Ryan Florence wrote:


Sure, when I'm back on my computer I'll post what I've done so far.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 4, 2009, at 5:07 PM, Daniel Lohse  
<annismcken...@googlemail.com> wrote:


Can we have a look at that "Controller Class"? Please? :)
On 2009-11-05, at 5/November, 12:37 AM, Ryan Florence wrote:


So far this controller class is exactly what the doctor ordered, I  
guess I just sent the email out to see if I was on the right track.

Like you, I typically have a few classes and connect them through  
events right there in domready. But on this page those event  
handlers were getting gruesome, and I don't like seeing that much  
logic in my domready. I prefer to just create class instances and  
leave it at that.

Ryan Florence

[Writing TextMate Snippets] ( http://blog.flobro.com/ )

On Nov 4, 2009, at 4:21 PM, evan wrote:


I don't abstract my classes out as far as I have seen Aaron do in  
some
of the clientcide plugins. I tend to keep each "widget/control"  
as a
single class and then any interaction that will need to take place
between classes I do through custom events. I usually only need to
create a few events on each class to set up the interactions I  
need. I
also usually use a domready event to instantiate my classes and  
make
the connections through the events. If things got a little more
complex I could see moving it in to a controller class.

The complexity of a project has a lot to do on how I end up doing
things. I also change my mind on each project and usually try
something new. I am still hunting for that one solution that I will
use each time.


On Nov 4, 2:09 pm, Ryan Florence <rpflore...@gmail.com> wrote:
Most public facing websites I do are pretty basic, with a  
handful of
unrelated classes instantiated (a gallery, some menu navigation,  
maybe
some ajax fun).  You know, a fancy "brochure" website.

But when developing web applications I've ended up either  
created a do-
everything-class that has tens if not hundreds of methods; or
splitting up each piece of the page into separate classes with a  
lot
of events used to communicate with each other.

The do-everything-class just feels wrong.

10-20 classes on a page with all sorts of `onWhatever` functions  
makes
a mess out of my domready code.

Is there a happy medium?  Like a "controller" class?

So I'd instantiate all the classes, and then pass them in to the
controller class and from there define how and when they  
communicate
with each other?

Simple Example to better illustrate the concept:

A photo gallery has
1) a carousel full of thumbnails with next and previous buttons
2) and an image viewer that loads an image, zooms in and zooms  
out.

When a thumbnail is clicked, the image viewer should load the  
image.

In the end will be some theoretical methods:
- loadImage
- next
- previous
- zoomIn
- zoomOut

I could either
1) create a single class that does everything or
2) have a class for the image viewer with loadImage, zoomIn, and
zoomOut, and then a carousel class with an onSelect event, used to
send a message to the viewer class to load the correct image.

I'm currently doing number 2 on a project but all the  
onWhatevers are
starting to drive me nuts and I'm tempted to go back to a do-
everything class.  But I just thought about creating a class to  
handle
all the communication between my classes.  So I could just pass  
in the
two class instances (carousel and image viewer) to the controller
class and then define inside there what to do onSelect of a  
thumbnail.

Is that making sense?  Again, the photo viewer is a simple  
example to
illustrate a problem. I don't need any links to good photo  
viewers.
Any tips, articles, thoughts?

Ryan Florence

[Writing TextMate Snippets] (http://blog.flobro.com/)