Consistency is good, but I wouldn't say that's our #1 priority. We
definitely want primary and secondary best practices like we do with
other things, but also want to support a variety of technologies on
the framework level. In other words, if people want to do stuff in
their own code bases we don't want to block that, but yes for
anything going into the project it should follow a consistent set of
patterns so that people exploring the code for the first time will
have a stream of "okay, okay, okay, ..." going through their heads
instead of a stream of "wtf, wtf, wtf, ...".
On an important but less pleasant note: the AJAX stuff we are dealing
with is very new in OFBiz, and outside of OFBiz the "market" is still
maturing quite a lot. I agree we should perhaps vote on a best
practice, though in general I'd rather see X task implemented with
DOJO required so much effort and with Prototype so much effort. What
I mean to say is that we should definitely decide on a best practice
now and it sounds like most of the consensus is around JSON+DOJO, but
we shouldn't be surprised if something much better comes up at some
point in the future.
BTW, as to how I see AJAX stuff fitting into OFBiz there are 2 big
parts:
1. adding dynamic client side features to the form and screen (and
other) widgets for things like dynamic lookups, expanding tree-
browsers, movable screen-lets, etc.
2. special purpose pages that are meant to optimize a certain task,
like the checkout stuff Tim mentioned, but probably even moreso for
fancy back-end stuff
For #1 replacing an AJAX framework is easy, but doesn't make as big a
different in coding efficiency or anything, whereas for #2 something
better would make coding easier, but require more rewriting...
-David
On Dec 13, 2006, at 4:53 PM, A. Zeneski wrote:
I am curious as to the pattern used to make the async calls, what
method
of return is used here?
I see two possible patterns which would be useful:
1) JSON compressed objects. This will require more processing on the
front end to pull the data and format the HTML. I like leaving this in
the front end code personally. This is currently implemented using the
JSONServiceEventHandler request handler.
2) Screen Widget based HTML return. The Ajax request makes a simple
call
which returns a HTML fragment (developed using screen widgets). The
return is then just plugged in by updating the element content
(innerHTML).
Either of these patterns is fine by me, and I believe that for most
applications a combination of the two would be necessary.
I am sure there are many other ways to accomplish the same thing, but
since there is so much effort about to begin around 'Ajaxing' OFBiz
making sure things are consistent is #1 priority.
I'm curious as to what other 'patterns' people have come up with
(if any).
Andrew
Tim Ruppert wrote:
Just to continue the push towards Dojo, I am about to submit a new
Anonymous Checkout process for
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-510 which is based upon
Dojo. You guys will like it - 3 steps and working towards my 2 step
process goal.
Cheers,
Tim
--
Tim Ruppert
HotWax Media
http://www.hotwaxmedia.com
o:801.649.6594
f:801.649.6594
On Dec 13, 2006, at 4:36 PM, A. Zeneski wrote:
I used prototype for my initial test and found it very easy to work
with. Dojo on the other hand seemed to have a much broader learning
curve. It too me a while to get everything working, but I think
it is
due to the ajax part being more verbose.
The extra features such as DND and other widgets is very nice as
well.
The fact that DOJO is available under the BSD license is a plus
as well.
I think there should be no license issues with this library.
Should we just say DOJO is the way to go for future Ajax based
tools in
OFBiz or do we need a formal vote?
Andrew
Alex D. Fleming wrote:
Hi,
Ooops Dojo is supported by IBM & AOL ....so I will prefer Dojo.
http://dojotoolkit.org/foundation/
On 12/14/06, A. Zeneski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Si (& all),
I am in process of doing a lot of custom AJAX stuff for a new
client. I
intended on using prototype.js but based on conversations with
other
people decided to go with dojo instead.
The main part of what I did was a JSON wrapper around the
service event
handler. What this does is allows you to define (controller)
requests
for ajax calls and have the results return in a lightweight (JSON)
format.
This will work with any front end toolkit (Yahoo, Prototype, Dojo,
etc).
The main point is to define a standard pattern for AJAX
requests in
OFBiz.
Deciding on a toolkit for the javascript is very important and
based on
what I have researched and discussed with other people, Dojo seems
to be
the way to go.
Of course, I am open for discussion with this, but we really
should
decide on a standard for contributions back to OFBiz. The last
thing I
want to see is several different ways of communication and
different
toolkits being used.
Prototype.js has been removed from SVN for the time being. As
soon as
there is code which uses one of the toolkits it can be added
back in.
Let's start a community vote for the default AJAX toolkit to
use in
OFBiz. Based on the work I did, I have already setup the back end
pattern, services using JSON for the return. Now let's decide on a
front
end toolkit.
First lets, define the candidates:
1) Dojo
2) Prototype
Andy
