I agree that the community is great and that the idea of Tapestry is great. But often times you just need to get stuff done. And right now we can't figure out how to get an include into a page (like you'd do with a SSI in JSP) where any code gets pre-processed just like the rest of the page. And we can't figure out how to restart the Tapestry engine in order to see changes to the spec and template files quickly.
These are two basic requirements which I (as a Struts/JSP/Servlet developer of 4 years) could do in about a minute. So I think that's the thing I'm struggling with. I know (from years of experience doing Struts) what the failings of Struts are. And I REALLY like the idea of doing most of the work with objects and thus reducing the complexity of the display layer. I'm behind this. And I'm behind the idea of reusable components instead of page after page of duplicate JSP/HTML code. The problem, though, is if I can't accomplish two very simple things, what other problems am I going to run into down the road. And I'm an experienced developer. Not a newbie. So this isn't (as someone suggested is the case for some people) a situation where someone is jumping on Tapestry because it's easier than learning Servlets or JSP. I've paid my dues there. I'm looking at Tapestry as a way to have cleaner code. But I've gone through a lot of work to try to make a couple simple things work, that would work easily in Struts without much effort. That's my struggle with the framework and why I'd agree with those that say that there is a payoff, but it doesn't come without a price in time and learning. Preston >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 7/19/2005 1:11 PM >>> Well, just let me tell you my experience, if it helps you... I'm currently at the second phase of a project that was never used in production, but was fully usable and built with a very simple Model 2 development technique. I have a tight schedule and nobody else to help me, which in the end was good, because I could choose any new framework I wanted without worrying too much about the communication problems. And I chose Tapestry, merely after reading Howard's article at TSS about their code migration, and a couple of other articles about Tapestry. The other thing that encouraged me to migrate to Tapestry was the perspective of continuing using JSP and Struts in a project where 90% of the work was pretty straighforward. The first three weeks I wondered if I took the right decision. Almost no advance and the time kept running... At the end, I decided to risk everything and keep on trying with Tapestry. At this point, I had read Tapestry in Action almost completely and was subscribed to this mailing list. Now I'm very satisfied with the way it's going on, I've been able to reuse most "business rules" and therefore it's been lots of fun. I'm no expert -you will notice if you read all my previous posts to this list- but right now my guess is that I'm saving 30% o even more of the time I would spend with another approach. On my development environment, I can easily reset pages whenever I make changes to templates/pages. I don't use Eclipse -still waiting for a free vi plugin for it! - so it was simple to add the JVM directive. I still need to refresh the application if I make changes to .java files, but it's the same with almost all frameworks except if everything is a JSP... :-) BTW, I use Tomcat as development environment because it refreshes webapps pretty quickly; my production server is an OC4J (yuk). So for me, RAD doesn't mean avoiding the "ant deploy / refresh the app / login again" cycle, it means having those small nirvana moments when you discover that a new page can reuse 90% of your components and therefore it will take you 10 minutes to build instead of two hours. I have to agree with you that Tapestry has a steep learning curve. That's why this list receives so many messages on a daily basis... I have found with joy that this is a community that won't let their new passengers down easily, even if some of us ask the same questions over and over... :-) Regards, Dario P.S. On 7/19/05, Preston CRAWFORD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You saw my earlier email, though, right? With reference to that page > > http://blog.shadowbox.com/index.php?p=40 > > I'm trying to follow that example to put together an Ant task where I > can automagically have the Engine reset for all templates, etc. And > someone earlier mentioned putting the "inspector" on each page. So I > thought I was on the right track. > > Either way, I tried it and it didn't work. No changes to the template > would show up. The url I used this time was... > > http://localhost:8080/tapestryTesting/app?service=reset/ToDo3 > > As far as the second problem goes, we are trying to do something like > an include, yes. I think we may have tried Border and it wasn't enough > for what we needed. > > I'm not in despair, it's just so steep. I like the tapestry idea. I > like the idea of more pure objects in development. That's partly why > I've latched on personally to Ruby on Rails and I'm learning that. But > I'm waiting for that "aha moment" with Tapestry. Right now it's just > hard slogging. What I'm trying to do right now (setup an environment > where one could rapidly change .page and .html files) is very simple in > Struts/JSP land. Copy the JSP files over and they recompile. Problem > solved. Why is this so hard with Tapestry? Why is there little to no > documentation on how to do it? > > These are the things that are getting frustrating, you know? > > Preston > > > > >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 7/19/2005 12:13 PM >>> > Preston, > > regarding your first problem (resetting the app), the text after the > "reset/" is the name of the page you want to reset. So please replace > contrib:Inspector with any of your pages... > > About your second problem, what do you mean by including a file > processed by tapestry? Do you mean something like jsp:include? > Tapestry is all about components, so take a look at the most simple > Border components included in several tutorials (as well as Tapestry > in Action). > > And don't despair, my friend... With Tapestry there's always an Aha! > moment that will speed things up, and maybe you're very close to it... > > On 7/19/05, Preston CRAWFORD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So this is starting to become a real problem. If I can't do rapid > > development, changing spec files and templates, then that's a real > > problem. And this just flat doesn't work, for whatever reason. > > Additionally, I can't get an include going, an include where the > > included file is pre-processed by the tapestry engine. Without these > two > > items, developing in Tapestry is looking like it's going to be a > > difficult sell as compared to Struts. > > > > Can anyone, anywhere shed some light on how to overcome these two > > problems? > > > > Preston > > > > >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 7/18/2005 3:45 PM >>> > > By the way, when I try to hit the URL to reset.... > > > > http://localhost:8080/testing/app?service=reset/contrib:Inspector > > > > ...I get... > > > > org.apache.tapestry.ApplicationRuntimeException > > Library 'contrib' not found in application namespace. > > > > >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 7/18/2005 2:55:52 PM >>> > > Okay, so I have the gist of how to do this now. The problem is I'm > > missing something. I can't call the reset method for some reason. Am > I > > supposed to put a component or something in my .page file? And if so > > what does it look like? I'm trying to follow this example here. > > > > http://blog.shadowbox.com/index.php?p=40 > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > For additional commands, e-mail: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > For additional commands, e-mail: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > For additional commands, e-mail: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > -- > Communism is man's exploitation of man. Capitalism is just the > opposite. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- Communism is man's exploitation of man. Capitalism is just the opposite. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
