[aerogear-dev] Aerogear Forge Plugin

Richard Kennard richard at kennardconsulting.com
Tue Feb 26 16:49:16 EST 2013


Seb,

Thank you for your feedback.

I'm afraid we'll need to agree to disagree that Freemarker is a good medium for implementing 'widget choosing' code. Your current implementation is 
basically a single line that is 500 characters long. I fear this will become a rapidly worsening maintenance problem.

However you make a good point about using Freemarker for the layout. I will look at implementing a FreemarkerLayout into Metawidget.

Regards,

Richard.

On 26/02/2013 8:48 PM, Sebastien Blanc wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Richard Kennard <richard at kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com>> wrote:
>
>     Seb,
>
>     It sounds like there may be some convergence here. Your 'macros' library may end up looking very similar to Metawidget's existing HTML5
>     WidgetBuilder. And
>     your 'composition plugins' may end up similar to Metawidget's LayoutDecorators and Layouts.
>
>     I'd like to make sure you're not re-inventing the wheel here? Is your main driver that you prefer writing templates in Freemarker to Java code?
>
>
> Absolutely :) ! A user should be able to read and understand a template / overload them and not forced to write a Java class, a mid-term vision is to be 
> more and more polyglot.
> Seb
>
>
>     Regards.
>
>     Richard.
>
>     On 26/02/2013 8:31 PM, Sebastien Blanc wrote:
>     > Hi Richard,
>     > Thanks for your remarks and questions, see my comments inline.
>     >
>     > On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Richard Kennard <richard at kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com>
>     <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com>>> wrote:
>     >
>     >     Hi Vineet,
>     >
>     >     Thanks for your detailed response.
>     >
>     >     I'm not opposed to the idea of a FreemarkerWidget (or VelocityWidget, or StringTemplateWidget). Indeed, the early versions of Metawidget looked
>     much like
>     >     you describe: a separate, pluggable inspection layer, then a Metawidget to render it.
>     >
>     >     However, we subsequently got a lot of feedback and did many interviews, adoption studies and case studies. This ultimately led to the
>     architecture of
>     >     pluggable WidgetBuilders, WidgetProcessors and Layouts. Let me give you 3 examples of the feedback we got:
>     >
>     >     1. Widget choice needs to be orthogonal to layout. If you look at your 'master.html.ftl' and 'detail.html.ftl' you have a lot of duplicated
>     code between
>     >     them. Both templates contain <#if... #else to choose between a 'select' box and a 'text' box. This code is going to inflate rapidly once you
>     add your
>     >     date
>     >     pickers, telephone numbers, URLs etc. to the mix. Worse, such code will need to be duplicated across both templates.
>     >
>     >
>     > Vineet is currently  factorizing all the duplicated code into Freemarker's Macros, this Macros library will be shared along the different plugins.
>     >
>     >
>     >     2. Equally, layout needs to be orthogonal to the wider page. Say I decide I want to use tables with rows and columns, instead of a div-based
>     layout.
>     >     Or say
>     >     I want to use different CSS classes to your 'control-group' and 'controls'. I will have to do it in both templates. But what is *actually*
>     different
>     >     about
>     >     the templates is the choice of search buttons/results versus save/cancel buttons. So the 'middle bit' of each page needs to be orthogonal. This
>     will get
>     >     worse as you add more templates, such as separate 'search', 'view' and 'edit' templates (see the JSF scaffold).
>     >
>     > With Forge 2.0 in mind, where Plugins/addons will be able to be dependent from each other, inherit from each other, we plan to end up with some basic
>     > plugins which will offer a lot of flexibility to deliver "Composition plugins". We are also going to introduce a lot of convention over
>     configuration but
>     > with keeping in mind that the user can always override the conventions.
>     >
>     >
>     >     3. Developers like to use third-party widget libraries, and also in-house custom widget libraries. If I want to add RichFaces, or PrimeFaces, or a
>     >     mixture
>     >     of both, I want to be able to do so in a way that is orthogonal to all of the above
>     >
>     >     So my concern would be that a FreemarkerWidget would tightly couple widget choice (WidgetBuilders) and layout, and not allow widget processing
>     (which is
>     >     important for other reasons I haven't touched upon). Freemarker does, I agree, offer an attractive level of immedicay and ease-of-editing
>     templates.
>     >     But I
>     >     wonder what your thoughts are on how it scales for some of the points above?
>     >
>     >
>     > "Scaling" will be partly solved by the new architecture explained above. For sure, there will always be situations where the user wants to
>     introduce his
>     > supra cool custom widget that don't fits without a lot of hacking but IMO that's beyond the scope of scaffolding. Scaffolding is just to "boost up"
>     a new
>     > project, it's a one time action,  for sure, we can offer entry points for customization but we can't (or don't want to) cover all the specific
>     situations.
>     >
>     > Regards,
>     > Seb
>     >
>     >
>     >     Regards,
>     >
>     >     Richard.
>     >
>     >     > On 22 February 2013 13:56, Vineet Reynolds Pereira <vpereira at redhat.com <mailto:vpereira at redhat.com> <mailto:vpereira at redhat.com
>     <mailto:vpereira at redhat.com>> <mailto:vpereira at redhat.com <mailto:vpereira at redhat.com>
>     >     <mailto:vpereira at redhat.com <mailto:vpereira at redhat.com>>>> wrote:
>     >     >
>     >     >     Hi Richard,
>     >     >
>     >     >        I'm glad you brought this up, since we've been looking to provide feedback once we've finalized on our usage of the Metawidget APIs.
>     By the way,
>     >     >     I'm the one responsible for the use (or abuse) of Metawidget in this manner.
>     >     >
>     >     >        The rationale behind the use of Metawidget inspectors alone, is mostly because we want to allow users to modify the generated
>     scaffold. One
>     >     of the
>     >     >     examples thrown around was to enable users to generate master-detail views instead of the plain CRUD forms generated by Forge. Another
>     driving
>     >     factor
>     >     >     was the need to create or enable creation of scaffold generators for several JS frameworks including but not restricted to AngularJS,
>     Backbone.js,
>     >     >     Aerogear etc. Furthermore, there is also a possibility of users needing to bring in plugins and extensions to these frameworks, like
>     Angular-UI or
>     >     >     Backbone.Forms, since the base frameworks may not satisfy all needs. From my understanding of the Metawidget pipeline and it's use in the
>     Forge
>     >     Faces
>     >     >     and (the earlier) Aerogear scaffold plugins, this would have been possible if a metawidget were created for every use case (one per
>     framework, per
>     >     >     widget-type). We attempted to bring in the use of templates written in a familiar templating langu!
>     >     >      age (like Freemarker/Velocity/StringTemplate) into the scaffold generation phase to make it easier for users to modify the generated
>     scaffold.
>     >     This
>     >     >     is somewhat on the lines of what the Yeoman generators do.
>     >     >
>     >     >        Thanks to the APIs you've made available for the Metawidget pipeline, the inspection results could be processed before feeding them to the
>     >     >     templates. Every scaffold plugin that could potentially be written, would more or less use this approach, with the sole difference being
>     in the
>     >     >     contents of the templates themselves. I hope this explains why I used the Inspectors alone, and not the InspectionResultProcessors and
>     the rest of
>     >     >     the pipeline. The inspectors just fit in naturally into the Forge scaffold generation pipeline.
>     >     >
>     >     >        Based on the above, I personally think that a FreemarkerWidget (or VelocityWidget, or StringTemplateWidget) would be something to
>     investigate.
>     >     >     This is of course a raw idea of mine, and I would like to see if it is possible to use such a metawidget in a type-safe manner with the
>     ability to
>     >     >     configure the templates that it would consume. I'm not sure if creating such a widget would deviate from the intention behind the Metawidget
>     >     project.
>     >     >
>     >     >        As a side note, I'd also like to point out that there has been interest in supporting various additional HTML5 form input types (telephone
>     >     >     numbers, URLs etc.) in the generated scaffold, and this would require extending the JPA/Bean Validation Inspectors in Metawidget.
>     >     >
>     >     >     Best regards,
>     >     >     Vineet
>     >     >
>     >     >     PS: CC'ing the forge-dev list.
>     >     >
>     >     >     ----- Original Message -----
>     >     >     > From: "Richard Kennard" <richard at kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com> <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com
>     <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com>> <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com>
>     >     <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard at kennardconsulting.com>>>>
>     >     >     > To: aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org <mailto:aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org> <mailto:aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org
>     <mailto:aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org>> <mailto:aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org <mailto:aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org>
>     >     <mailto:aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org <mailto:aerogear-dev at lists.jboss.org>>>
>     >     >     > Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 5:17:29 AM
>     >     >     > Subject: Re: [aerogear-dev] Aerogear Forge Plugin
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > Seb,
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > This looks very cool. I see you have used parts of Metawidget for
>     >     >     > some of the implementation? I'd love to hear your thoughts on how it
>     >     >     > went and/or any
>     >     >     > changes you'd like me to make to Metawidget. For example:
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > 1. You have some code in Html5Scaffold that processes the inspection
>     >     >     > result returned by CompositeInspector. It does things like
>     >     >     > 'Canonicalize all numerical
>     >     >     > types in Java to "number" for HTML5 form input type support' and
>     >     >     > 'Extract simple type name of the relationship types'. Was there a
>     >     >     > reason you didn't factor
>     >     >     > this into a Metawidget InspectionResultProcessor
>     >     >     > (http://metawidget.org/doc/reference/en/html/ch02s03.html)?
>     >     >     > Specifically BaseInspectionResultProcessor has
>     >     >     > some methods to help?
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > 2. You appear to be using FreeMarker templates rather than
>     >     >     > Metawidget's WidgetBuilders, WidgetProcessors and Layouts (see the
>     >     >     > existing Forge JSF scaffold,
>     >     >     > Forge GWT scaffold, and Forge Spring scaffold). Could I ask what the
>     >     >     > reasons were behind this?
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > 3. I have recently implemented a pure client-side, pure run-time,
>     >     >     > AngularJS version of Metawidget. If you were interested in a
>     >     >     > non-static version of your
>     >     >     > scaffold, perhaps you could give it a try?
>     >     >     > http://blog.kennardconsulting.com/2013/01/metawidget-meets-jquery-ui-and-angularjs.html
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > Regards,
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > Richard.
>     >     >     >
>     >     >     > On 20/02/2013 11:49 PM, Jay Balunas wrote:
>     >     >     > > Wow!!!  Really awesome work guys!!!
>     >     >     > >
>     >     >     > > On Feb 15, 2013, at 11:15 AM, Sebastien Blanc wrote:
>     >     >     > >
>     >     >     > >> Hi all !
>     >     >     > >> I'm pleased to announce that the first version of the Aerogear
>     >     >     > >> Scaffold Plugin for forge is available !
>     >     >     > >> It's still an alpha but thanks to the excellent work and help from
>     >     >     > >> Vineet we have a working plugin :
>     >     >     > >>
>     >     >     > >> - CRUD Scaffolding based on your entities.
>     >     >     > >> - One-to-one , many-to-one relation supported.
>     >     >     > >> - AngularJS and bootstrap responsive based.
>     >     >     > >> - Aerogear Pipe and Store used.
>     >     >     > >>
>     >     >     > >> There is still a lot to do but you can already play with it, a
>     >     >     > >> quickstart is available here and you should be able to create
>     >     >     > >> your first Aerogear App in
>     >     >     > >> 5 minutes ;) https://gist.github.com/sebastienblanc/4961324
>     >     >     > >>
>     >     >     > >> An example of a generated application can also be found here :
>     >     >     > >> https://github.com/sebastienblanc/scaffoldtester , please review
>     >     >     > >> the generated code (at
>     >     >     > >> least the JS and HTML) and report it to me and I will update the
>     >     >     > >> templates accordingly.
>     >     >     > >>
>     >     >     > >> Next steps are :
>     >     >     > >> - Integrate Search feature (using the DataStore filter facilities)
>     >     >     > >> - Integrate Aerogear Pagination (although generic pagination is
>     >     >     > >> present now)
>     >     >     > >> - Integrate jQueryMobile (will probably be another plugin)
>     >     >     > >>
>     >     >     > >> Enjoy !
>     >     >     > >>
>     >     >     > >> Seb
>     >     >     > >>
>     >     >     > >> _______________________________________________
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>     >     >     > >
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