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(a)kennardconsulting.com
<mailto:richard@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(a)kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com>
<mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com
<mailto:richard@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(a)redhat.com <mailto:vpereira@redhat.com> <mailto:vpereira@redhat.com
<mailto:vpereira@redhat.com>> <mailto:vpereira@redhat.com
<mailto:vpereira@redhat.com>
> <mailto:vpereira@redhat.com
<mailto:vpereira@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(a)kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com>
<mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com
<mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com>>
<mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com <mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com>
> <mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com
<mailto:richard@kennardconsulting.com>>>>
> > > To: aerogear-dev(a)lists.jboss.org
<mailto:aerogear-dev@lists.jboss.org> <mailto:aerogear-dev@lists.jboss.org
<mailto:aerogear-dev@lists.jboss.org>>
<mailto:aerogear-dev@lists.jboss.org <mailto:aerogear-dev@lists.jboss.org>
> <mailto:aerogear-dev@lists.jboss.org
<mailto:aerogear-dev@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-...
> > >
> > > 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
> > > >>
> > > >> _______________________________________________
> > > >> aerogear-dev mailing list
> > > >> aerogear-dev(a)lists.jboss.org
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> > > >>
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> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > aerogear-dev mailing list
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