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Blog
PureMVC Employee Admin demo for jQuery Mobile
I started this project last year when jQuery Mobile was still in alpha stage. The first version of Employee Admin demo I made with alpha version of jQuery Mobile was interesting but not fully functional. I so have waited near a year to work on it again. Now that jQueryMobile is final and even passed version 1.0.1 few days ago it was worth it to try to finish the project completely. As recalled for my recent Employee Admin demo for jQuery (call it desktop so) that demo does not use a port of the PureMVC framework for jQuery Mobile. It is not necessary. The two are compatible but independent one from the other.
jQuery Mobile
For those who do not yet know much how jQuery Mobile works, it is loaded in addition to the jQuery framework on a mobile HTML page. The library, once loaded render the HTML page (with some minor jQuery Mobile specific additions) to make it identical to any native mobile application. The framework supports a maximum mobile platforms.
Multi-page template
All pages of a jQuery Mobile application must be hosted on a single HTML page. This is the so called jQuery Mobile multi-page template. Using address bar anchors, the framework is responsible to navigate between different pages of the application without changing the root HTML page hosting the application. For the demonstration I chose to only have two pages. One to manage the list of users, one to manage the form to enter data related to each user. In this demo, there is no dedicated page to manage user roles, it would have been ridiculous to make navigation so complex only to have a page hosting a panel when it can be made with a simple multiple select box.
PureMVC Employee Admin demo for jQuery
More and more people ask me to finish the job I started in 2011 on the PureMVC Employee Admin demo for jQuery. So I recently took the time to finish it completely.
The project uses:
- objs for the definition of classes, inheritance and namespaces
- PureMVC for JavaScript objs for the MVC micro-architecture
- jQuery for communication with the DOM
- jQuery UI for UI components layer
- jqGrid for the data grid UI
- YUIcompressor and ANT to minify generated application files
Before continuing note that using PureMVC Standard or PureMVC JS Native Port (Cliff spoke recently on Twitter ) instead of Objs would be really easy. It is only syntactic sugar. The libraries used, the architecture, implementation choices will be kept the same.
Also note that this project does not depend on any specific PureMVC for jQuery framework, here jQuery only provides the UI layer, PureMVC and UI layers always stands to be two distincts entities. I found this port illustrate this perfectly.
Objs JavaScript library update
I recently completely refactored the Objs library to make a 2.0 version of it. I also moved its source from Google code to Github.
For those discovering the project, Objs is a tiny and non-intrusive library available with an open source GNU GPL v3 license. It is slowly evolving since 2006 to suit my own needs in JavaScript programming. I used it successfully in most of my personal and professional JavaScript projects.
It is also used in the first JavaScript port ever made for PureMVC which was updated recently to follow the new syntax. As it's a non-instrusive library (meaning that it doesn't pollute DOM nor prototype objects) I made a PureMVC EmployeeAdmin demo for Objs+jQuery and another one with Objs+jQuery mobile which will be added to the PureMVC repositories as soon as possible.
The current library is focused on simplicity:
- It is only 711 Bytes
- Objs is itself a Function object and the only public method of its API
- Support namespaces
- Support inheritance
- Shortcut to superclass in their subclasses
Simple but powerful. It has been unit-tested and demonstrated to work perfectly on big applications having more than 300 Objs classes.
Project home: Objs on Github
Documentation: Objs wiki on Github
PureMVC native JavaScript port
Now that I have implemented a Unit Tests Suite for PureMVC JavaScript ports I couldn't resist to create a native JavaScript PureMVC port. By "native" I mean that this port doesn't use any external library but PureMVC classes themselves. The port uses "org.puremvc.js.standard" as namespace because I think this is a good thing to refer to it as the JavaScript standard port.
When I started to work with PureMVC in JavaScript in 2008 I thought this was not possible to use PureMVC alone with JavaScript to develop maintainable projects. My main fears were class name collision and class declaration order. But time passed, I worked since on JavaScript projects with near 300 classes using only a micro-architecture (my Objs library) to maintain class namespaces for reflection on rare cases. All of this worked pretty well, I thought last week to create a PureMVC port to native JavaScript only.
But this is not only a personal challenge. Now that we have an agnostic Unit Test Suite and an agnostic PureMVC port, we can easily create applications using jQuery as User Interface (I mean avoiding any UI components compatibility with others libraries). And what I really wanted to create was a PureMVC EmployeeAdmin for jQueryMobile as few applications already exists for and I need to learn how to use it. I'm already working on it and I think to be able to release it for the next week-end.
Next step will be to create a PureMVC EmployeeAdmin Demo with this standard port using jQuery UI (the standard jQuery version, so not the mobile one). My hope is that it will help in creating future Employee Admin port to other frameworks.
PureMVC port to Prototype JavaScript Framework
As to give an answer to Cliff Hall asking: "JavaScript Port Branches to Support ExtJS, MooTools, Objs... What's Next?" on a PureMVC blog post, I announced on Twitter last week that I had in idea to port PureMVC to Prototype.js as soon as possible.
As you may know, I made the first PureMVC port to JavaScript using a micro-architecture of mine called Objs. The goal of this project was to show that PureMVC could be used in JavaScript and to demonstrate with the PureMVC EmployeeAdmin demo that it even works great. Even if some people have been a little pessimistic in that it uses a micro-architecture instead of a well known JavaScript framework, I like to think that my goal was achieved as Justin Wilaby created a PureMVC for Mootols (for which I made the PureMVC Employee Admin demo too) and more recently Tony DeFusco the PureMVC for ExtJS.
I said it on my blog or on the PureMVC forums, I'm a partisan of having a PureMVC port for each mainframe JavaScript framework. One of the reason is that, as each JavaScript developer knows, we don't always have choice of the framework we can use on the product we are working for. This is why I decided to port PureMVC to Prototype which was the next mainstream JavaScript framework in which we need to port PureMVC.
Another thing I want to do for months was to add an agnostic JavaScript Unit Test suite to PureMVC for JavaScript. This is why I have not taken the time to make a demo for the Prototype port but preferred to add an Unit Test Suite.
I will port PureMVC Employee Admin or BoxSplash demo in a later blog post I assume that this part will be valuable for PureMVC developers only, but for the moment I prefer to describe which Unit Test framework I used and how I implemented it to test PureMVC.
Android currency converter using PureMVC
I'm working on an Android Froyo application in the goal of better learn Android development while developing a real Android application. It uses PureMVC for Java. I initially have planned to make it public here only when the application would have been pushed on the Android Market. But when I occasionally talk about this project here on my blog and on the PureMVC forums, some folks were really interested and ask me to give some help on how I achieved my PureMVC app development with Android. So today I decided to publish the application in its alpha stage even if it's still not ready.
The application is a currency converter that uses a webservice hosted on my website for several years that deliver currencies rate for 40 currencies with a daily update. Currencies rate are obtained from the European Central Bank. I recently have worked a on the webservice (PHP 5/ MySQL 5) to deliver currencies name in all existing languages supported by Android. I used a Java project based on the IBM International Components for Unicode project to fill the database with the I18N informations I needed.
The Android application itself uses threads, multiple activities, PreferenceActivity, SQLite local storage, Json and a call to a webservice and has unit tests associated to it. So this is what I think to be a good example to start with Android and PureMVC. I will commit its sources to the PureMVC website when it will be committed to the Android market as well.
PureMVC single core for Java
As I proposed it recently on the PureMVC forums I took some time today to convert the multicore version of the PureMVC for Java port into a single core version.
I recently had to work with PureMVC Java for an Android application I work for the PureMVC community as an example of what we can do with PureMVC in an Android native Java application. I was surprised that the existing single core version didn't have onRegister/onRemove methods over Mediator and Proxy objects. Those methods were present in the multicore version of the port. The single core version was older and some other minor fixes have to be made, so I proposed Cliff to update the existing single core version with the multicore.
I took the best of both world each time possible in code and structure following the last PureMVC best practices for project editing.
I suppose that Cliff Hall will update the single core Java as soon as possible with this update, but for the moment here are the files :
Robotlegs for Silverlight alpha
I'm working on a port of Robotlegs for Silverlight in background on my spare time since February. As I'm on a Silverlight and C# learning track, I found this would be a great way to practice C# and Silverlight when it also could help the Robotlegs community.
My goal with this post is to give an insight of the project to people who asked me which is its status and real value and if it have chances to reach a final version.
This alpha contains Robotlegs for Silverlight library sources and its Unit Test project. You can launch the Unit Test runner here in live.
I'm currently working on an HelloSilverlight demo which is basically the port of the HelloFlex demo of Robotlegs for ActionScript 3.0. As it's the first real implementation of the framework outside simply passing Unit Tests, it shows that some serious changes and decisions will have to be made before a second alpha in which the demo have to be included.
The project is developed with Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express Edition so it guarantees that anybody can work on it with a free Visual Studio license. Visual Web Developer allows only to target Silverlight, but the project could easily be imported in Visual C# 2010 Express or Visual Studio 2010 to target WPF applications.
PureMVC JavaScript Mootools EmployeeAdmin Demo
As you may know I'm the author of the first PureMVC JavaScript port. I started it in 2008 using a little library of mine called Objs. I also provided a JavaScript EmployeeAdmin demo to test it.
Recently Justin Wilaby contribute to the PureMVC community by providing a new PureMVC port to JavaScript using Mootools. I expected a port to a better known JavaScript framework like Mootools since the first release of my port to JavaScript. My opinion is that we need a PureMVC port to each of the mainstream JavaScript frameworks. I'm still convinced that the more PureMVC code examples we will have for each of them, the more users will understand the gain in working with real architectures, even in JavaScript. That's why, on the announce of the PureMVC port to Mootools, I immediately engaged myself in porting the standard PureMVC EmployeeAdmin application from the Objs port to the Mootools one.
Private session with Jeff Sutherland in Paris
Today, I attended a private Q&A session with Jeff Sutherland in Paris. For those who don't know, Jeff is one of the fathers of the Scrum development framework and helped to write the Agile Manifesto.
The session was organized by Xebia France, a training center focused on Agile methodologies used to work with him. I had the surprise to be invited last week to this special event. This was a great opportunity to meet Jeff and to better understand Scrum.
As this was a private event, we were only 30 people invited. Before it begins, my thoughts were that Jeff will only occasionally speak during the session. But Luc Legardeur CTO at Xebia took only five minutes to introduce himself, Xebia and the event. Jeff finally made all the session himself. This was, again, a good surprise, I have to thank Xebia for that.