[Openinteract-dev] Dicole - New page creation toolkit for OpenInteract

[Teemu A. <te...@io...>]

Hello,

for a while we have been developing a nice object oriented toolkit for making 
application development on OpenInteract easy.

The main idea is that when creating applications, you don't have to creaty 
_any_ templates for your project. Dicole core just provides generic templates 
for different content and an object oriented interface to hide all dirty 
template parameter details. That way you may build sites completely out of 
widgets. Site layout is controlled completely through CSS and the page 
sources are based on XHTML.

I have extended the toolkit with a system called Dicole::Generictool. Most 
applications that work with some sort of data objects usually are 
satisfactory when they provide at least functionality to add, list, remove, 
show and edit objects. Generictool addresses just those, adds a couple of 
nice features and makes everything easy to extend.

For example, here is sample code of my current "list" handler method that 
features browsing, sorting, searching and listing of objects and some fields:

sub list {
	my ( $class, $p ) = @_;
	my ( $R, $tool, $gentool ) = $class->_common_init( params => $p );
	$tool->Path->add( name => 'List users' );
	# Modify tool object to contain our form in a single legend box
	$tool->Container->box_at( 0, 0 )->set_name( 'List of users' );
	$tool->Container->box_at( 0, 0 )->add_content(
		$gentool->get_list( 'list' )
	);
	return $R->template->handler( $tool->get_template_handler_structure );
}

Not too many lines of code =). _common_init basically only defines the object 
fields with some added meta-data.

Generictool also takes care of input validation. Here is my add method, for 
example:

sub add {
	my ( $class, $p ) = @_;
	my ( $R, $tool, $gentool ) = $class->_common_init( params => $p	);
	$tool->Path->add( name => 'Add new user' );
	if ( $R->apache->param( 'save' ) ) {
		( $p->{return_code}, $p->{return} ) = $gentool->validate_input(
			$gentool->visible_fields('add'),
			{ clear_output => 1 }
		);
		if ( $p->{return_code} ) {
			$p->{return} = "User has been saved.";
		} else {
			$p->{return} = sprintf( "Failed adding user: %s", $p->{return} );
		}
		$tool->set_return( $p->{return_code}, $p->{return} );
	}
	# Modify tool object to contain our form in a single legend box
	$tool->Container->box_at( 0, 0 )->set_name( 'New user details' );
	$tool->Container->box_at( 0, 0 )->add_content( $gentool->get_add( 'add' ) );
	return $R->template->handler( $tool->get_template_handler_structure );
}

No single template needed for that handler, either.

Dicole is going to be the total rewrite (sequel) of MimerDesk 
(www.mimerdesk.org), a groupware I created during the years. This time I'm 
going to make the sources a little bit more maintainable. 

I try to keep the documentation if the source code complete so using it 
shouldn't be a problem in anyone is interested to try it so early in the 
development.

Links:

The current unstable CVS is browsable here:
http://www.mimerdesk.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dicole/

Dicole documentation (draft, partly incomplete):
http://inf.dicole.fi/dicole_docs/

Generictool documentation:
http://inf.dicole.fi/dicole_docs/Dicole/Generictool.html

Example handler code:
http://www.mimerdesk.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dicole/pkg/user_manager/OpenInteract/Handler/UserManager.pm?rev=1.50&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

Example application for trying the results out (Mozilla recommended):
http://dev1.dicole.fi/Usermanager/

Latest CVS checkout:
cvs -d :pserver:ano...@mi...:/opt/cvs login
Login with blank password (Just press enter).
cvs -d :pserver:ano...@mi...:/opt/cvs checkout dicole

-- 
Sincerely,

Teemu Arina
mimerdesk.org