I'm building a Zend-based Web app that will permit third-party extensions.
Essentially, this application's database will have a generic "content store." Extensions are added to render different pieces of content in different ways.
Think of a rich mail store: When the user asks for a "Calendar" item, I instantiate a Calendar class (or something) and ask it to render the item's content. The same database might contain "Mail" items, which are rendered by a different class (or whatever). So I'm basically defining a base class with the needed methods to handle content items, and then add-ins are written which inherit from that to deal with specific item types.
Each of these add-ins may need to access its own View files, since each of them will obviously have a different visual layout.
I can't foresee all the content renderers that might be used; new ones will be "installed" (in some fashion) so that my application knows "when I see content with a database type column of XYZ, I'll call the XYZ thing to render that."
Likely, what will happen is this: User will visit a URL for the application, thus triggering an action within a Controller. That Controller will use a Model method, telling it which specific content item was requested.
From there, either the Model or the Controller (which?) needs to call something (what?) that gets the item from the database (okay, the Model clearly does that) and renders it using some predetermined View. This would be PART of a larger page that might well include several rendered items (as in, a list of content items).
So two questions:
What's the best way to architect this in Zend Framework? I do want these add-ins to inherit from a base renderer class that I provide, because very simple renderers may simply need to call functionality from that base class, rather than having any of their own code (e.g., a "Note" and a "Memo" might well use the simplified rendering functionality from the base renderer class).
What's the best way to "register" these add-ins with my application? An .ini file, perhaps a database table? The goal is simplified installation steps for whoever is operating the application - e.g., editing an .ini file is often easier than manually querying a database, although I could also provide an admin back-end UI for new content renderers to be registered in.
I'd implement the Visitor Pattern for this.
Each third-party extension should implement an interface that you define, so that you know you can call a specific method, say render() on any object that is an instanceof that interface.
Each extension then implements its own rendering. Perhaps it utilizes a View partial in the Zend Framework architecture. Or else perhaps it uses some totally different code to render itself as a PDF or something (maybe each extension needs to be able to override content-type headers?).
As for how to register it, check out the Zend_Application framework for defining resource plugins.
Related
I'm trying to create subpanel in Account detail view where list of elements is fetched from external REST service.
I know how to define subpanel, but have no idea how to fill it with data from external network source. Was trying to use get_subpanel_data but there I can only change SQL.
Any ideas how can I do this?
When I've done this in the the past, at least with Sugar 6, I opted distinctly not to try to create a true subpanel. The data being loaded is coming from an outside source and is loaded dynamically with the page, so why present it as if it's static data coming from Sugar? Instead, I created a custom Smarty template to use as the footer on the detail page. For such an example, you can check how it works on the Calls Edit View. I think it's the footerTpl parameter in the detailviewdefs.php or editviewdefs.php. I loaded the smarty template by creating a custom detail view for my module, so custom/modules/MyModule/views/view.detail.php - extend the base Detail View class and override the display to feed Smarty new params, then your Smarty template only needs to iterate through and present the data that your view defined.
To be super-hip and abide by MVC, you could even put your custom code into your bean (if it's a custom module) or into a custom controller method, then reference that from the view.detail.php, and still feed it from there to the Smarty template.
Alternatively, you could just load JavaScript into the Smarty template and use the JavaScript to call the third-party service, parse and present it, etc.
I realize this question is a little bit old now however it comes up fairly often so why not provide an answer with a couple possible solutions. I won't get into code but more just into the design theory of how it can work. If someone needs more specific code help then that is another question.
A couple ideas...
As you mentioned you can define a custom Function which will load in Data to the SubPanel from your own SQL Query. That is one method that I just recently got to finally put to use after knowing about it for a good year and a half.
When you go this route, you are restrained to using the Columns in the SubPanel. I assume it is using the actual Metadata files to determine which Field Columns a SubPanel can use so you pretty much need your custom data in a Database table to have the same column names as the fields defined in the SubPanel Metadata.
Obviously this works great in the right situation, however not always and that leads us into the 2nd method I know of.
The other way is pretty much what #Mattew-Poer mentioned in his answer. It means abandoning the SubPanel altogether and instead generating your own HTML. This is by far my favorite and prefered way of doing it and I have been some really custom modules due to this being possible in a custom module! I will show an example below.
(Click HERE to View full size image)
In the screenshot, you can see in this example that I have something looking Similar to a SubPanel however it is not and is much for flexible and easy to customize.
Example, to the far left column in my fake subpanel is image checkboxes. When clicked on, an AJAX request is made to change the Task row Status.
After that, the checkbox image is updated to indicate the new Status state, the Modified DateTime is updated, the Status column has color background SPANS and is also updated with the correct text and background color when the left side checkbox is clicked.
Doing any of this with the standard SubPanels is a complete nightmare and would be difficult to do some of the stuff that you are open to do when you build your own version of a SubPanel.
With that said, I have built an identical clone of the above screenshot using SugarCRM default SubPanels! It was a nightmare. I could easily update the content and HTML in some of the columns. I even had the AJAX click checkbox image to update and do all the other updates I mentioned above. It wasn't too hard and worked fairly good but it had some issues.
When you do inline edit, inline create record, or subpanel paging to load different set of record. You would then lose all the custom HTML formatting that was applied. The reason is, in the SubPanel you are limited to using the After UI load logic hook. So since the "Page" is loaded already, when an AJAX request is made to add/edit the subpanel content or load a new set of items with the paging links. It only loads the SubPanel content on those events and the whole Page content does not reload. Because the logic hook only fires off 1 time after the page loads, this newly loaded subpanel data doe not receive any of your custom HTML formatting.
In my case, this means that nice looking colored background Status spans are lost, the image checkboxes are lost, and some other functionality is lost.
Now to get super technical, I could have gone another 3rd route and instead made new Custom Field Types for each SubPanel filed that I needed to apply custom HTML to. This process is super hard in my experience and in some cases it really isn't the BEST solution.
Because of the reason explained, this is why my new modules use the Custom HTML route to generate my own version of a custom subpanel or whatever Data is needed in my Module pages! So far it is working better than I imagined and has opened doors for me to build custom SugarCRM modules that I previously didn't even realize would be possible to build due to some of the issues I mentioned above. Now I bypass them altogether and open the door to do pretty much anything!
I've got some really cool stuff for SugarCRM in the works right now. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask in a new question or for me personally in a comment here.
I am attempting to build a simple application using wicket and have been impressed so far. I have been taking advantage of the Component class to determine behavior of elements on the page based on user input or the model. I see the component model similarities with JSF, but find the wicket lifecycle easier to manage.
What i haven't been able to understand is having to add every component to the tree for every wicket:id mentioned on a page, especially for ones without any children. it seems heavy handed to have to build up the tree in java code when the tree has already been somewhat defined within the markup. what am i missing?
edit
I should probably give an example. I have a label for an input box that in some cases i want to be able to modify. 95% of the time the text and attributes i have for the label in markup will be fine.
Short answer: Yes, you have to add them.
Long answer: You can create custom code to do this, but I doubt it's worth the effort.
With JSF, you use a non-html tag, which has one component type associated to it - for example, h:inputText correspond to the class HtmlInputText -, so it knows what class to instantiate.
With Wicket, the HTML file contains only (with a few exceptions) HTML tags, and you have to instantiate a concrete component for each wicket:id-marked tag you add to the markup, because it can't know for sure if <span wicket:id='xyz'> means a Label, a FeedbackPanel, a WebMarkupContainer, or some custom component.
With JSF you do in the markup what, with Wicket, you do in Java code, that is, to build the component tree, bind components to properties, and handle events. It keeps everything in one file (you don't have to create a class for every template file), which has many, many cons (some may think it has some pros, I digress).
You page is never just a simple form that does nothing. You want to convert and validate the input, you want to process the submit, you want to update components using Ajax. With JSF, you do all that in the (non-compilable, type-unsafe, poorly tooled, non-refactorable) template, making it bloated with expressions, configuration tags, and - gawd forbid - business logic.
If Wicket had support for this (and, for the matter, it has the flexibility needed for you to build this add-on yourself), you would have to add lots of extra annotations (special, non-standard tags and attributes) to the markup, to declare what class to instantiate, what model to update, what validations to execute, etc., compromising two of the beauties of the framework, the clean HTML template, and the clear separation between visuals and logic.
One framework that tries to do more in the template, while remaining less bloated than JSF (which isn't that hard anyway) is Apache Tapestry. But as can be seen in its tutorial, you still end up having to use non-standard tags and following arbitrary conventions to bind the template to the code (you may like it, but if this is the case you have baaad taste, sorry :P).
I have a label for an input box that in some cases i want to be able to modify. 95% of the time the text and attributes i have for the label in markup will be fine.
You could try to wrap the content of the label in a Model, enclose that label in a container and repaint the container (target.add(container);).
Offcurse you should add them.One of the most powerful facilities of wicket is that allow you to make a reusable components espacially html components.
There are a million ways to build a house, but most people wouldn’t
consider building toilets, bathtubs, and glass windows from scratch.
Why build a toilet yourself when you can buy one for less money than
it would cost you to construct it, and when it’s unlikely you’ll
produce a better one than you can get in a shop? In the same fashion,
most software engineers try to reuse software modules. “Make or buy”
decisions encompass more than whether a module is available;
generally, reusing software modules is cheaper and leads to more
robust systems. Reusing software also means you don’t have to code the
same functionality over and over again.(wicket in action:manning)
So to have a reusable wicket pages, wicket just needs a html page to show it's components hierarchy or their positions. The types and model of these components left to programmer.
I was just wondering why no code-behind or helpers were made to work with layouts? I have stuff I want to display in my layouts without having to set it up in a placeholder for every single controller.
I was also wanted to know what is the best way to persist a display-once "success-message" across many pages. For example, a user fills out a form and when it is submitted correctly they are redirected to another page. I want the user to see a success message on that other page. Is there some sort of provision in Zend Framework that makes this easier?
Well for the messages you can use the Flash Messenger helper
As far as setting up the place holders you could use a base controller and set these up in the init method overriding on descendents when necessary.
I want to create an admin bundle, that somehow detects other bundles and tries to add them to the menu and to the same RBAC context.
Eg:
AdminBundle defines a route /admin/dashboard, that requires authentication and authorization. There you can see 3 items in the menu, eg: dashboard, config (some config stored in the db), and users (CRUD for users, found in the UserBundle)
Then someone adds a ProductBundle, which deals with CRUD for e-commerce products or something. Somehow, without modifying any code in AdminBundle, we have now a new item 'products', available in the menu in /admin/dashboard
Later on, the products CRUD is no longer needed, so we just delete the ProductBundle, and it automagically disappears from the admin dashboard menu.
How would you go about implementing something like this? Is there any native support for a plugin-like design like this in symfony 2?
I don't know about a full plugin solution but my approach would be:
There is one "master backend" call it MasterAdminBundle for the sake of conversation. This bundle contains a base.html.twig which just helps define the navigation bar of the Administration area and a {% block content %}. It also has some kind of MenuService which displays the menu. I'd have my other bundles register with this service an AdminMenu subclass by way of using the Tag System just as a Voter can register with the Security Context (see here).
In the base.html.twig I'd then likely use an Embedded Controller to render the menu.
Now with this sort of framework in place your other bundles can stay encapsulated by keeping their own admin routes and interfaces:
ProductController would now also have ProductAdminController where you can use a route prefix #Route("/admin") on the class definition. Any routes could then render templates from within the bundle since templates are held under the controller name. Acme\ProductBundle\Resources\views\ProductAdmin\edit_products.html.twig as long as they extend the base.html.twig from MasterAdminBundle and put their content into the content block.
For other things like a dashboard that you wanted to plug other bundles into I'd likely just keep going the same way, create a service in the MasterAdminBundle and use tags to load other classes into it with the data required.
Hope that makes sense, maybe others will have a better solution to this, I'm interested to hear also since this is something I'm trying to tackle at the moment also.
I have a website that has related pages. They have links that point back and forth to one another but I have no integrated system, nor do I know what that would mean.
What is the minimum code that a group of web pages must have to be considered a Content Management System (CMS). Is it that all the settings are in the database and the pages are generated somehow? Is there some small snippet that all my pages could share that makes them a CMS, database or not?
Thanks. I was also hoping not to have to study a giant CMS to see what makes it a CMS . After maybe a basic understanding I would know what I was looking for.
edit: here's why I ask about code. Whenever I have looked at a CMS, and maybe they aren't all the same, I saw that to develop a module you always had to inherit from certain classes and had some necessary code. I didn't know if there was some magic model that I just don't get that all cms makers understand.
edit: perhaps my question is more about being extendable or pluggable. What would a minimum look like? Is it possible to show that here?
edit: how about this? Is something a CMS if it is not extendable and/or pluggable?
I think this is really impossible to say. We all manage content. The "system" is just whatever mechanism you use to do so(dragging and dropping in Explorer or committing content changes via a SQL query). To say there is a minimum amount of code needed really isn't indicative. What is indicative is how often you find yourself making mistakes and how easy it is for a given user of a given skill level and knowledge to execute the functions in the designed system. That tells you the quality/degree of what you have in place being worthy of being called a "CMS."
Simply put a CMS is an application that allows the user to publish and edit existing web content.
In response to the edit:
A "good" CMS allows of extensibility. By using inheritence you can extend the functionality of a CMS outside of the core components provided. That's the magic.
About Extensibility:
Depending on the language/framework you want to build your CMS with, you can load pages or controls(ASP.NET) using command built into the framework. Typically what is being done is a parent class/interface is being defined that forces an module that is to be developed to follow some given standards:
Public MustInherit Class CMSModule
'Here you will define properties and functions that need to be global to all modules being developed to extend your CMS.
public property ModuleName as string
End Class
public class PlugInFooCMSPage
inherits CMSModule
end class
Then it's just a matter of simply loading a module dynamically in whatever construct a given language/framework provides.
Ultimately, a CMS is a system that lets you manage content, so it needs an user interface that is dedicated to letting you easily create, edit and delete pages on your website.
However, it's fairly usual to expect from a CMS to provide a browser-based WYSIWYG page editor, file uploading, image resizing, url rewriting, page categories and tags, user accounts (editor, moderator, administrator), and some kind of templae system.
Without dragging you into a theoretical explanation of what a CMS is and what it's not, perhaps some tutorials on the building methodology of a CMS will help you better understand.
http://css-tricks.com/php-for-beginners-building-your-first-simple-cms/
http://www.intranetjournal.com/php-cms/
A Content Management System is a System that Manages Content. :)
So if you got many pages that share the same layout, you can create a system that stores the content into a database and when a page is requested, it gets that content, merges it with a template that contains the page header, menu, etc.. and outputs the result.
The basis idea is that you don't want to copy HTML pages, and have to edit hundreds of them when you want to change your layout.
Such a system can be very complex, featuring wysiwyg editors, toolbars, version control, multiple user publishing and much more, but it could be as simple as a single page behind a standard loging, that contains only an input field for the title and a textarea in which you type the html content.