[cgi-prototype-users] Reusable Components

[LD]

Hi there,

obviously an active list :-)

Anyway - I'm so far really liking CGI::Prototype (with its simple MVC
implementation) but what I'm not clear on is the best way to
incorporate Reusable Components.

Say you've got the following components which all inherit from
CGI::Prototype...

Header: (reusable)
/Header.pm
/Header.tt

Various Pages:
/Main.pm
/Main.tt
/Login.pm
/Login.tt
<...>

Footer: (reusable)
/Footer.pm
/Footer.tt

...and somecgi.cgi which basically does
Main->activate;

What's the best way of including the output of Header and Footer in the
render phase - i.e., as if you'd concated the output of:
Header->activate; Main->activate; Footer->activate;

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
LD

[Matthew Browning]

Post by LD
What's the best way of including the output of Header and Footer in
Header->activate; Main->activate; Footer->activate;
Any thoughts?

The functionality you're after is suggested in the docs of
CGI::Prototype::Hidden, here (link will probably wrap):

http://search.cpan.org/~merlyn/CGI-Prototype-0.9052/lib/CGI/Prototype/Hidden.pm#MANAGEMENT_SLOTS

I'd go easy using anything marked as `experimental' but I've had a go at
using this feature, purely as a point of interest, and it does work.

Be nice to see how this develops.


MB

[Randal L. Schwartz]

Post by LD
What's the best way of including the output of Header and Footer in

Header-> activate; Main->activate; Footer->activate;

Post by LD
Any thoughts?

Matthew> The functionality you're after is suggested in the docs of
Matthew> CGI::Prototype::Hidden, here (link will probably wrap):

Matthew> http://search.cpan.org/~merlyn/CGI-Prototype-0.9052/lib/CGI/Prototype/Hidden.pm#MANAGEMENT_SLOTS

Matthew> I'd go easy using anything marked as `experimental' but I've had a go at
Matthew> using this feature, purely as a point of interest, and it does work.

Matthew> Be nice to see how this develops.

Or, do as I've done, and put all that in WRAPPER.tt - you can do an
amazing amount there.

I've just finished a seriously fleshed out medium size project with
CGIP, and I'm probably going to take my "this works, that doesn't"
thoughts and put them into CGI::Prototype::Cookbook.

For example, my top level class was GC::App... so I created GC/ttlib
to hold all my INCLUDE'd files, because they'd sit alongside the rest
of my app, but not get in the way of the files in GC/App/*.tt, which
I reserved purely for state-based pages.

[Jim Brandt]

For standard header/footer stuff for pages, we take care of this on the
template side since this tends to be view-like information. We put it
in our wrapper.tt (along with error-handling code) so it gets run for
each page. Then each page.tt only needs to handle display duties for
the middle part of the page.

With Template Toolkit, you can use INCLUDE to pull in other templates
easily in the display phase.

If you have dynamic data in your headers and footers, you can handle
that a few ways. The easiest is probably to add subs to your App.pm
base class and call back to them from TT. Since self is sent to the
template, you can call any of the methods from there.

Another way is to create new slots, generate the data in your pm files,
stick the data in the slot, then reference it from the Template.

In general, I've found that one pm = one page, so you usually won't
create separate pm files for smaller components. If it is a shared
component, you can stick it in App.pm.

And for what it's worth, CGI::Prototype::Hidden adds some nice
features, so you may consider checking that out.

Hope this helps.

Jim

Post by LD
Hi there,
obviously an active list :-)
Anyway - I'm so far really liking CGI::Prototype (with its simple MVC
implementation) but what I'm not clear on is the best way to
incorporate Reusable Components.
Say you've got the following components which all inherit from
CGI::Prototype...
Header: (reusable)
/Header.pm
/Header.tt
/Main.pm
/Main.tt
/Login.pm
/Login.tt
<...>
Footer: (reusable)
/Footer.pm
/Footer.tt
...and somecgi.cgi which basically does
Main->activate;
What's the best way of including the output of Header and Footer in
Header->activate; Main->activate; Footer->activate;
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
LD
-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by: Tell us your software development plans!
Take this survey and enter to win a one-year sub to SourceForge.net
Plus IDC's 2005 look-ahead and a copy of this survey
Click here to start! http://www.idcswdc.com/cgi-bin/survey?id=105hix
_______________________________________________
cgi-prototype-users mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cgi-prototype-users

==========================================
Jim Brandt
Administrative Computing Services
University at Buffalo

[Randal L. Schwartz]

Jim> And for what it's worth, CGI::Prototype::Hidden adds some nice
Jim> features, so you may consider checking that out.

Yeah, I should probably make it clearer that CGI::Prototype starts
a bit too close to the metal. CGI::Prototype::Hidden (and the upcoming
"when I get a few more tuits" CGI::Prototype::Pathinfo) are a much
better starting framework for a "real" app.