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I am acting as web developer for a small startup, taking over as the only in-house developer to maintain and adapt the application that was initially put together by a team of contractors. I would consider myself to be at an intermediate level with Ruby on Rails. I know enough about front end technologies like HTML and CSS to use Bootstrap or Foundation effectively and write my own tweaks when necessary. However, I only can read the JavaScript code of other developers well enough to make small modifications to what's already in place.
I would like to become proficient in JavaScript to help round out my skillset but there seem to be a lot of JavaScript "options" out there and I'm not sure what's on the way in, what's on the way out, what's popular, what's most useful, easiest to start with, best fit for Rails applications and so forth. And by "options" I mean "regular" Javascript, jQuery, Node, Angular, etc etc.
In hopes that my question will meet SO terms as "answerable" I'd like to focus on the question of what kind of Javascript fits best with Rails and which technologies are the most generally relevant today (i.e. not on the way out of popularity already).
Your choice should depend on what you're doing. One case might be using Rails primarily on the back-end, pulling data from it, and then generating your markup and displaying content primarily on the front-end with JavaScript. In that case, you should look into a JavaScript framework like Ember.js or AngularJS. If you're going to be generating your markup primarily on the back-end with Rails, having that markup being pre-populated with content before being sent to the user, you might be better off using jQuery for DOM manipulation and the occasional AJAX request to your Rails back-end.
In the case you're looking for a framework: Yehuda Katz is a leading voice in the Ruby on Rails core team, and has a similar role inside of the Ember.js project. While this isn't strictly objective, I'd say that Ember is the JavaScript framework that most closely matches "The Rails Way". That said, any framework will integrate well if you're using Rails as a backend, and AngularJS is currently more popular and might be easier if you're looking for examples and helper libraries.
I'd like to point out that Ember is just a framework, just like jQuery is just a library. Knowing JavaScript from the bottom up is a very helpful thing when working with anyone's code. I highly recommend checking out the Learn JavaScript page on MDN, and maybe picking up a copy of JavaScript: the Good Parts by Douglas Crockford. The former has a bunch of free information about getting up to speed on JavaScript. The latter is a dense, and somewhat controversial book, but (in my opinion) is one of the best books about dealing with the language's rough edges.
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I'm a PHP programmer that was just hired to write an interactive ipad app whose requirements are basically that it be a website. So I started setting up to develop a website when I found out that my employer's server has been lobotomized: no dynamic languages, the only things I'm allowed to code with are HTML and JavaScript.
AJAX and jQuery are still in, but as far as I can tell they won't have a server-side language to back them up. If I have an urgent and compelling reason to have an active language, I might be able to convince the senior web guy to give me an exception, but I don't think my project qualifies as urgent or compelling by about two orders of magnitude.
My question then, is what sort of labor-saving devices are out there for HTML/JS only sites? I would have liked to use something like Drupal. Would I be better off writing the whole thing in XCode?
The site will display information regarding a number of historical artifacts in the possession of the library that is my employer.
It would help if you were more specific about your needs (the kinds of things you do in PHP that you don't know how to do with just HTML/JS), but I think I know what you're getting at.
If the site isn't too complicated, a good client-side templating engine is probably what you're looking for. Handlebars.js is a popular choice, but there are tons to choose from. I prefer to use client-jade, but it doesn't matter much. The idea is to define a template (e.g. for displaying one historical artifact), then iterate over an array of data that describes all the artifacts in the library, rendering each element of the array into some pretty-looking DOM with your template.
If you need something more sophisticated than that, you might want a client-side MVC framework like Backbone.js (lightweight, easier to learn, less opinionated) or Angular.js (heavier, harder to learn, very opinionated).
If the labor you're trying to save yourself from doing is styling work, you might want to check out twitter bootstrap (or similar frameworks like foundation). Bootstrap makes it easy to create good-looking navbars, make column-based layouts, and ensure that your site looks good across different browsers and devices.
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I am ColdFusion developer working in ColdFusion since last 2 years. Recently before few weeks i have started learning cfclient API of ColdFusion Splendor as I am always interested in Mobile application development. But today after reading comments on the blog
http://blogs.coldfusion.com/post.cfm/coldfusion-mobile-features-are-not-just-about-cfclient-but-it-is-necessary#comment-08603915-B031-CC32-1C2DE6521C233F65
I am in big dilemma, Is it worth of spending time for learning cfclient. Some of conclusions that I found after reading the comments on the blog are.
Adobe never have a good track record on generating JS. They generate very ugly looking js.
cfform and cfgrid were introduced with some client side functionality.But now a days no one loves to use it because they have not been updated since long and we can get more flexibility using custom js library.The same may happen to cfclient.
It's a crappy decision from Adobe to focus on mobile application development instead of making the server side language more robust and fixing old bugs.
cfclient inspires the developers not to learn JavaScript.
Adobe is trying to solve a problem that does not exist.
I think you've answered your own question here, to be honest: don't waste your time.
Basically <cfclient> is, by Adobe's own admission, just a hook into the language to tell how the compiler should treat the code: translating it into JavaScript instead of compiling it to bytecode like with normal CFML. And it's a really crap way of achieving that.
The other reason is that they couldn't work out how to implement the hooks into ColdFusion Builder to make all its mobile-dev workflow work.
Another problem is that the Adobe guys are just... not any good at writing anything other than Java. This has been borne out by every single foray into anything other than Java that they write (this includes CFML, incidentally: they can't even write that).
So do you really want journeymen developers who aren't comfortable in the language writing wizards to write your JS for you? No.
Do yourself a favour, and just learn to do it properly. <cfclient> is just an example of Adobe having not learned their lessons over the years after all the <cfform>, AJAX-enabled layout widgets like <cfpod>, and Flash forms. They have never had the skillset to do this work properly, so don't put yourself at their mercy.
Oh, and I'm also voting to close the question as it's not one that can be answered objectively.
This is my take on it
Even if it were good approach today, it is not future proof. New browsers will come, new javascript features will come. I fear that this won't move ahead.
I could not agree more
And some of the existing bugs really need to be addressed.
<cfclient> asserts that client side development should be in cfml. IMHO, Coffeescript covers some of those concerns.
There is a demand for Mobile friendly websites. If I had to pick ONE thing to move ColdFusion forward in this arena it would be: Can we get the JSON functions to work right
There are many ways that Adobe could have moved forward on the mobile application front. If they promoted various community based solutions that would be useful. I know Bootstrap + FW/1 + ColdFusion. But I don't know PhoneGap/Cordova + ColdFusion. I would be good to see those work together.
True, But if you're using CFClient, you're not wanting to write JS anyway, so what do you care what it looks like on the client.
I believe Adobe has promised that we would be able to update the core underpinnings of CFClient (probably PhoneGap/Cordova) and other JS libraries.
Agreed.
I don't know about inspires.
I disagree here. I'd love for a way to quickly deploy to mobile.
PS> I'm sure since this question isn't code related, it will get downvoted / deleted; Might be a better topic for the CF-Talk mailing list or some ColdFusion forum somewhere.
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Just wanted to understand where does SAPUI5 stand as a framework.
(1)Is it like jQuery (library with host of utility functions, effects, animations etc)
or
(2)Is it like a MVC library like Backbone,Angular,Ember etc?
If 1, then how could it possibly supersede jQuery?
If 2, then what advantages & disadvantages would it have over these
other frameworks.
Apart from the fact that it's SAP's proprietary framework what really i would like to know is the principles & philosophy behind this framework, and how does it stand the test of time in front-end regarding-
MV* philosophy of building applications
building single-page applications
learning curve along with other frameworks like Backbone, Angular
(I mean if i learn SAPUI-5 does my learning curve for other
frameworks increase or decrease or how can it affect that)
And lastly can (if there is!) I create an ecosystem of SAPUI5 with other frameworks.
This is rather a large question that is in danger of having a very long answer, one which is also subject to opinion as well as fact. But I'll have a go.
First there's the "which toolkit" question. There's SAPUI5 which is the name of what the toolkit originally took (and still has), and this is subject to certain SAP licence restrictions. Since December 2013 there's also OpenUI5 which is the Open Sourced version of the same toolkit (minus a few things currently, but for the most part the same). And when people refer to UI5 they're collectively referring to both SAPUI5 and OpenUI5.
So while "SAPUI5" is proprietary, its sibling "OpenUI5" is very much Open Source.
UI5 is a full featured toolkit that includes, amongst other things:
MVC
data binding with support for JSON, XML and OData out of the box
module loading and management
support for component-based app creation
internationalisation (incl. RTL support)
routing
different libraries of controls e.g. rich desktop-specific controls in the sap.ui.commons and sap.ui.table namespaces, plus responsive controls for smartphone/tablet/desktop in the sap.m namespace (on which the SAP Fiori application suites are built)
To your question on jQuery - it uses jQuery and many other libraries, and builds upon them, so it's not a competitor for jQuery or a replacement for it. In fact, from personal experience, I'm not a jQuery expert but I build apps with UI5 just fine.
To your question on advantages and disadvantages vs other MV* frameworks, I don't think there's space in this answer to tackle such a wide-ranging question.
Not sure what you mean by standing the test of time regarding MV*; MVC has been around as a concept since almost the beginning of time, so I guess that has stood the test; UI5 is relatively young (2-3 years) so still has to prove itself in terms of years, but it's doing rather well so far if you consider the large scale of app development that's happening with it in the SAP world.
Learning curve? I'm traditionally a backend / integration developer and I picked up UI5 without too much bother. Difficult to answer the question without knowing your skillset and desire to embrace it.
Ecosystem inside SAPUI5? Not sure I understand that question.
Hope that helps a bit.
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Now I don't have any specific question, rather a general, ask for opinions post.
Within a month we will receive the documentation of a project we have to develop. The website has a lot of potential and will be advertised in TV and radio as well when it'll be done. So it'll have a lot of visitors, members and it'll have a rich admin panel with lots of options. My friend who was asked to be the CTO is a senior PHP developer with almost 10 years of experience and I am a junior JS developer. (or less, I don't have years of experiences in JS, but I'm committed)
Is a JS MVC framework substitute for PHP? Is a PHP MVC framework substitute for JS? Are they both working well together or is it possible to not use any framework, but write the project in MVC approach?
For example:
model: PHP
controller: JS (jQuery+Ajax)
view: HTML, CSS
As my friend is a professional PHP developer and will have a daily job next to, but only in the beginning of this project, he doesn't really want to learn an other language (like Node.js), because almost everything is a routine for him now in PHP.
I know everything depends on the documentation and what we have to develop exactly, but I'm just a curious mind and want to understand more. I know I have much to make up and sometimes I worry of my current knowledge, but then I think that be whatever big the challenge, there will always be a solution for it.
MVC does not mean to use differenct languages for all of the modules (model, view, controller), but to loose couple and encapsulate certain parts of your application.
Against many opinions, MVC is not the panacea for application development. It really depends on the application you're developing.
It's not necessary to use any frameworks in order to follow the MVC approach. In fact it's a pattern that can be tied together very quickly, in it's most basic form.
If you decide to use your backend as an API and pull the data via frontend, you don't need to use MVC come hell or high water. For an API for example it's not necessary to perform most of the view tasks. Instead you should care about building a performant and scalable data storage layer (which for example is able to easily provide your data in many common formats, such as XML or JSON) and a strong router that can handle HTTP Requests nicely (See if REST is something for you).
In this case you want a strong frontend which can handle templates, and also has a strong layer for obtaining, sending and handling data in general. A strong controller layer that can delegate tasks to certain parts of your application would also come in handy.
Well you see what I'm talking about. It really depends on your application. In my example the backend wouldn't exactly follow the MVC approach, while my frontend would completely. MVC isn't about switching programming languages for certain parts of your application. Instead it decouples your application structure making things a lot easier.
Of course Frameworks come in handy when developing such an enterprise scale application, but it's not necessarily required.
To sum things up: MVC has not much to do with the code itself, it has much more to do with architecture and structure of your code. How exactely you're implementing it is absolutely up to you.
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I need to develop quite simple web application with some Ajax functionality and GUI components with Java as a server-side language. The main purpose for me is to learn sth about designing web app that I can make use of when I start looking for a job ... .I ran into lots of framework (RAP, Nice JSF implementations etc.) and there are also GWT and JQuery . I started reading about GWT and it seems to be great at the beginning, but there are limited number of visual components. When You missed one it seems to be much harder to write it with GWT than in JavaScript/JQuery (e.g sortable components).
Also:
If JavaScript is is easy why to learn API to just make translation?
The main argument seems to be that GWT is for developers who don't
know Java Script very well, but is JS harder than GWT API and
configuration to work with?
GWT offers also very nice Remote Procedure Call and translating
objects to JS, but there are lots of libraries like DWR.
You need also to use standard servlet to e.g send file stream to a
user, so You need also to save it to a Database or as a hidden XHTML files to make them available to servlet.
So should I start to learn GWT? It is really wide spread? Or maybe JSF implementations with Ajax support outperforms GWT in usability? The biggest problem I have that I cannot imagine how to solve simple problems in GWT while they are almost complete solutions with JQuery. Mixing JavaScript native code with GWT don't seems to be a good option also.
When working with GWT, its always better to now whats going on behind. So you have to learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript as anyway. Maybe you can start with less knowledge on browser frontend technologies. But you will come to the point where you need to know whats going on.
So ask yourself. Is your app large enough that its worth to start with complex GWT app. Also if you're on a large team and familiar with JAVA, Maven and Junit it makes senses.
On the other hand there are a bunch of small (backbone.js with jquery), middle (mootools) or large (extjs) JavaScript frameworks to build RIA.
I've never work with JSF, but all people a meet that used it, wasn't really satisfied.
After all I dont think its a good idea to select a framework by the current feature set of your app. As this can change of the time, you will have to implement it later with a technologie you not familiar with.
Note there is a table sort library for GWT as well: http://code.google.com/p/gwt-advanced-table/
GWT contains several unique features which make it difficult to be compared with other frameworks. The key point is that GWT isn't just a framework or library -- it's a toolkit. Consider:
Ability to use Java IDE's and debugger during development
Automatic generation of compiled scripts optimized for different browsers
Benefits of java for organization of code-base: OOP, package system, checked exceptions, compile-time type-checking etc.
These features make GWT suitable for big projects built by large teams that should be enhanced and maintained over a large time-frame. Off course, many projects do not have such requirements and therefore developers should give more weight to other consideration like widget library and learning curve.