Grails GSP and template relations - javascript

When you have a GSP and then say you try to render a template into some part of it, if the template is sophisticated enough that it has to have its own CSS and JS, where is the best place to put the template's css and js? I currently have it inline with the template's markup in the same file such as but I feel it belongs with the parent GSP's css and js like maybe in the same files? Suggestions?
So right now the parent GSP looks like this.
<head>
reference to external file which has the parent GSP's css
inline JS
</head>
<body>
...
</body>
and the template which I render later into that GSP looks like this:
inline CSS
inline JS
inline markup
I know this isn't the cleanest, best strategy therefore I seek input as to what is. Thanks.

The answer is "It depends". It depends on how you are using the template.
More specifically are you reusing the template? If so, then it makes more sense to put the required CSS and JS within the template itself so it's self contained and reusable in such a manner.
If you are simply using the template for partial rendering then, and only within a specific parent GSP then it makes more sense to include the CSS and JS within the parent GSP and not the template.

The best way to handle this kind of scenario are using plugins like Grails Resource plugin or Grails Asset Pipeline Plugin, both of them provide ways to keep organisation in yours resources (css, JavaScript) files
For example using grails resource plugin you could create a module that include specific view resource and template resource as a dependency all this possible using this plugin and keep it clean.
You can find useful information about resource plugin in this Marc Palmer Post
About asset pipline plugin in this Bobby Warner Post
I hope this help

Related

Angular Dart external JS

I am building an Angular-Dart site based on a commercial Bootstrap template.
The correct rendering should be like this:
I used IntelliJ to scaffold a Dart/Angular app and started to modify from there.
I have put related files (CSS/JS/images) of that template into web/css, web/js, respectively.
HTML used is verbatim copied from the template but I have taken out the CSS, JS reference from btqun_component.html and moved into index.html.
The output is like this:
Obviously, the CSS is working, and the header/footer are showing correctly. But the masonry effect is not showing, so I doubt that is related to JS reference.
Can anyone give any hints on this?
Do you have a documentation for the bootstrap template ? I guess you need to execute the javascript they provide to you so you need to add it to your index.html, and you probably need to import bootstrap and jquery too.
If you need to call a javascript function you can do it directly in the index.html inside a script tag or build a dart wrapper using package:js
EDIT: answer to call jQuery function from Dart

Angular directive to load JS files for the other directives

I'm trying to minimize js/css/html footrpint for the user and to load only the files really needed. I've utilized RequireJS for that.
For my templates I'm trying to implement someting similar to
using section in C# or ///< reference path='...' > in TypeScript
But somehow depending on my template content it does or doesn't instantiate depends-on directive depending on template I have:
Works:
<depends-on path="..\..\test"></depends-on>
<login-form></login-form>
Doesn't work:
<depends-on path="..\..\test"></depends-on>
<login-form></login-form>
<other-directive></other-directive>
Doesn't work:
<div>
<depends-on path="..\..\test"></depends-on>
<login-form></login-form>
</div>
I'm obviously missing the way Angular parses and processes templates.
Is there a way to achieve what I'm trying to do?
OK, the problem was that it didn't wait until all directive template depends on are loaded. To ensure dependencies are loaded, dependent code should be in callback passed to require function.

Backbone: managing templates

I'm using underscore template engine for an backbone application. As of now I have over 15 templates in the <head>. Its getting hard to maintain. So far, most of the solutions I seen to manage templates ended up needing them to be js files. That's also a headache, I prefer them to be html files for editing purposes.
I took a look at requirejs and not sure if I need that since it kinda revolves around a more modular approach that I can't say I'm using at the moment (although I will soon).
What will be the best way to manage templates and load/cache them as needed?
Personally we needed a robust solution at my company, so we went with:
Require.js - for module loading
Handlebars - for more powerful templating than Underscore can offer
HBS - an excellent require plug-in from Alex Sexton that handles bringing compiled templates in via Require
With this setup I can keep all of my templates in their own file, and then to use them I have files like this:
define(['template!path/to/someTemplate'], function(someTemplate) {
var MyNewView = BaseView.extend({template: someTemplate});
$('body').append(new MyNewView().render().el);
}
(and as you might guess we have a base Backbone view called BaseView which uses the view's template property to render the view).
Now, all that being said, if you don't need such a robust setup then Require may not be for you. In that case I would do the following:
Put all of your templates in to one or more HTML files; wrap them in script tags, like so:
<script id="dummyTemplate" type='text/template'>
<span>I'm a template!</span>
</script>
Write some code on your server-side to include those HTML files in the main HTML file you send to the client
Write a function which takes a template ID, gets the text of that element, compiles it in to a template, and returns that template (maybe cache the compiled templates if you want ... of course, with Underscore templates I don't think you even need compiling, so you can skip all that).
Use your function to access your templates: $("#something").html(templateFunc('dummyTemplate').template())
This will allow you to store your templates in html files (for syntax coloring), but still access them conveniently in JS. You can also divide your templates between as many files as you want, as long as you can write include logic to bring them in.
If you do opt for Require though, definitely check out the HBS plugin. And if you haven't looked at Handlebars templates yet, you might want to; they're far more powerful than Underscore ones (but like any good templating system, don't allow for too much logic).
Not sure what you mean by it being unmaintainable. Is it just a long list?
You don't need to keep your templates in the head. They can be at the bottom of your body as well. They just need to be defined before you try to use them.
One thing you might look into, depending on the server technology you are using would be to separate your templates into a different HTML file and include it at runtime.

Grails: Javascript files in views folder

I'd like to split my views in Grails into 2 files a .gsp file and a .js file so that I get a cleaner Javascript separation from my views. So here's an example:
views/index.gsp
views/index.js
views/home/index.jsp
views/home/index.js
But when I simply add the index.js script reference like this:
<script src="index.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
all I get is a 404.
Does anyone knows how to deal with this?
A great benefit would be to have the ability to use view data inside the index.js file to produce the desired content.
Matthias.
Actually, it should be perfectly possible to serve a JS file (or any other file type) as a GSP from your grails-app/views/ directory. The only thing you have to do, is define a suitable URL mapping for those GSPs, e.g.:
"/javascript/home/index"(view:'/home/index.js')
With this URL mapping, you can put your JS code into grails-app/views/home/index.js.gsp (note the trailing .gsp) and you can use any grails tags in your JS source. To ensure that your JS is delivered with the correct content type, you may want to place
<%# page contentType="text/javascript"%>
at the beginning of your GSP.
Unfortunately, the createLink tag doesn't support link rewriting to views, but it should be easy to write your own tag to create those links.
Anyways, keep in mind that this won't have a very positive impact on your app's performance. It's usually better to have static JS files (and also serve them as static resources) while passing dynamic stuff as parameters to JS functions for example. This will also keep you from some headaches wrt. caching etc.
The idea is good, but Grails has this directory structure for a reason. The view folder is intended for a certain artifact type (views)..
You could clone your view folder structure under web-inf, but that gives you more work as I guess the idea behind this is to keep related files close together for convenience reasons.
Even though I'm not to excited about storing Javascript together with the view I loved Robert's idea of hooking into the build process by using build events to copy javascript sources into the right directory! If you decide to go down that road you might as well compress the sources while you're at it. ShrinkSafe is popular library.
I don't think you are allowed to access js inside views/
if you need to do that ... here is the trick
create your js and rename it with myjs.gsp (use "")
iniside _myjs.gsp type you js
... write down you js in here ...
inside you gsp (for example: index.gsp, view.gsp, etc)
type this tag to upload you js
Update 2:
Grails offer the possibility of hooking into the build lifecycle using custom events.
An event handler can be written which synchronises all JavaScript files under grails-app/views with the target folder of web-app/js.
Place the custom code in $PROJECT/scripts/Events.groovy. The PackagingEnd is a good target for the invocation, since it happens right after web.xml is generated.
eventPackagingEnd = { ->
// for each js file under grails-app/views move to web-app/js
}
Update
If you'd like the JavaScript files simply 'meshed' together, you can do that using symlinks, e.g.:
grails-app/views/view1/index.js -> webapp/js/view1/index.js
As far as I know, there is no way of forcing grails to directly serve content which is outside of web-app.
Alternatively, you can inline your JavaScript, but that can have performance implications.
JavaScript files belong under web-app/js.
Then you can reference them using <g:javascript src="index.js" />.

Executing groovy statements in JavaScript sources in Grails

There are essentially 2 places to define JavaScript functions in Grails, directly in a element on the GSP, and within a separate javascript source file under /web-app/js (for example, application.js). We have defined a commonly reused javascript function within application.js, but we also need to be able to generate parts of the function dynamically using groovy code. Unfortunately, ${some groovy code} does not appear to be processed within separate javascript source files.
Is the only way to do this by defining the javascript function within a script tag on a GSP page, or is there a more general solution? Obviously we could define the javascript function in a script tag within a template GSP file which would be reused, but there is a lot of push to keep our javascript functions defined all together in one place (i.e. the external javascript source file). This has performance benefits as well (the javascript source files are usually just downloaded once by each client's browser, instead of reloading the same javascript functions within the source of every html page they visit). I have toyed around with the idea of breaking the function up into static and dynamic pieces, putting the static ones in the external source and putting the dynamic ones in the template GSP, then gluing them together, but this seems like an unnecessary hack.
Any ideas?
(edit: It may sound like the idea of dynamically generating parts of a JavaScript function, which is then downloaded once and used over and over again by the client, would be a bad idea. However, the piece which is "dynamic" only changes perhaps once a week or month, and then only very slightly. Mostly we just want this piece generated off the database, even if only once, instead of hard coded.)
An easy solution to keep your JavaScript unobtrusive is to create a JavaScriptController and map its actions "/js/*" by adding this to your UrlMappings.groovy file:
"/js/$action"{
controller = "javascript"
}
then just create an action for each dynamic JS file you want, include in in your layout <HEAD>, and presto, you've got a JS file that you can insert Grails snippets into! :)
Note: I've found that there's currently a bug in Grails that doesn't map file extensions to content-types properly, so you'll need to include <%# page contentType="text/javascript; UTF-8" %> at the top of your view files.
This is a great solution. I would like to offer a suggestion to use somthing other then a mapping of "/js/$action" because this is no longer going to allow you to access you javascript files in /web-app/js/. All your javascript files would have to be moved to a the directory your controller would point to.
I would use something like
"/dynjs/$action"
This way you still can point to files in the /web-app/js/ files with out conflict and enjoy the benifits of gsp tags in javascript files
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Or this... have a tag/service/dynamic method that lets tags write out their JS+CSS+whatever else, to a "cache" which is used to build the JS+CSS resources by a different controller.
Full concept here: [http://www.anyware.co.uk/2005/2009/01/19/an-idea-to-give-grails-tags-esp/][1]
If you want to use models created by the controller (that rendered HTML page which reference the Javascript in which you intend to use groovy code) in the Javascript code, then you can use this technique:
This technique does not need to change URL mappings and does not require you to create extra controller.
In your view GSP add javascript as follows:
<script type="text/javascript">
<g:render template="/javascript/yourJavascriptFile"/>
</script>
In views folder create a "javascript" folder. And create a file named:
_yourJavascriptFile.gsp
You can not only use all the GSP code in your _yourJavascriptFile.gsp file, but you can also use all the models created in your controller (that is rendering the view).
NOTE: There is nothing special about javascript folder. You can name it anything you want OR use an existing view folder. This is just a matter of organizing and identifying your HTML spitting GSP from Javascript spitting GSPs. Alternatively, you can use some naming conventions like: _something.js.gsp etc.
Name your scripts like this
/wherever/the/js/files/are/thescript.js.gsp
The gsp code inside will be rendered correctly by grails. This works, but I have no idea if it's considered a Good Idea or not.
There is another way - pass in the generated code into a function that expects closures. Those closures is generated by the program of course. The generated code is of course inlined/script-tagged in the gsp page.
it may or may not work depending on the nature of the code being generated. But i suspect it will work, and if it doesnt, minor tweaking to the coding style of your javascript will definitely make it work. Though, if these 'generated' code doesnt change much, this quite overkill imo.

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