Rich (or any) GUI Components for Rails

rubyonrails-talk
1

HI,

I Find rails great but theres lack of rich components, i mean any components except standard html controls.. I cant build everytime my table with all features, we are crud right ?

So any component repository planned ? Maybe rails isnt good solution for my requirements ? I heard that components facility is now depreciated in rails... why ?

So far im programming asp.net and im using components library from www.telerik.com, see what im talking about.

what i mean is components repository. almost every app i make has a trees, tables and so on. all of these are not available out of the box so i wonder how do you guys manage to develop usable applications ? im not asp nor java evangelist i just want to switch to framework which works for me, not me for framework.

ok, everything seems to be easy with rails, but there must be rich components set to let web developers build something really competitive to other framework like asp or gwt.

have a look at mygwt.net, they adopted widgets from extjs framework (extjs.com). i wonder why theres no attempts for rails

2

I Find rails great but theres lack of rich components, i mean any

components except standard html controls…

I cant build everytime my table with all features, we are crud right ?

You’re missing the point about Rails here.

So any component repository planned ?

Maybe rails isnt good solution for my requirements ?

I heard that components facility is now depreciated in rails… why ?

Because you can do the same with partials and components had issues (that’s the short story). Components is not what you think they are. You can still make reusable components using the engines plugin.

So far im programming asp.net and im using components library from

www.telerik.com, see what im talking about.

what i mean is components repository. almost every app i make has a

trees, tables and so on. all of these are not available out of the box

so i wonder how do you guys manage to develop usable applications ?

im not asp nor java evangelist i just want to switch to framework

which works for me, not me for framework.

If these tightly integrated components in a drag-and-drop IDE are a must for you, then stick with your comfort zone.

ok, everything seems to be easy with rails, but there must be rich

components set to let web developers build something really

competitive to other framework like asp or gwt.

have a look at mygwt.net, they adopted widgets from extjs framework

(extjs.com).

There’s nothing stopping you from using extjs to build your Rails app interface. I’ve done some tests and it works perfectly. Rails can provide the json for the remote requests, as well as using the rhtml file to build the interface itself. You could even write a plugin that makes building the javascript code a lot easier by using Rails helpers to generate them.

Rails can be integrated with Flex apps too, the IDE provides a drag-and-drop interface builder.

i wonder why theres no attempts for rails

Nothing is stopping you from whatever’s out there to build your interface. Out of the box, Rails provides xml and html view renderers and it seems to do the job for a lot of the Rails apps out there.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

3

If these tightly integrated components in a drag-and-drop IDE are a must for you, then stick with your comfort zone.

thanks for reply.

i was talking about some nice looking and rich gui widgets, not ide actually.

extjs is great but i dont like javascript nature of this library.

Btw, how do you work with extjs, do you use render partials passing some locals and thus building javascript ? can you post some examples of best practises with ror + extjs ?

4

If these tightly integrated components in a drag-and-drop IDE are a must

for you, then stick with your comfort zone.

thanks for reply.

i was talking about some nice looking and rich gui widgets, not ide

actually.

extjs is great but i dont like javascript nature of this library.

Then u could consider either OpenLaszlo or Flex, they use XML to describe the interface.

Btw, how do you work with extjs, do you use render partials passing some

locals and thus building javascript ?

Exactly. I first built some basic interfaces in a mockup html+extjs document, then pulled it apart and added the necessary controller and model code. Quick and sloppy, just to see if it might work. I now know it works, I might be tempted to use it in a future project.

can you post some examples of best practises with ror + extjs ?

I have to look it up, probably already deleted it, because it was so straightforward and easy. I basically used the RESTful authentication plugin, then built the login form with extjs and made a small contact list using the layoutpanels. All in all, it was pretty easy based upon the examples included with extjs (took some time, as i was getting used to extjs’s syntax). I didn’t load prototype or scriptaculous, used the extjs standalone library, it was so much faster.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

5

thx.

Btw im going to build community website, like orkut, is rails good for such project ?

6

Sure. Rails should fit the picture perfectly.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

7

Belated addition: you could consider XUL, which is open source. Zed Shaw posted a little about it in Dec 2006 -- http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/ruby_xul.html There's a fairly active IRC channel about XUL as well. irc.mozilla.org #xul

Ron