From sharma.ruby1forge at zoemail.net  Sun Jun 22 11:47:53 2008
From: sharma.ruby1forge at zoemail.net (Anil Sharma)
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:47:53 -0400
Subject: [Yui4rails-discuss] yui4rails - day one for me
Message-ID: <1214149673.485e7429465e8@www.zoemail.net>

Hi,

I just started with yui4rails. The tutorial link (
http://martyhaught.com/articles/2008/05/23/yui4rails-component-tutorial ) was
helpful. Quick takes:

1. Marty, Great Job!

2. Category: Your blog is archived by month. A tagged list by category will make
your page even better. An example of a very similar blog :
http://sonjayatandon.com/category/ruby/ .

3. Comment: I could not find any way to leave a comment for you on any of your
pages! Did I miss something?

4. initialize_yui: On windows, the rake initialize_yui did not work. After
reading the rakefile, I figured that the only thing it does at this time is
copy the <my_app>\vendor\plugins\yui4rails\public\yui directory to
<my_app>\public\yui directory.

5. SVN command: It didn't download anything for me. The .zip file download and
unzipping in the <my_app>\vendor\plugins directory did the trick.


Will keep posted.

Anil Sharma

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From mghaught at gmail.com  Sun Jun 22 23:26:22 2008
From: mghaught at gmail.com (Marty Haught)
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:26:22 -0600
Subject: [Yui4rails-discuss] yui4rails - day one for me
In-Reply-To: <1214149673.485e7429465e8@www.zoemail.net>
References: <1214149673.485e7429465e8@www.zoemail.net>
Message-ID: <57f29e620806222026o7996e2abn5c1862b0cb8a430f@mail.gmail.com>

> I just started with yui4rails. The tutorial link (
> http://martyhaught.com/articles/2008/05/23/yui4rails-component-tutorial ) was
> helpful. Quick takes:
>
> 1. Marty, Great Job!

Welcome Anil and thanks.  Though I will say that the quality of what's
there is no where close to what I'd like it to be.  As this plugin was
extracted from two projects of mine that used YUI, it's not as
polished as it could be.  We're slowly making improvements and I hope
it to be a solid plugin that others can use and extend before the
summer's over.  It's slow going though as both of those projects have
me working in other areas at the moment.


> 2. Category: Your blog is archived by month. A tagged list by category will make
> your page even better. An example of a very similar blog :
> http://sonjayatandon.com/category/ruby/ .

Thank you and you're right.  My blog is a base Radiant CMS install
that I did back in 2006.  I have done virtually no customization on it
and while Radiant is very cool, it's not written to be a world-class
blogging engine.  They are slowly adding more standard blogging
features to it so it might actually be a very good blog engine before
the year is out.  It has been on my list to add tagging as well as
other basic features to make it more user-friendly.


> 3. Comment: I could not find any way to leave a comment for you on any of your
> pages! Did I miss something?

No, you didn't.  I felt bad that I didn't have any comment solution
for the blog.  However, I've seen more people moving away from
comments due to the high maintenance of comment spam.  I may still add
them in but I'll want to be sure the comments are meaningful.  At the
least I should add to the footer something about sending me an email
if you want to pass along any feedback.


> 4. initialize_yui: On windows, the rake initialize_yui did not work. After
> reading the rakefile, I figured that the only thing it does at this time is
> copy the <my_app>\vendor\plugins\yui4rails\public\yui directory to
> <my_app>\public\yui directory.

Sorry, I didn't keep the README up-to-date.  I improved that rask task
and moved into a more fitting namespace.  Assuming you're running on
the newer codebase, you should be able to run rake yui4rails:update to
move the files over.  Right now the project is in a funky state as
I've added some new features and changed how things work in the github
repo.  I also need to incorporate the latest 2.5.2 release from YUI.
Once that's done I'll do another official release and there shouldn't
have any more significant API changes.


> 5. SVN command: It didn't download anything for me. The .zip file download and
> unzipping in the <my_app>\vendor\plugins directory did the trick.

My co-worker, Andy, added some tags to the svn repo recently.  Here's
the new path to the last official patch.  Note, that this will not be
compatible with what I wrote about in my component tutorial post.

svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/yui4rails/tags/yui4rails-0.1.1/

For the tutorial stuff, please use the github master branch.  There
are two popular ways of pulling down the code.  First, if you have git
installed run this command:

git clone git://github.com/mghaught/yui4rails vendor/plugins/yui4rails

Second, assuming you don't have git, use the download button on this
page: http://github.com/mghaught/yui4rails/tree/master

It will give you a tarball of the master branch (think svn trunk).

I'm still debating dropping svn support and going 100% with git.
Working in Git and trying to sync changes back into svn is an extra
layer of hassle, I may opt for simplicity on my part.  Beyond the
learning curve for those new to Git, it's superior for handling
contributions in my experience.  There will always be official
releases in zip/tarball formats.

Anyway, hopefully that will get you going with the plugin.  Please
post back to the list how things are going.

Cheers,
Marty

From sharma.ruby1forge at zoemail.net  Mon Jun 23 01:10:31 2008
From: sharma.ruby1forge at zoemail.net (Anil Sharma)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:10:31 -0400
Subject: [Yui4rails-discuss] Using yui4rails
Message-ID: <1214197831.485f3047030cf@www.zoemail.net>

Hi Marty,

Thanks for the prompt response. I made a little more progress. I used the old
README file, and documented my steps.

My application is a pilot's logbook. The individual entries are in the logrows
table. I want to display all entries when called with the index action. The
layout file is app/views/layout/standard.html.erb.

1. In app/views/layout/standard.html.erb, after includes for all .js and .css,
add the yui resources:

   <%= include_yui :datatable, :charts %>

2. In app/controller/logrows_controller.rb, change as follows:

def index
  @logrows = Logrow.find(:all)

  @table_id = "pilottable"  #this will be the div id of the generated table

  @column_definitions = [
        {:key => 'flt_dt', :label => "Flight Date", :resizeable => true,
:sortable =>
true},
        {:key => 'make_model', :label => "Make/ Model", :resizeable => true,
:sortable
=> true}
        ]

  @data_rows = []
  for logrow in @logrows      # this block is just to format the @data_rows var.
    row = {}
    logrow.attribute_names.each do |f|
        row[f] = logrow.send(f)
    end
    @data_rows << row
  end

   @datatable = Yui4Rails::Widgets::DataTable.new(@table_id,
                             @column_definitions, @data_rows, footer_row = "")
end

Note: The @data_rows parameter looks like this:

       @data_rows = [{:flt_dt => '05/01', :make_model => "C172"},
                     {:flt_dt => '05/02', :make_model => "B747"}]

   I would have liked to say @data_rows = @logrows. But that doesn't work. It
would be nice to specify a table name, and an instance variable loaded with the
find results, and be able to tabulate. The plugin could help keep DRY.

Also, resizeable and sortable are not part of the plugin but are passed thru to
yui. They worked in first guess and try. Nice touch Marty.

3. In app/views/logrows/index.html.erb, I deleted everything and included one
statement.

     <%= @datatable.render %>

That's it.

Next stop: Pagination.


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From mghaught at gmail.com  Mon Jun 23 23:29:43 2008
From: mghaught at gmail.com (Marty Haught)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:29:43 -0600
Subject: [Yui4rails-discuss] Using yui4rails
In-Reply-To: <1214197831.485f3047030cf@www.zoemail.net>
References: <1214197831.485f3047030cf@www.zoemail.net>
Message-ID: <57f29e620806232029r42056baex56d4460523ae438c@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Anil,

Glad to hear of your progress.  Which release did you end up with?
Things will change slightly with the current trunk/github code.  One
of the things that I wish to do with datatable is remove the need to
call include_yui separately.  With the latest AssetManager code it is
no longer necessary.  I'll see if I can modernize the datatable code
in the coming weeks.

Also, I did get some time to upgrade my current projects to 2.5.2 and
that went well.  The github account has my latest commits.  I
encourage any of you that are git-savvy to pull down the changes and
see how they work with your projects.  I'll give push it to the svn
trunk in the next few days for others to try out.

On your approach with datatable, that's on the right track.
Unfortunately the datatable structure isn't easy and I'm not sure how
you can generically handle it without shutting down a lot of options.
 What I would do is extract all that controller code into helpers and
models.  For example, I'd put that hefty controller on a diet with
this:

def index
	@logrows = Logrow.find(:all)
end

Of course, you will probably need to add in more options such as
sorting and pagination controls.  Not sure.

I would then look to make most of the datatable specific code into a
helper such as:

module LogrowsHelper

	def lowrow_datatable(logrows, options = {})
		table_id = options[:table_id] || "pilottable"
		column_definitions = [
		       {:key => 'flt_dt', :label => "Flight Date", :resizeable => true,
						:sortable => true},
		       {:key => 'make_model', :label => "Make/ Model", :resizeable => true,
						:sortable => true}
		       ]
		data_rows = logrows.map(&:datarow)
		@datatable = Yui4Rails::Widgets::DataTable.new(table_id,
column_definitions, data_rows)
	end

end

Now I'd probably look hard at moving the column definitions code to
the model or at least have it be driven by your model.  You will
probably want to interact with the @datatable object for
sorting/pagination and then render it when you're ready.

That leaves the model code, where I would move the datarow creation.

class Logrow
	....
	def datarow
		row = {}
   	self.attribute_names.each do |f|
       row[f] = self.send(f)
   	end
	end
	
	--OR--
	
	def data_keys
		["flt_dt", "make_model"]
	end
	
	def datarow
		row = {}
		data_keys.each do |key|
			row[key] = self.send(key)
		end
	end
end	

The datarow method essentially converts the individual Logrow record
into a datatable-compatible hash.   I put two examples in there.  One
which is identical to what you had except I moved it to the model and
invoked with the symbol.to_proc map combo.  The attribute_names
approach is pretty efficient unless you get more attributes that you
don't want in your table.  Additionally, it would be nice to drive the
keys from the same source.  Furthermore if you could have the column
labels driven from the model that would be great.  I know it's
primarily a view concern but the model should know more about its
attributes so I'd put it there.

If you see other ways to improve the developer interaction with the
datatable model, please send them to the list.

Cheers,
Marty

On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 11:10 PM, Anil Sharma
<sharma.ruby1forge at zoemail.net> wrote:
> Hi Marty,
>
> Thanks for the prompt response. I made a little more progress. I used the old
> README file, and documented my steps.
>
> My application is a pilot's logbook. The individual entries are in the logrows
> table. I want to display all entries when called with the index action. The
> layout file is app/views/layout/standard.html.erb.
>
> 1. In app/views/layout/standard.html.erb, after includes for all .js and .css,
> add the yui resources:
>
>   <%= include_yui :datatable, :charts %>
>
> 2. In app/controller/logrows_controller.rb, change as follows:
>
> def index
>  @logrows = Logrow.find(:all)
>
>  @table_id = "pilottable"  #this will be the div id of the generated table
>
>  @column_definitions = [
>        {:key => 'flt_dt', :label => "Flight Date", :resizeable => true,
> :sortable =>
> true},
>        {:key => 'make_model', :label => "Make/ Model", :resizeable => true,
> :sortable
> => true}
>        ]
>
>  @data_rows = []
>  for logrow in @logrows      # this block is just to format the @data_rows var.
>    row = {}
>    logrow.attribute_names.each do |f|
>        row[f] = logrow.send(f)
>    end
>    @data_rows << row
>  end
>
>   @datatable = Yui4Rails::Widgets::DataTable.new(@table_id,
>                             @column_definitions, @data_rows, footer_row = "")
> end
>
> Note: The @data_rows parameter looks like this:
>
>       @data_rows = [{:flt_dt => '05/01', :make_model => "C172"},
>                     {:flt_dt => '05/02', :make_model => "B747"}]
>
>   I would have liked to say @data_rows = @logrows. But that doesn't work. It
> would be nice to specify a table name, and an instance variable loaded with the
> find results, and be able to tabulate. The plugin could help keep DRY.
>
> Also, resizeable and sortable are not part of the plugin but are passed thru to
> yui. They worked in first guess and try. Nice touch Marty.
>
> 3. In app/views/logrows/index.html.erb, I deleted everything and included one
> statement.
>
>     <%= @datatable.render %>
>
> That's it.
>
> Next stop: Pagination.
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
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