ExtJS based UI for Eden

S3XRC being a powerful backend that serves XML and JSON in a RESTful manner has now got a front-end framework that can exploit its positives. S3UI - the new ExtJS based front-end help us not only utilize S3XRC but also save a lot of bandwidth by exchanging information in JSON instead of full page reloads. This in turn aims to create an easy and quick workflow for different tasks that a user does with Sahana Eden.

Architecture

S3UI Framework is has 4 major components

• Custom views - these views contain appropriate javascript and html required to render the S3UI widgets, however they are minimal and look almost similar to old views for matter of simplicity and similarity.
• Javascript -
  • _s3ui_list.js - generates the grid view, included by _s3ui_list and _s3ui_list_create views -
    • Setting up metadata
    • fetching column model
    • Parsing json data from s3xrc into an Ext Datastore
    • Configuring and rendering a Grid widget on desired DOM element
  • core.js -
    • Provides S3UI objects and S3UI_Elements list
    • Manages creation of different widgets - used in custom views
    • Naming convention -
      • data_FunctionName - any function pertaining to parsing, formatting or manipulating data, nothing that affects UI
      • tools_FunctionName - various helpers that aid larger widgets - Eg. plugin implementors, micro-widget generators (date picker, checkbox, combo box)
      • widget_FunctionName - Larger widgets that can be used directly to create new visible UI elements
  • plugins - various ExtJS based plugins used by core.js
  • Extcrud.py
    • is used to override necessary functions of 01_crud.py that are useful to S3UI
    • Alters flow through pre, post hooks to plug in code required by new UI
    • list_fields is no longer relevant, the modified S3XRC has a url/listfileds.json handler that gives back list of fields needed by a resource, it is implemented in the post processing hook here.
    • Implements xrc_list - a replacement for shn_list. It doesn't do as much work as shn_list, but leaves the rendering of datagrid to the frontend, page loads fast but rest of the processing is done by core.js
    • contains S3XRC_FRONTEND switch. Whats that? setting S3XRC_FRONTEND = false results in disabling all S3UI functionalities and lets one fall back to old UI. Useful when S3UI fails, or for testing.
    • overrides shn_rest_controller to setup hooks.

Widgets

Grid View Widget

RHeader Tabs

Form generation

Roadmap

FAQ