overthinkings

by Ruben Daniels

Javeline Platform 101

March 9, 2007 at 7:14 pm · Filed under Tech, Javeline

Although I thoroughly enjoy the interest we get for Javeline Platform, somehow I got the feeling that there is a more optimized way to explain the general features of our Ajax development platform. Rather than giving someone VNC access and go over the different features during a 3 hour session, I thought using my blog might be efficient.

I want to discuss the most important features of the platform here to give you an overview of what it can do, and to make it clear what the advantages are for learning how to use it. I want to stress that last part of the sentence because there is indeed a learning curve. I built the system with ease of use in mind; I sometimes perceive it as an exoskeleton. It can give you a lot of power when used right. How to use it right however, is something you will have to spend time learning.

The features I will be discussion are the following:

Javeline Markup LanguageThe declarative API for creating an application
State managementManaging state in an application. A world of difference from a stateless website
TelePortTransparantly communicating with any backend using any protocol
SmartBindingsOur MVC implementation, and much more to make the developer happy
Drag & DropGUI niceties with a twist
SkinningGiving designers the same freedoms they are used too, but with the power to deliver working GUI’s without the need for a developer
PositioningEasy ways to position the GUI elements
Realtime Language SwitchingAll the language logic you ever wished you have
Components, Tools and Other SoftwareComponents, Tools and Other Software
Example application and downloadsDownloads and an example application

Here’s a short QA to start of with (for the curious types among you):

Question	Answer
On which browsers does Javeline Platform run?	Opera 9.1+, Firefox 1+, IE 5.5+, Safari 1.4+
What is the footprint of the library?	Javeline Platform can be packaged using the Packager application. One of its features is support for IFDEF’s which are used extensively to be able to turn features on and off. Another feature is to obfuscate the code. This usually removes between 25% and 40% of the size. The library in total is about 850KB non-obfuscated with all features turned on. For a general application the size is between 130KB and 260KB non-obfuscated. It is usually wise to sent it gzipped across the line. This will give it a general size of 50-80KB.
Do you follow the standards?	Yes, we use XHTML, XML, XSLT, Xpath, CSS, SOAP, Ecmascript, XMLRPC, JSON and HTTP(S) among others
Is your framework built on another framework	No, Javeline Platform has been in development since august 2000. It started with vcXMLRPC, one of the first open source Ajax libraries available.
Are there any cheatsheets available?	Yes, you can find them here
Under which licenses is Javeline Platform released?	The core of Platform is released under the GPL license. We also offer a enterprise license. Furthermore many of the components are released under the LGPL.

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11 Comments »

Kai Tischler wrote @ October 4th, 2007 at 12:12 am

Hello Ruben !

I have already sent two emails to the Javeline team via the “info@javeline.nl” email
address, but unfortunately I got no response

So I am contacting You directly here via this blog entry; because I have fallen in love with Your layout engine almost immediately ! I am currently doing some research with regard to layout in the native contemporary browsers, and Your approach seems to be really unique ! I have played around with it a little bit and am so impressed right now that I want to leverage Your layout engine ! I know that I can use the packager to extract only parts out of all the Javeline SDK stuff; but I couldn’t make it extract the layout parts … in fact I couldn’t get it to work at all …

I am also very much excited about Javeline in its whole glory, but this particular blog comment shall address the issue of leveraging Your layout engine separately. Is there a technical way to do it ? And what about licensing then ? Or do You know of other layout engines for browsers which are as capable as Yours seems to be ?

I am looking forward to the comments to come !

Cheers

Kai

Ruben wrote @ October 4th, 2007 at 9:45 am

Hi Kai,

I just found your e-mail. It got lost in the spam box somehow. You will get a reply from me on that. It is possible to extract the layout engine using the packager. For what purpose would you like to use it? Please register to the internals mailinglist at http://developer.javeline.net/mailinglists.php and sent your answers there so the community can follow them as well.

Kind Regards,

Ruben

overthinkings » Contextmagic and Repeat wrote @ October 22nd, 2007 at 2:49 pm

[…] this was the first time you read about Javeline PlatForm, this article is a good place to start learning more about this Web Application […]

Mehmet KURT wrote @ January 2nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm

Please ! Help Me…

Using for Framework Javeline… Help Me??

bharath wrote @ February 9th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

hi , my name is bharath
i have a doubt in ajax connectivity

how to connect an ajax application to database using jdbc…
can u plz clarify my doubt.. with sample example with coding.
thanx & regards.

Ruben wrote @ February 14th, 2008 at 8:32 am

Hi Bharath,

Ajax applications connect to a backend. Most popular nowadays is to use REST to connect to a backend. This backend can be written in PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP or any other language. It’s the responsibility of that language to connect to a database using jdbc.

In Javeline PlatForm you would do something like this:

<j:teleport>
   <j:rpc id="comm" protocol="POST">
      <j:method name="getUsers" url="http://example.com/users.php">
         <j:variable name="group_id" />
      </j:method>
   </j:rpc>
</j:teleport>

<j:model id="myUsers" load="rpc:comm.getUsers(10)" />

<j:list model="myUsers">
   <j:bindings>
     <j:caption select="@username" />
     <j:icon select="@icon" />
     <j:traverse select="user" />
   </j:bindings>
</j:list>

or if you want to use the javascript approach with Javeline PlatForm you’d do:


var http = new jpf.http();
var data = http.getXml(”http://example.com/users.php?group_id=10″, function(data, state, extra){
   if(state == __HTTP_SUCCESS__){
      alert(”My XML: ” + data.xml);
   }else{
      alert(”An error has occurred”);
   }
});

Please note that these code examples are for v0.9.8 of Javeline PlatForm which will be released shortly.

Kind Regards,

Ruben

overthinkings » Alignment, Layout, Docking and it’s State wrote @ June 15th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

[…] early version of Javeline PlatForm and up untill that moment I had only positioned elements using anchoring. I did remember a nice feature that Visual Basic had, where I could align an element to one of the […]

overthinkings » What is Javeline PlatForm, and how does it compare? wrote @ June 29th, 2008 at 12:34 am

[…] supports Anchoring, Alignment and position using a grid (similar to a table in […]

Michal wrote @ January 29th, 2009 at 4:19 pm

Hi There,

Guys, I have gone thru the documentation available on javeline.com website nevertheless I am still unable to start with it. There are several examples which I have browse as well but would you have something like tutorial or learn by example so, I can quickly adopt and use your framework?

Thank you,
Michal

Martijn wrote @ July 6th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

I’m trying to send a form in JPF. I use a set of form elements checkbox, textbox, etc. I would like to send all these elements with Teleport to a php-script to put the values in a database. I get it to work if I declare the variables within the tags. This seems not very efficient to me.

Is it possible (like plain HTML), to submit all the form elements in one, without declaring them again within the Teleport-tags?

I.e.:

…

Ruben wrote @ July 6th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

Hi Martijn,

Yes of course. There is a demo on this online here:
http://www.ajax.org/#demos/elements.s.submission

It uses a list bound to the data, but I’m sure you can see that it works the same with form elements bound to the xml.

Kind Regards,
Ruben