Masterview devel - Jul 2006 - Some rough ideas for ajax grid table directive syntax

Deb,

I have been planning for a directive that would add ajax capabilities to an
ordinary table (ajax sort, page forward/back), this would make it dead
simple to add this functionality without doing any manual javascript work.
The idea is to make this very easy to add to an existing table. Additional
things could be done to do inline edit and stuff like that, but I will save
that for later.

Here is an idea for the syntax

It basically identifies what model we are pulling from, what columns, what
the sort and secondary sort would be for each column (when you click on the
heading to sort). It would generate the proper rhtml and partials under the
covers and all the necessary javascript to click on headings etc. If you
don''t care about secondary sort then you can even eliminate the :sort
param.

<table mv:ajax_grid="product, :cols => [:name, :desc, :date], :sort
=>
[:column, :date]">
<tr><th>Name</th><th>Description</th><td>Date</th></tr>
<tr><td>name1</td><td>desc1</td><td>date1</td></tr>
</table>

or alternately specifying the columns using nested directives so that they
could be rearranged in WYSIWYG editor. Directives can work with nested
directives to accomplish interesting things or for that matter they can also
read style or anything that is nested.

<table mv:ajax_grid="product, :sort => [ :column, :date ]">
<tr><th>Name</th><th>Description</th><td>Date</th></tr>
<tr><td mv:column="name">name1</td><td
mv:column="desc">desc1</td><td
mv:column="date">12/31/2006</td></tr>
</table>

and if we go the extra step to allow alternating row styles we could allow
this, the below would apply rowStyle1, rowStyle2, and rowStyle3 to each row
allowing a nice striping effect

<table mv:ajax_grid="product">
<tr><th>Name</th><th>Description</th></tr>
<tr
class="rowStyle1"><td>name1</td><td>desc1</td></tr>
<tr
class="rowStyle2"><td>name2</td><td>desc2</td></tr>
<tr
class="rowStyle3"><td>name3</td><td>desc3</td></tr>
<tr
class="rowStyle1"><td>name4</td><td>desc4</td></tr>
<tr
class="rowStyle2"><td>name5</td><td>desc5</td></tr>
<tr
class="rowStyle3"><td>name6</td><td>desc6</td></tr>
</table>


Let me know what you think. But these are the types of directives that I
think really show off the power of MasterView.

Jeff
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Jeff - got it, need to "digest" a bit before responding.  Tables
always end
up being ridiculously complicated because of the endless little variations
and complexities, so the challenge is to do something that''s simple but
not
useless.
 
~ Deb
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Right, One needs to find the 80% solution that meets a good portion of
users needs. However I think one can take something simple and if one
takes into account nested directives one can get a good portion of
that other 20% too. For instance if the default ajax_grid directive by
default simply outputs the data for each field in the td columns, one
could always apply a mv:content directive to override this and fill it
with whatever is wanted.

I think similar to Streamlined you can get most of the way there if
you have some simple config options, but then if you combine other
directives into the mix we can pretty much do anything.

One would always have the ability to code up partials as we do today
and then drive them however they want, but I think for many situations
we can just make this easier.

Jeff

On 7/30/06, Deb Lewis <djlewis at acm.org> wrote:
>
>
> Jeff - got it, need to "digest" a bit before responding.  Tables
always end
> up being ridiculously complicated because of the endless little variations
> and complexities, so the challenge is to do something that''s
simple but not
> useless.
>
> ~ Deb

Also just to note, after I thought about it more, I think that the
first syntax where the majority of the info is specified in the
directive is the most straight forward. We can still pick up the
distinct row styles if there is to be alternating row format along
with the other style specifics for the particular columns. We''d use
the first td row for the partial to iterate on, injecting the
appropriate row style based on the mod count.

Jeff

On 7/31/06, Jeff Barczewski <jeff.barczewski at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Right, One needs to find the 80% solution that meets a good portion of
> users needs. However I think one can take something simple and if one
> takes into account nested directives one can get a good portion of
> that other 20% too. For instance if the default ajax_grid directive by
> default simply outputs the data for each field in the td columns, one
> could always apply a mv:content directive to override this and fill it
> with whatever is wanted.
>
> I think similar to Streamlined you can get most of the way there if
> you have some simple config options, but then if you combine other
> directives into the mix we can pretty much do anything.
>
> One would always have the ability to code up partials as we do today
> and then drive them however they want, but I think for many situations
> we can just make this easier.
>
> Jeff
>
> On 7/30/06, Deb Lewis <djlewis at acm.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Jeff - got it, need to "digest" a bit before responding. 
Tables always end
> > up being ridiculously complicated because of the endless little
variations
> > and complexities, so the challenge is to do something that''s
simple but not
> > useless.
> >
> > ~ Deb
>