Last month, I generated numerous e-mails on this list about dynamic components. After a lot of hair pulling, because a lot of tooth pulling, I finally figured out how to do the whole block/for/if/db solution. Yes, this solution is pretty annoying; especially to a dev who is more concerned about getting his product out the door than adhering to a design dogma.
However, I think the tragic flaw is not in the difficulty of the block/for/if solution, but in its lack of documentation. It seems to be well understood by a few Tapestry gurus, but a complex secret to us lay folks. I believe that Tapestry would be best served not by rushing to fix bugs in 4.0 or forge ahead to 4.1, but by providing exhaustive documentation--the majority of which should be examples. We spend *so much* time working through Tapestry's unique behavior because we have very few points of reference from which to draw. Tapestry in Action is a decent start. Kent Tong's book is a better start (IMHO). But there needs to be more information. More examples. We've almost completely shelved the idea of going to 4.0 for a long time (we're coding in 3.0.3) because we believe it needs to stabilize AND because there are fewer examples available than 3.0.3. Why fight that battle anew? I've come to appreciate Tapestry & have found a certain amount of efficiency to it, but only after a steep learning curve and plenty of frustration. Two examples: dynamic components and application catalogs. Dynamic components is possible, but there's no clear set of examples or documentation. Application catalogs are documented, but don't work. The workaround is *brutal*, but possible....if you're willing to go it alone. "Todd Orr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/03/2006 08:45 AM Please respond to "Tapestry users" <tapestry-user@jakarta.apache.org> To "Tapestry users" <tapestry-user@jakarta.apache.org> cc Subject Re: How to improve Tapestry IMHO, the biggest feature that Tapestry is missing is solid dynamic component generation. Time and time again you'll see devs asking the same question in the forums, "how do I dynamically generate..." Each time someone points out the block, the for, or the if constructs. Yet these always seem way more difficult than they should be. Even with these tools, content management systems are notoriously difficult to build with Tapestry. Since Tapestry makes most things easier, this seems to be ironic. I began using Tapestry because most of my development time was cut in half, but the dynamic form development tasks I had to perform were tripled in time! Now, I could be the crappiest dev on earth, but I doubt it considering all the trouble everyone else has with this task and Tapestry. Because Tapestry is static, the very idea of dynamic components seems to leave a bad taste in Howard's mouth (and the mouths of die-hard enthusiasts). Yet it shouldn't, dynamic form generation is a very real, and fairly common task. It should be a first class citizen in the land of Tapestry. Just to make sure the tone of this post isn't misunderstood: I love Tapestry. Yet, everything can stand some measure of improvement/rethinking. On 3/3/06, Mark Stang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Look at http://www.nextapp.com (a.k.a. echo2). > > regards, > > Mark > > -----Original Message----- > From: Apache [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Fri 3/3/2006 5:04 AM > To: tapestry-user@jakarta.apache.org > Subject: How to improve Tapestry > > I think Tapestry already makes a big step forward > but still there is a lot of things that could be made more dynamic and free programmers of templates and component definitions. > > In my opinion everything could be in the database instead of configuration files. > > In my idea world there should only be Java Classes > and no XML/Html/Page files. > > I only want to tell the system to "genrate a form with the fields I tell you" and to tell it which fields are editable - the rest should be done automatically. Maybe you could tell how to order or align them, but I dont want to write any html templates. > > > -------------------- m2f -------------------- > > Sent from www.TapestryForums.com > > Read this topic online here: <<topic_link>> > > http://www.tapestryforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=14479#14479 > > -------------------- m2f -------------------- > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
