Rich (or any) GUI Components for Rails

Rails
1

HI,

I Find rails great but theres lack of rich components, i mean any
components except standard html controls…
I cant build everytime my table with all features, we are crud right ?

So any component repository planned ?
Maybe rails isnt good solution for my requirements ?
I heard that components facility is now depreciated in rails… why ?

So far im programming asp.net and im using components library from
www.telerik.com, see what im talking about.

what i mean is components repository. almost every app i make has a
trees, tables and so on. all of these are not available out of the box
so i wonder how do you guys manage to develop usable applications ?
im not asp nor java evangelist i just want to switch to framework
which works for me, not me for framework.

ok, everything seems to be easy with rails, but there must be rich
components set to let web developers build something really
competitive to other framework like asp or gwt.

have a look at mygwt.net, they adopted widgets from extjs framework
(extjs.com).
i wonder why theres no attempts for rails

2

On 07 Nov 2007, at 21:59, Piotr N. wrote:

I Find rails great but theres lack of rich components, i mean any
components except standard html controls…
I cant build everytime my table with all features, we are crud right ?

You’re missing the point about Rails here.

So any component repository planned ?
Maybe rails isnt good solution for my requirements ?
I heard that components facility is now depreciated in rails… why ?

Because you can do the same with partials and components had issues
(that’s the short story). Components is not what you think they are.
You can still make reusable components using the engines plugin.

So far im programming asp.net and im using components library from
www.telerik.com, see what im talking about.
what i mean is components repository. almost every app i make has a
trees, tables and so on. all of these are not available out of the box
so i wonder how do you guys manage to develop usable applications ?
im not asp nor java evangelist i just want to switch to framework
which works for me, not me for framework.

If these tightly integrated components in a drag-and-drop IDE are a
must for you, then stick with your comfort zone.

ok, everything seems to be easy with rails, but there must be rich
components set to let web developers build something really
competitive to other framework like asp or gwt.

have a look at mygwt.net, they adopted widgets from extjs framework
(extjs.com).

There’s nothing stopping you from using extjs to build your Rails app
interface. I’ve done some tests and it works perfectly. Rails can
provide the json for the remote requests, as well as using the rhtml
file to build the interface itself. You could even write a plugin
that makes building the javascript code a lot easier by using Rails
helpers to generate them.

Rails can be integrated with Flex apps too, the IDE provides a drag-
and-drop interface builder.

i wonder why theres no attempts for rails

Nothing is stopping you from whatever’s out there to build your
interface. Out of the box, Rails provides xml and html view renderers
and it seems to do the job for a lot of the Rails apps out there.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

3

If these tightly integrated components in a drag-and-drop IDE are a must
for you, then stick with your comfort zone.

thanks for reply.

i was talking about some nice looking and rich gui widgets, not ide
actually.

extjs is great but i dont like javascript nature of this library.

Btw, how do you work with extjs, do you use render partials passing some
locals and thus building javascript ?
can you post some examples of best practises with ror + extjs ?

4

On 07 Nov 2007, at 23:04, Piotr N. wrote:

If these tightly integrated components in a drag-and-drop IDE are
a must
for you, then stick with your comfort zone.

thanks for reply.

i was talking about some nice looking and rich gui widgets, not ide
actually.

extjs is great but i dont like javascript nature of this library.

Then u could consider either OpenLaszlo or Flex, they use XML to
describe the interface.

Btw, how do you work with extjs, do you use render partials passing
some
locals and thus building javascript ?

Exactly. I first built some basic interfaces in a mockup html+extjs
document, then pulled it apart and added the necessary controller and
model code. Quick and sloppy, just to see if it might work. I now
know it works, I might be tempted to use it in a future project.

can you post some examples of best practises with ror + extjs ?

I have to look it up, probably already deleted it, because it was so
straightforward and easy. I basically used the RESTful authentication
plugin, then built the login form with extjs and made a small contact
list using the layoutpanels. All in all, it was pretty easy based
upon the examples included with extjs (took some time, as i was
getting used to extjs’s syntax). I didn’t load prototype or
scriptaculous, used the extjs standalone library, it was so much faster.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

5

thx.

Btw im going to build community website, like orkut, is rails good for
such project ?

6

On 07 Nov 2007, at 23:48, Piotr N. wrote:

Btw im going to build community website, like orkut, is rails good for
such project ?

Sure. Rails should fit the picture perfectly.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

7

On Nov 7, 5:04 pm, Piotr N. [email protected] wrote:

i was talking about some nice looking and rich gui widgets, not ide
actually.

Belated addition: you could consider XUL, which is open source. Zed
Shaw posted a little about it in Dec 2006 –
http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/ruby_xul.html
There’s a fairly active IRC channel about XUL as well. irc.mozilla.org
#xul

Ron