marcel molina jr. presentation

Sharing RJS: Reuse at the app level

Marcel Molina Jr.37signals

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A little bit about me

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Member of Rails Core

Sam StephensonRick Olson

Thomas FuchsJamis Buck

Tobias Lütke Nicholas Seckar

Jeremy Kemper

Some of the people you trust your business to...

Michael Koziarski

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Work for 37signals

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Hottest Hacker On Earth

David Has And Belongs To Many Hanssons

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Sharing RJS

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Typical RJS

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

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app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

Duplication

Oops

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Let’s fix this

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Extract to private method of controller

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

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app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

Wrong scope!

Oops

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Extract to helper, passing page

app/helpers/articles_helper.rb

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This works

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

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But it’s Pythonic :-(

Oops

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

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Monkey patch JavaScriptGenerator!!!

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Define custom helpers directly on page!!!

app/helpers/articles_helper.rb

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That’s more like it!!!

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

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Page “namespace” is already reserved

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

Oops

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app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

JavaScriptProxy or custom helper?!

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public/javascripts/application.js

Maintenance headache

app/helpers/articles_helper.rb

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

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app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

Method missing abuse

Oops

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What now?

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Let’s look back to the origins of RJS

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Initial API for Ajax in Rails

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Indicates which element to update

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Faced with a tricky problem

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:update won’t cut it

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Wouldn’t it be nice if you could...?

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Thanks Ruby :-)

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Initial API

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Ugly. Not quite right.

Oops

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Wrap it up in a new template type

actionpack/lib/action_view/base.rb

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Just update_page under the sheets

actionpack/lib/action_view/base.rb

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update_page just spits out JavaScript

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<< just adds raw JavaScript to the stream

is the same as

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So...36

Wrap update_page in a helper

app/helpers/articles_helper.rb

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Reuse it with <<

app/controllers/articles_controller.rb

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Bonus

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Reuse it client side

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Having said all that...

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No use obviates reuse

app/helpers/application_helper.rb public/stylesheets/screen.css

app/views/articles/edit.rhtml

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Questions, comments & etc

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Questions, comments & etc

Thanks44