Transcript Introduction to Model-Glue - MD ColdFusion User's Group

Introduction to Model-Glue
Rachel Lehman
[email protected]
http://rmaxim.blogspot.com
Perpetual Intermediate Designer-Developer 
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
1
Model-Glue:ColdFusion
•
•
•
•
An MVC Framework for ColdFusion
Open Source
Also does scaffolding
Works well with other frameworks
(and uses them)
• Simple enough for beginners
• Powerful enough for enterprise development
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
2
Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What a Model-Glue application looks like
What the framework does
Installation & configuration
Hello World example
Master-Detail example
A few handy tips
Upcoming in Model-Glue 3
Q&A
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
3
Basic Model-Glue Application Architecture
Model (CFC business objects & data access)
 CFCs for business objects (Beans)
 CFCs for data access (DAOs & Gateways)
 CFCs for service abstraction (Service layer)
View (CFM display code)
 CFM pages for view templates (dspIndex.cfm, dspTemplate.cfm, dspMyPage.cfm)
 Common includes (headers, footers, UDF’s, etc)
 Where the HTML goes
Controller (CFC business logic)
 CFCs to connect your views to your model
Configuration (XML defining your application)
 ColdSpring.xml defines ModelGlue application settings
 ModelGlue.xml defines the pages (events) in your application
 ORM Configuration: Reactor and Transfer (required for scaffolding)
 Application.cfm (soon to be Application.cfc, defines app name)
 Index.cfm (front controller, imports framework, all requests go through here)
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
4
Model-Glue Event Flow
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
5
Installation
• Download MG from http://www.model-glue.com
• Download ColdSpring from
http://www.coldspringframework.org
• Download Reactor from http://www.alagad.com; or
Transfer from http://www.transfer-orm.com
• Unzip files and copy the framework files to your web
root, or what ColdFusion sees as /modelglue,
/coldspring, /reactor (with mappings if necessary)
• Copy the modelglueapplicationtemplate directory to
where you wish to deploy your application
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
6
Configuration
• Open the build.xml file – ANT build file
• Edit the project name, application name, and
application directory
• Run the file as an ANT build (either through
Eclipse, or the command line with ANT)
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
7
No Ant?
• Don’t be intimidated, it’s super simple and comes
with Eclipse (you have it if you’re using CFEclipse)
• You can also follow these steps for a manual
install:
– Create a new directory called "myappname" under your Web root.
– Copy the contents of the /modelglueapplicationtemplate directory to the /myappname
directory.
– Open /myappname/config/ColdSpring.xml
– Do a find and replace, changing "modelglueapplicationtemplate" to "myappname"
– Open /myappname/config/ModelGlue.xml
– Do a find and replace, changing "modelglueapplicationtemplate" to "myappname"
– Open /myappname/Application.cfm
– Do a find and replace, changing "modelglueapplicationtemplate" to "myappname"
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
8
Here Goes Nothin!
• Browse to the home page of your application,
and you should see…
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
9
What You Should Know About
Configuration (ColdSpring.xml)
• Reload (true for development, false for
production) & reload password (defaults to true)
• Rescaffold (true for development when using
scaffolding, false otherwise and for production)
• Debug (true for development, false for
production)
• Preferences, Names for common terms (default
event/page, event name, reload key, etc)
• Mappings to files (views, scaffolds, config, etc)
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
10
Adding and running a new event
DEMO: HELLO WORLD
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
11
A Few Tips
• Force application reload with init=true
• Get the current page and event name (base URL) with
viewState.getValue(‘myself’)
• Forward events within the Controller (like <cflocation> but within
the framework) with event.forward() for redirection
• It’s event within the Controller, and viewState within the views*
• Centralize application settings with GenericConfig beans
• Create multiple view templates for different layouts or types of
delivery (home, subpage, popup, rss, etc)
• Add an unnamed result to the xml and it will execute at the end of
the request for easy site-wide templates
• Lock down your config files (store outside the web root and use a
mapping, or apply directory security) and if possible, the framework
itself.
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
12
An application put into practice with Model-Glue
DEMO: MASTER/DETAIL
APPLICATION (CF ART GALLERY)
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
13
From Here…
• You can organize and divide your application
with multiple
– Controllers
– ModelGlue.xml config files
– ColdSpring.xml config files
• ActionPacks are pluggable Model-Glue
applications
• Check out Generic Database Messages and
Scaffolds features for quick admin interfaces
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
14
Now in Alpha
Model-Glue: Gesture Feature Preview
• Event generation – type the name of an event that doesn’t exist,
and your stub XML, controller methods, views and even a unit test
case will be generated for you
• Custom-typed events allow you to bundle repetitive event
functionality (templates) into the event, rather than defining it with
each event handler in your xml
• Application.cfc support (CFMX6 has been EOL’d)
• All event values are now stored in the Event object, no need to use
viewState
• Easy ways to manage search engine safe URLs
• Helpers – for an easier way to include UDFs
• Dead-simple caching (in event xml – cache=true) – extendable for
you to implement on your own
• Estimated release is Mid 2008
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
15
Resources and Further Reading
•
•
•
•
•
ModelGlue mailing list (Google Groups ID- model-glue)
Documentation: http://docs.model-glue.com/
Joe Rinehart’s Blog: the author of Model-Glue
http://www.firemoss.com/blog
Ray Camden’s Blog: intro series, answers to many FAQ’s:
http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/ModelGlue
Other Blogs that cover Model-Glue:
– Todd Sharp - http://cfsilence.com/blog/client/
– Doug Boude - http://www.dougboude.com/blog/
– Dan Wilson - http://www.nodans.com/
•
•
Model-Glue Cookbook: http://modelgluecookbook.com/
Demo applications written with Model-Glue:
– Canvas wiki: http://canvas.riaforge.org/
– Litepost blog: http://code.google.com/p/litepost/
– Sample apps with MG install
•
•
Apache ANT for deployment - http://ant.apache.org/
I’ll post my code examples on my own blog at http://rmaxim.blogspot.com
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
16
Thank you!
Q&A
Introduction to Model-Glue | Rachel Lehman
17