Ext JS with Rails

Sencha Touch Bits

2011-03-15T20:41:00.002-04:00

I just want to make a shout out that I have a new blog about tips on using Sencha Touch (the mobile framework from the folks behind Ext JS):http://www.senchatouchbits.comI also have been increasingly working with Ext JS 4, Ruby 1.9 and Rails 3 lately. So this blog might awake again soon. :)Btw, Ext JS 4 Preview Version 4 has been released today: http://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?125072-

Theming an Ext.Window in 10 minutes

2010-02-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

A lot of people in the Ext JS community wonder about how to customize the design of their Ext JS application.There are a few ready to install themes available (search the forums) that you can choose from and I know that Ext is working on 1. making it easier to customize the theme of your app and 2. finding themes (marketplace).But, after all, it isn't already that hard to do.I wanted to add a

Ext JS vs. Google Closure

2009-11-09T14:06:00.002-05:00

Since Google released its JavaScript library Google Closure there have been quite some people wondering about how it compares to Ext JS.Because I'm belonging to this group of people, I thought it can't hurt to try to answer this question myself.Hello WorldThe entry point for getting started with a library is usually a small "Hello World" application.I'm not impressed at all with Google Closure's

RESTful store example with Rails

2009-06-04T16:32:00.009-04:00

Yesterday Ext released the second release candidate of Ext JS 3.0.It included a new restful configuration option for the Ext.data.Store and an example for its usage.Update April 9, 2010: It's now compatible with the latest Ext JS 3.2.0 version.Impressed by Ext's Chris Scott's lightweight Rails-like PHP MVC framework, I still wanted to get a feeling for this new feature by writing a Rails backend

A day the Hashrocket way

2009-05-01T10:30:00.013-04:00

Two weeks ago, I had the awesome opportunity to spend a day at Hashrocket’s office. Hashrocket is a consultancy company from Jacksonville, FL, specializing in Ruby on Rails software development. It is led by Ruby on Rails community well-know and book author Obie Fernandez.Thanks to their open nature and their utilities such as presentations, posts, tweets and videos, I already knew a lot about

Short Ext Conference Résumé

2009-04-20T12:17:00.001-04:00

I'm not going to go through each session here. For a more detailed summary:Check out all tweets with the #extconf tag.Read Tim Sporcic's opinionated but therefore interesting daily round-ups.See pictures from Nils Dehl and Sergei Kozlov.Or wait for the session presentations and videos to be online. :-)With this post, I basically want to thank the Ext team and all people I have been able to meet

Live from Ext Conference in Orlando, FL

2009-04-14T09:07:00.002-04:00

Follow news from the Ext Conference in Orlando, FL, that just has started 40 minutes ago here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23extconf

Ext JS with Rails in Twitter

2008-08-13T20:36:00.001-04:00

Since there had been a lack of time and courage to overcome the obstacle lately to author new blog posts, I decided to do mini posts instead. And to add a little more social flavor to that, I'll post them to my new twitter account: http://twitter.com/extjswithrailsSo, follow me or write me via the @ thing. See you in twitter!P.S. Posts on this blog might follow, too, though.

Ext.ux.RowWithCellSelectionModel

2008-06-27T13:52:00.001-04:00

I recently published another Ext JS extension at http://github.com/steffen/ext.ux.rowwithcellselectionmodel/ I want to let you know about.Ext.ux.RowWithCellSelectionModelThis Ext JS extension enables the user to activate the editor of an editable cell in an Ext.grid.EditorGridPanel through a double click, to navigate through the cells via the cursor keys and select one or multiple rows through

Ext.form.FieldSet and Ext.layout.CardLayout

2008-06-13T16:17:00.006-04:00

This post is a note to myself and maybe to some others, since I today searched for the second time for a solution for a misbehavior (bug) in Ext JS when using an Fieldset inside a Panel which belongs to a Panel with a CardLayout.When I set the Panel with the Fieldsets as the active item via panel_with_card_layout.getLayout().setActiveItem('form_with_fieldsets_panel') everything was shown/rendered

Ext.apply and Ext.applyIf

2008-05-31T18:57:00.001-04:00

In case you missed it, last weekend Jay Garcia released his third screencast in which he explains Ext.apply.Here is the video, a short 7 and something minutes long, which is a fresh alternative of reading plain blog posts. :-)Jay actually mentions a firebug bug which I wasn't aware of but which I encountered just this week after learning about it in his screencast. The bug is that the properties

More Rails 2.1 changes that target JSON and therefore Ext JS

2008-05-26T12:47:00.005-04:00

Two days ago I posted about Rails 2.1 changes that make living with Ext JS easier. Today I discovered (via Jörg Battermann) a tutorial about using Rails 2.1 (see Part 1 and Part 2).The tutorial shows two new config options that target JSON, especially the to_json method: ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json and ActiveSupport.use_standard_json_time_formatHere are the respective changesets and

Rails 2.1 changes that make living with Ext JS easier

2008-05-24T12:57:00.007-04:00

I just like to point out a few changes of the soon to be released Rails 2.1 which I caught via Chu Yeow's Living on the edge blog series.Automatically parse posted JSON content for Mime::JSON requestsThe most important change is probably the automatically parsing of JSON requests into the params hash.Here's the example from Chu Yeows's post:# http requestPOST /posts{"post": {"title": "Breaking

Rails helpers in Ext JS

2008-05-22T15:53:00.004-04:00

Today I needed to truncate a set of strings in Ext JS. Rails has the truncate helper method built in, Ext JS not, which isn't bad since it's pretty easy to write your own little helper in Ext JS.Update: Diego pointed out that there is actually a truncate method in Ext JS, called ellipsis which can be found in the Ext.util.Format class. I hope this post still makes a little sense, since it's about

Ext JS Events, Observable and DomHelper slides

2008-05-14T14:57:00.009-04:00

Want to learn more advanced stuff about how to use Ext JS?Check out these slides from an Ext JS core developer named Aaron Conran. You might know him from the Ext JS forum.First a very good and quick introduction to Javascript, where you learn more about strictly (not) equals such as === and !== which you encounter often in the Ext JS code and also some nice to know information about the

Ordered Attributes

2008-04-30T13:34:00.008-04:00

I released my first Ruby on Rails plugin today. It is actually helpful for building Ext JS grids! More on that later in an extra post. Below some information about the ordered attributes plugin (taken from the README file).Ordered AttributesThis Ruby on Rails plugin provides a way to order ActiveRecord attributes for using them for csv exports or automated table generation.Installationgit clone

Ext JS 2.1 with (more-or-less) first-class REST support released

2008-04-22T09:56:00.001-04:00

In case you missed it, yesterday the Ext JS Team released version 2.1 of it's impressive Javascript library.Besides nice new widgets such as the slider and statusbar, and big performance improvements, the Ext JS library is now supporting the PUT and DELETE http verbs (besides GET and POST) when using their Ext.form.Action class for Ajax Requests. But is that helping us Rails developers? Not

Ext.ux.PrinterFriendly, 0.2

2008-04-08T17:30:00.003-04:00

I hope nobody minds if I post some update announcements for my Ext JS extension here in my blog. The next Rails-specific post is coming soon...Here are the changes for version 0.2:Added config.js file for customized settingsAdded Ext.ux.PrinterFriendly.ENABLE_SHORTCUTS config optionAdded Ext.ux.PrinterFriendly.ROOT constantAdded x-grid3-cell-first and x-grid3-cell-last class to header cellsAdded

Ext.ux.PrinterFriendly, 0.1 (Initial Release)

2008-04-04T18:56:00.001-04:00

I'm happy to announce the first release of my (first) Ext JS extension.Here are the facts:NameExt.ux.PrinterFriendlyVersion0.1 (Initial Release)SummaryEasily build printer friendly layouts and grids for your Ext JS pages.FeaturesBuilds a normal html table (Ext.ux.PrinterGridPanel) based on your data store and column model, which saves a lot of cpu power and memory when printing large data sets.

Ext JS Screencast (Sketchcast) about Ext.extend and Ext.override

2008-04-03T11:16:00.004-04:00

Jay Garcia from TGD innovations LLC started doing a series of screencasts (or so-called sketchcasts) about Ext JS. Here's his second one about Ext.extend and Ext.override. It's certainly an interesting way of doing a screencast using a (digital) whiteboard.Check out his Blog at http://tdg-i.com which also includes some nice explained Ext JS examples.

Fitting Ext JS into the Rails architecture

2008-03-31T10:58:00.010-04:00

When you start building your first Ext JS page into your Rails application, you certainly will wonder where to put the Javascript code.Instead of just creating a javascript file such as posts_show.js in your public/javascript directory, here is a more elegant way for adding Ext JS pages to your Rails (2.0.2!) project:# app/controllers/post_controller.rbdef show @post = Post.find params[:id]

Inspecting your Ext.onReady variables

2008-03-27T15:38:00.009-04:00

In the Ext JS examples included in the Ext JS package, you'll find usually this code:Ext.onReady(function(){ .. var store = new Ext.data.SimpleStore({ .. }); var grid = new Ext.grid.GridPanel({ store: store, .. });});Notice the var keyword in front of the declared variables! The var keyword is defining the variables as local variables. They are only existing in the scope of the

ext-all.js or ext-all-debug.js

2008-03-27T00:31:00.002-04:00

To ease the debugging process, the Ext JS package includes the uncompressed javascript files of their library as well.Here's a small Rails helper to add the Ext JS library files based on your Rails environment:# app/helpers/application_helper.rbmodule ApplicationHelper ... # your other helpers here def javascript_include_extjs if RAILS_ENV == "production" javascript_include_tag "ext/

Sending forms the "old way" with Ext JS

2008-03-23T10:10:00.003-04:00

The normal non-AJAX life-cycle of sending a form in Rails is the following:The user submits the formThe browser is going to the form's action urlThe Rails action calls some model methods and sends a redirect to the users browser to a overview page or the created record for exampleHere are some code snippets to solve this life-cycle with Ext JS and Rails:// ext js formvar submit_button = new

Discovering Ext JS with Rails

2008-03-22T18:19:00.001-04:00

Before I discovered the Ext JS - Javascript Library in November 2007, I was working with Ruby on Rails for almost a year. (I know, pretty late since Rails came already out in 2004, but I was stuck with my PHP Projects.)From then on, Rails was really helping me to get my models and controllers in order. But what about the view layer? Yes, Rails was helping me here, too. But not as much as on the