From: Bauduin Raphael <rb@...>
Date: 2004-07-25T20:01:54+09:00
Subject: Re: rubyonrails and cgikit comparison

Gully Foyle wrote:
> There seems to be a lot of excitement about rubyonrails even before the 
> announcement of version 0.5.
> 
> What makes rubyonrails 0.5 more attractive than cgikit 1.2.1?  I'm under 
> the impression cgikit offers MVC and has an architecture similar to 
> WebObjects (which is well-regarded) but I've no experience with these 
> tools.

I'm using cgikit and starting to look at its code. What I like about it 
is that it completely separates presentation from code (more so than 
rails by reading http://media.nextangle.com/rails/ror2bc.pdf, see below).

For example, if you want to repeat something your html page, you can use 
the CKRepetition element like this in your template file:

<cgikit name="myrepetition">
	<!-- CONTENT TO BE REPEATED -->
</cgikit>

Note that you don't enter any reference to the data you work on, you 
simply specify an cgikit element named "my repetition". You don't even 
say which type of element "myrepetition" is. You do that in the binding 
file:

myrepetition : CKRepetition
{
     list = my_items_list;
     item = current_item;
}


where my_items_list is an array in your code (which is a class extending 
CKComponent). When iterating, you can access the current element with 
current_item.

For example, if my_items_list= ["first","second","third"], and you want 
to display them as an <UL>, you can do it this way:

#template
<ul>
   <cgikit name="myrepetition">
     <li>
        <cgikit name="listitem"/>
     </li>
   </cgikit>
</ul>

#binding
myrepetition : CKRepetition
{
     list = my_items_list;
     item = current_item;
}
listitem : CKString
{
     value=current_item;
}

You ruby code can be as simple as that:
#code
class CSSList < CKComponent
   def pre_action
     @my_items_list = ["first","second","third"]
   end
end

The reason I said it seems cgikit better separates presentation and 
logc, is that in http://media.nextangle.com/rails/ror2bc.pdf, I saw this 
code:

<% for comment in @post.comments %>
    <li> <%= comment.value%> </li>
<% end %>

This may be a question of personal taste, but I really prefer the cgikit 
solution where there's absolutely no reference in the template to the 
data we're working on. Now, this opinion is only based on reading the 
pdf available on rails at the url mentioned. Can someone correct me or
give another opinion on the subject?


The other thing I really like with cgikit is that you can develop 
completely reusable components. My first developments with cgikit 
resulted in a CKHTMLTable component I reuse a lot to display data in
html tables (see http://www.raphinou.com/wiki/wiki/show/CKHTMLTable+Details)

Cgikit is not perfect though, as components reuse could be better 
(that's why I'm looking at the source actually), but I think it'll stay
my development platform of choice, certainly combined with Active Record.


Raph


> 
> Thanks.
> 
> cgikit
> http://www.spice-of-life.net/cgikit/index_en.html
> 
> rubyonrails
> http://www.rubyonrails.org/