From: Michael Neumann <mneumann@...>
Date: 2005-02-17T16:27:24+09:00
Subject: Re: Wee web-framework. It's great!

Joao Pedrosa wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think it's important to say that the dynamic nature of Ruby
> contributes to a nice development environment for Wee, that is,
> whenever we are editing one of the components, and we save it, Wee
> tries to reload it. If it had to be compiled it would slow this cycle
> a little bit. And worse, because the compiler would complain at the
> first sign of incorrectness, making errors appear when we surely new
> that the component was not ready yet for compilation. Behind the
> scenes, Wee remaps methods and creates components only when it's
> necessary (time saving feature!)
> 
> It makes it appear that I'm editing an HTML and not a Ruby file.
> That's it! Lovely.
> 
> Actually, it has less to do with editing an HTML and more with
> creating the business logic of our application. The HTML is generated
> automagically for us.
> 
> Look at this:
> 
> r.text_input.callback{|v| do_something_with v}.value(@original_value)

And for assigning it back to @original_value one can use this short-cut:

   r.text_input.callback{|@original_value|}.value(@original_value)

Yeah, this looks ugly ;-)

Or alternativly without the need to create a block:

   r.text_input.callback(:instance_variable_set, :original_value)

> That's all that's needed to create the INPUT TYPE=TEXT object and at
> the same time fill it with the default value and save its returning
> value.
> 
> Add a submit button to it and you have your FORM.
> 
> r.submit_button.callback{save_edition}.value('Save Edition')
> 
> That's how everything is created, generally. There is more to it,
> because it needs to support the simple and the complex, so it
> "scales."

Just want to add, that this is only *one way* to generate HTML in Wee.
You can use other renderers simply by overwriting method #renderer_class 
of your component class. Or you could use ERb-templates directly:

   # c.rb
   class MyComponent < Wee::Component
     template :render
   end

   # c.tpl
   <ul>
   <% (1..10).each do |i| %>
     <li><%= i %></li>
   <% end %>
   </ul>

You can even define "block"-templates (this of course is a bad example, 
as templates do not accept parameters):

   # c.rb
   class MyComponent < Wee::Component
     template :render
     tempalte :render_item
   end

   # c.tpl
   <ul>
   <% (1..10).each do |@i| %>
     <% render_item %>
   <% end %>
   </ul>

   # c.tpl-item
   <li><%= @i %></li>

Or you can mix templates with programmatic html generation:

   # c.rb
   class MyComponent < Wee::Component
     template :render

     def render_item(i)
       r.li.with(i)
     end
   end

   # c.tpl
   <ul>
   <% (1..10).each do |i| %>
     <% render_item(i) %>
   <% end %>
   </ul>

Regards,

   Michael