Components are not a dirty word: modeling your Rails interface with stateful objects
by Mike Pence
Seaside, Cocoa, WebObjects, Shoes, and .NET -- among many other frameworks -- have long benefited
from reusable widgets, or stateful components, as the building blocks of user interfaces. In this
talk, we will see how the Cells and Apotomo Rails plugins can be leveraged to allow you to extend
the concept of partials in Rails to fully embrace a user interface that is completely
object-oriented, using properties, methods and events, to create reusable pieces for your apps.
Further, we will see how these reusable parts can leverage JavaScript frameworks, like jQuery and
YUI, to provide an elegant and flexible user interface that can be incorporated in any of your views
or partials with minimal code. You need not be limited to the simple controls that HTML forms
provide. You can compose more sophisticated UI elements from simple ones and have tabsets, grids,
and tree controls, among others, in a completely modular form.
You can have your Rails and fast, flexible, reusable components, too!
About Mike Pence
I have been doing professional software development since 1990, working in the cubicle farms of big
name corporations. I have been focusing on Ruby on Rails as an independent web developer since 2005,
and spoke at the first Rails conference in 2006.