ZF2 - ZF1 - database - zend-framework2

I just switched from ZF1 to ZF2 and I'm missing a few features or I#M just not able to find them. For example in ZF1 I was able to define references between tables extending Zend_Db_Table_Abstract or I was able to get e.g. images for a tag using the find<XYZ>Via<xyz>()method. Is there something similar in ZF2?

No, there is nothing similar like this in ZF2.
With ZF2, the maintainers of Zend\Db have taken a step back as far as ORM-Functionalities are concerned. You still have the implementation of Zend\Db\TableGateway but there is no longer any more magic happening than that.
However, there are Modules / Technologies out there, that do the Job better than Zend_Db ever did. Namely you'd want to be looking into Doctrine. All Doctrine-Functionalities are available via DoctrineModule and DoctrineORMModule.

Related

Rails plugin to separate markup and logic, like Wicket or Effigy

I need a Rails plugin that gives you the chance to purely separate HTML and any logic in your views. Views should be classes reading the separate markup and replacing it with dynamic content where needed.
Basically Effigy from github does this.
I am looking for something like Wicket, but on the Rails base.
I can remember seeing a plugin from a Rails enterprise that does this. In my memory, it was better and seemed more mature than Effigy. But I forgot its name. It was something like "luxurious" or "delicious"; does anyone know what I am talking about? The plugin was created in a US Rails enterprise.
Any other alternatives would be much appreciated.
I feel that Effigy is almost OK, but it's hard to find tutorials or people using it properly, so I question its the maturity.
Well, if nothing comes up, I will go ahead with Effigy for now.
All right guys, I think I finally found what I was talking about.
The plugin is called "Erector"
The thing that I like about it, is that views are finally plain ruby objects and you can do everything you can usually do in ruby. I found couple of blogposts:
https://github.com/erector/erector
Why I always liked this idea you can easily see in this blogpost
I want to thank the creators for this.

Ruby on Rails customer-facing formbuilder?

I have a customer that wants to build their own questionnaires. Something like WuFoo (www.wufoo.com) but more secure and contained within the app.
I've looked at Smerf (http://github.com/springbok/smerf) which provides the yaml-to-form conversion, but I'd like something the user can use to create their own forms.
I would look at using active_scaffold. The main version has not been updated for Rails 3, but a fork at the location below has. I think it would work well for your purpose, you just need a way to grab the data and feed it in. Here is a demo of what it looks like when it is running:
https://github.com/vhochstein/active_scaffold
Here is a demo at the top of the page:
http://demo.activescaffold.com/roles
You could always embed Google Forms. Might be easier than reinventing the wheel. Unless you have some specific use case this doesn't cover?
If you are not adverse to going the Javascript route the then you might consider one of the many framework plugins like the JQuery Form Builder. From a usability perspective it seems to me that any good solution is going to involve some Javascript. There should be no reason why this approach wouldn't integrate well into a Rails backend
You might want to check out this one. Dynamic Forms
I too am looking for something very similar. What solution did you come up with?

What makes an effective URL Mapping implementation and why?

I am looking at implementing URLMapping for a personal project. I am already aware that solutions exist so please do not answer suggesting I should use one.
What I want is to harvest the opinions of fellow developers and web users on URL mapping implementations. Specially I would like you to answer:
Which is your favourite implementation?
What do you like about your favourite implementation?
What do you not like about your favourite implementation?
How would you improve it?
I would like you to answer from two points of view:
As a developer
As a user
I would be grateful for any opinions on this matter, thanks!
I've only worked with django's URLConf mechanism. I think the way it relies on the urlpatterns variable is a bit flimsy, but I like its expressiveness in specifying patterns and dispatching to other url configurations. I think probably the best thing is to figure out your URL scheme first, and then try out a couple of solutions to see what matches best. If you're going hard-core REST using the full complement of GET/POST/PUT/DELETE, and checking the user agent's Accept headers, and all that, django will, by default, have you splitting your logic between URL config files and view files, so it might not be the cleanest solution.
However, since it's all Python, you might be able to do some more complex processing before you assign to urlpatterns.
Really, you want a system that does what you need. Your URL scheme is your API, so don't compromise on it based on the tools you use. Figure out your API, then find the tools that will let you do that and get out of your way.
Edit: Also do a google search for "URL scheme design." I found this without much effort: http://www.gaffneyware.com/urldesign.htm. Not comprehensive, but some good advice gotten from looking at what flickr does.
Well, I should have noticed the url-routing tag shouldn't I? :-) Sorry about that.
jcd's experience mimics mine - Django is what I use too.
I like the fact that the routes for an app reside within the app (in urls.py) and can just be included into any projects that might make use of that app. I am comfortable with regular expressions, so having the routes be specified in regex doesn't phase me (but I've seen other programmers scratch their heads at some more uncommon expressions).
Being able to reverse a route via some identifier (in Django's case by route's name) is a must. Hardcoding urls in templates or controllers (view in Django) is a big no-no. Django has a template tag that uses the reverse() method
The one thing I wish I could do is have the concept of default routes in django (like Rails does or even Pylons). In Django every route has to map to a view method, there is no concept of trying to call a certain view based on the URL itself. The benefit is that there are no surprises - your urls.py is the Table of Contents for your project or app. The disadvantage is that urls.py tend to be longer.

Adding search/filter to a scaffolded list.gsp

I've been looking in some of the latest Grails books and many open source projects for samples and best practices for adding search/filter functionality to scaffolded list.gsp:s, eg making it work with pagination and sorting etc. This may be a simple task, but being a Grails newcomer it would be of great benefit in having some thorough samples to look at.
The closest thing I've found is the FilterPane plugin, but that is a very general solution - so the code may be unnecessarily complex to retrofit to a more custom search/filter. Does anyone have or has anyone seen good sample code for this? I'm thinking it's a very common requirement so it must be out there...
Check out http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GRAILS-5225, it's a set of alternate scaffolding templates. They support filtering and searching (if you add searching plugin). The scaffolding templates take a bit to get working, but they will show you how to do things.
Another plugin to check out is the Criteria Plugin.
There is also UberScaffoling Plugin, which allows you to inject code into scaffolded templates, of which I am the author, but I haven't posted updated in a while and I think what's on there may have a bunch of bugs right now. Let me know if you are interested in it - I could email you the latest version (need to find the time to post on grails plugin repo).
Check this blog post - https://blog.uni-koeln.de/rrzk-knowhow/2012/03/14/add-filter-pane-to-your-customized-scaffolded-templates-for-list-pages/
Only downside is need some styling re-work for the filterpane to look neat.
filterpane:2.0.1.1
Grails 2.0.4

'WebControls' for Ruby on Rails

I've recently started working with RoR for some projects and I quite like the framework - however coming from an ASP.NET background I'm quite fond of the idea of being able to purchase & drop in reusable components/control such as those from telerik, without having to 'reinvent'.
I suppose it would be possible to maybe create my own using partials or plugins or similar, but I'm wondering if there is anything out there already, or perhaps alternatives which could be massaged into place, like javascript widgets etc?
I don't know of any commercial components or "controls", but there's thousands (probably, I haven't counted them) of plugins out there freely available, to do a great many things for you, some of which would probably count as "controls". Unfortunately, there's no one place to go and find them, and the quality is depressingly variable, but there are a number of plugin indexes like http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/ that might help in finding what you want while weeding out the dross.
Ext JS is a great GUI toolkit. I can't say that it entirely fits in with the RoR way of doing things, but if you write your controllers to return JSON it isn't too bad.
One of the big differences between Ruby/Rails and the .Net world is the fact that most of the available plugins are open-source and integrate at the code level. There is an incredible array of plugins for Rails, and it is very straight forward to write your own. Due to the nature of Ruby you can hook into any just about any part of the language and framework, giving you impressive extensibility.
I am not sure how Web Controls work, but it sounds like they are a "black-box" that provides an end-to-end solution for both UI and data-level operations ... ?
Many of the Rails plugins do provide both UI and data aspects. An example would be "restful_authentication" which provides you with both some basic forms for login and user registration as well as an authentication module and a Active-Record model. Again, this operates at a code-level, so will actually push the relevant code into your codebase when you install and "generate" the authentication modules.
As for "widgets", there is no equivalent in Rails, per-se, but there are a number of JavaScript libraries that provide similar functionality. I use and recommend jQuery UI, myself.
Dojo has a widget library which might meet your needs.

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