Pragmatics of Declarative Ajax

Pragmatics of Declarative Ajax XTech 2007 May 15-18, Paris Dave Johnson CTO, Nitobi [email_address]

Agenda Who Am I Rule of Least Power Declarative Languages Programming Basics Web User Interfaces Common Problems Summary

Who Is this Guy? Enterprise Ajax book (Addison Wesley) Nitobi Enterprise Ajax Podcast http://blogs.nitobi.com/dave

Anything Else? Nitobi CTO + Co-founder Located in Vancouver, Canada Declarative Ajax user-interface components for the enterprise

Agenda Who Is this Guy? http://flickr.com/photos/jjd/24164311/ ME THUNK HTML ROCZ!!!

The Rule of Least Power Tim Berners-Lee Noah Mendelsohn www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/leastPower

Principle “ Powerful languages inhibit information reuse.”

Inhibiting Information Reuse Humans like complicated Pen and paper or memory stick? What does this have to do with the Web?

Good Practice “ Use the least powerful language suitable for expressing information, constraints or programs on the World Wide Web.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/doglotion/154496890/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpade1337/429996161/

Benefits of Less Power? More robust and secure Easier for people to use Therefore, more people use them Be mindful of the success of HTML

http://flickr.com/photos/oceanyamaha/186146223/ DEKLARATIVE WUT???

Declarative What? It is about what not how There is no sign of an algorithm We are not talking functional languages HTML – canonical declarative language

Declarative Languages HTML XForms SVG MXML XAML JSON

Ham and Cheese “ declarative” vs “imperative” “ library” vs “roll your own”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/refractedmoments/399890975/

Computability But is the Jambon et Fromage Touring complete? You can’t change the recipe If there is no way to specify what you want to do then how can you do it? Make the sandwich yourself Bring your own mustard Why bother?

Pareto’s Principle Call it what you will 80-20 rule Law of the vital few Principle of factor sparsity 90-10 rule in software engineering Declarative gets you most of the way!

Design VS Program Declarative “design” gets us 80% Programming gets the other 20% One of two evils Easy to design Easy to program

Popular Tools HTML – how many HTML pages? JSON – relatively new compared to <XML> Microformats – hCard Twitter – how many messages? Twitter vision L:Paris

Not Just About XML Declarative does not have to be XML Imperative languages can look declarative Using imperative language to encapsulate non-declarative ideas You don’t have to bake the bread for your sandwich … nor mill the grain

Layering Languages Languages get more simple as we share more information Consider a factorial function in a few different languages?

Assembly main: movl $5, %eax movl $1, %ebx L1: cmpl $0, %eax je L2 imull %eax, %ebx decl %eax jmp L1 L2: ret

C++ int factorial(int n) { if(n <= 1) return 1; return n * factorial(n - 1); }

Python fac = lambda n:[1,0][n>0] or fac(n-1)*n

Still All Clearly Imperative Conditional statements However, once you start using the factorial function it appears declarative

Agenda I CULD DO ZAT http://flickr.com/photos/stevecaddy/474542238/

Declarative User Interface Who cares about calculating factorials Power is in design

In JavaScript <script type=“text/javascript”> gmap.init = function() { var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map")); map.setCenter(new GLatLng(49.290327, -123.11348), 12); var polyline = new GPolyline([ new GLatLng(49.265788, -123.069877), new GLatLng(49.276988, -123.069534), new GLatLng(49.276988, -123.099746), new GLatLng(49.278108, -123.112106), new GLatLng(49.2949043, -123.136825)], "#ff0000", 10); map.addOverlay(polyline); } window.onload = gmap.init; </script>

In (X)HTML <g:map id="map" width="370px" height="380px" smallmapcontrol="true" maptypecontrol="true"> <g:center zoom="14"> <g:point lat="49.2853" lng="-123.11348"></g:point> </g:center> <g:polyline color="#FF0000" size="10"> <g:point lat="49.265788" lng="-123.069877"></g:point> <g:point lat="49.276988" lng="-123.069534"></g:point> <g:point lat="49.276988" lng="-123.099746"></g:point> <g:point lat="49.278108" lng="-123.112106"></g:point> <g:point lat="49.294904" lng="-123.136825"></g:point> </g:polyline> </g:map>

Same but Different new GLatLng(49.265788, -123.069877) <g:point lat="49.265788" lng="-123.069877" /> new GLatLng( -123.069877 , 49.265788 ) <g:point lng=" -123.069877 " lat=" 49.265788 " />

Practical Differences Both could have auto-complete support Designability and IDE support HTML writer support on servers Order matters … to a less degree in XML Declarative can be less code People don’t like JavaScript Remember, HTML is a success for a reason

The Bugaboo Imperative can be nearly as good as declaration “ JavaScript objects need more than just setting properties”

var input = new Input(); input.hint = “Please enter a number”; <input> <hint>Please enter a number</hint> </input>

var input = new Input(); input. setHint (“Please enter a number”); Input.prototype.setHint = function() { // setup any event hooks etc… }

Benefits? Designable easy IDE tooling Declarative patterns succinct, reproducible solutions Rich semantics frameworks can easily read and interpret server or client side interpretation

http://flickr.com/photos/elmyra/9335163/ WUT IZ ISNIDE?

Problems Firefox – served as HTML DOM traversal Self closing tags Internet Explorer – can’t be served as XHTML DOM methods Namespace Namespaces XHTML CSS Validation

Firefox HTML DOM Traversal <div id="div1"> <ntb:button id="button1">button</ntb:button> <ntb:button id="button2">button 2</ntb:button> <ntb:panel id="panel1"> <ntb:title id="title1"> <div id="div2">panel title 1</div> </ntb:title> <ntb:contents id="contents1"> <div id="div3">Contents div3</div> <div id="div4">Contents div4</div> </ntb:contents> </ntb:panel> </div>

getElementsByTagNameNS ns.getElementsByTagNameNS = function(tag, np, context) { context = context || document; var qname = np + ":" + tag; if (ns.IE) qname = tag; var elems = context.getElementsByTagName(qname); if (ns.IE) { realElems = []; for (var i=0; i<elems.length; i++) { if (elems[i].scopeName == ns) realElems.push(elems[i]); } elems = realElems; } return elems; }

Styling Namespaced Elements Internet Explorer ntb\:* { display:none; } W3C @namespace ntb "http://www.nitobi.com"; ntb|* { display:none; }

Other Approaches Custom attribute <div oatype="ntb:grid" ... /> Microformats <div class=“ntb_grid” … /> XBL / HTC JSON <div oatype=“{widget:’grid’,colums:[‘Col1’,Col2’]}” /> Many, many more

Standards Approach Use HTML role attribute Accessibility of Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) as part of Web Accessibility Initiative

W3C Accessibility tabindex="-1" role="wairole:checkbox" property:checked="true“ <div tabindex=“-1” role=“wairole:checkbox” property:checked=“true”> </div>

What are Others Doing? XML-Script Dojo Toolkit XForms

XML-Script <script type="text/xml-script"> <page xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/xml-script/2005"> <components> <textbox id="searchText" /> <button id="searchButton"> <bindings> <binding property="enabled" dataContext="searchText" dataPath="text.length" transform="NumberToBoolean" /> </bindings> <click> <invokeMethod target="searchMethod" method="invoke" /> </click> </button> <serviceMethod id="searchMethod"> <bindings> <binding property="parameters" propertyKey="query" dataContext="searchText" dataPath="text" /> </bindings> </serviceMethod> </components> </page> </script>

Dojo Toolkit <BUTTON widgetId="helloButton" dojoType="Button">Hello World!</BUTTON> <?xml:namespace prefix=dojo/> <dojo:widget></dojo:widget> <DIV dojoType="widget"> <DIV class=dojo-widget></DIV> </DIV>

XForms <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:f="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"> <head> <title>Search</title> <f:model> <f:submission action="http://example.com/search“ method="get" id="s"/> </f:model> </head> <body> <p> <f:input ref="q"><f:label>Find</f:label></f:input> <f:submit submission="s"><f:label>Go</f:label></f:submit> </p> </body> </html>

Summary Declarative is “least power” approach Facilitates sharing of information User interface designability and skinnability are paramount

Q&A? Dave Johnson [email_address] http://blogs.nitobi.com/dave

Pragmatics of Declarative Ajax

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