My Projects

[Stu]

First. Apologies to the community. I have been using NetTalk for a long time, and while I'm not expert, I have gotten through a bit. And I've not been active at all here. Both asking questions and helping with answers.

Second. Here's a list of projects I'm working on, and what they do. If you'd like to know about functionality, let me know. I haven't got them up yet on websites (well, not for download), except for Jaymoe. But hopefully soon a website will get kicking.

Jaymoe
http://www.jaymoe.com

Very VERY basic engine. Pages, Images and Forums. A lot of work needs to be done on this. It's really a prototype at the moment.

Rasp

A basic File serving Web Server. Designed for small business who need to share documents and files (upload and download) between each other.

The Desktop interface allows for the importing of files in a number of different way.
The Web interface requires a login, although Pages are served on the normal index page.

Bank Buddy

Imports your Bank Statements (usually downloaded from your internet banking interface) and then allows you to allocate them.

The beauty of this sucker is the graphs you can get out of it. Simple to see (pie graphs rule) how much you are spending on what.


NetTalk Functionality
- file uploading from Web interface
- hooking into the WebHandler to customise the interface by serving custom CSS files based on the URL (and then Entity) entered.
- using Static files and the Ext framework (http://extjs.com) to give an enhanced user interface. Unfortunately cannot use the templates in this scenario. Or not much. At least, my brain wasn't able to get around it, so did it the long way .. hardcode .
- Lightbox (cool js imaging functionality) into the web server, for Images
- Using Rico functionality, such as moveable boxes
- Pulling in Scriptaculous and using it instead (this was hard, and not completely functional).

[CyberFerret]

Hi Stu,

Yes - ExtJS is definitely a kick-ass Javascript framework.  We are using it + NetTalk on a couple of projects now, and the reactions to the interface and functionality have been huge.  NetTalk + XFiles makes a perfect combination to send data to the ExtJS 'front end'.

Now, if we could only write a set of template classes to map Clarion browse and forms to the ExtJS grids, forms and windows then we could be joining Larry & Sergei on their new 767 private jet very soon!!!

Cheers,
Devan

[Stu]

Devan,

Nice! I reckon the template thing wouldn't be too hard .. just a bit time consuming.

I got the browse/form working nicely in static files with NetTalk serving XML feeds .. but putting it to a template would mean .. well .. joy of joys. Ha ha.

Cheers,

Stu

[random69]

Devan,

Sweet!

I'd be curious to see how you did your implementation of ext js to NetTalk - at least how much time it took to implement it.

Care to share?

Thanks!

Dave

[CyberFerret]

Hi Dave,

Nothing too technical here - I am definitely NOT one of the smarter programmers out there.  As Stu said, there is a fair bit of tedious manual coding required to get things to happen.

Basically, all I do is to create a few simple web pages in NetTalk which pump out data from my databases in pure XML format.  This is actually the easiest part.  I use a combo of NetTalk and XFiles or IQ-XML to do this.  Simply create a NetWebForm procedure which does the query on the tables, then use XFiles to convert the table/queue to an XML _string_, then return that string using packet=MyXMLString in the procedure.

The tedious bit is in ExtJS.  You have to manually hand code the data grids and "Reader" objects to consume the output from the NetTalk procedures.  All the fancy stuff such as sorting, pagination etc. is actually handled really well by the ExtJS objects.  Really the easiest way is to download their examples, and just change the "Reader" and "GridPanel" objects to map to your XML output instead.  That is how we built 80% of our app!

Tip: Get a good editing suite which will assist you in creating ExtJS code.  We use Aptana Studio (www.aptana.com) which has support for ExtJS 1.1 at the moment.  ExtJS 2.0 support is coming soon and I cannot wait.

All in all - I wish for an easier way to set up an ExtJS reader, as well as GridPanel columns which are mapped to your data table or query.  It would be so good to have a Clarion generator type tool in which you filled in a dialog box telling it which fields you wanted, what sort order and pagination type, and having it spit out the Javascript code for you.

Oh well, perhaps a project for when I have a spare month or two...

Cheers,
Devan

[random69]

Devan,

Thanks a bunch. I can't wait to play with this framework. If I come up with anything on my end, I'll be sure to share too.

Cheers!
Dave

[frosty]

Are any examples of using Nettalk + ExtJS available for us to see?

[L]

[Stu]

I haven't got any live unfortunately.

Stu

[frosty]

An evangelist without tangible results?  :-)

[L]

[LANSRAD]

Tip: Get a good editing suite which will assist you in creating ExtJS code.  We use Aptana Studio (www.aptana.com) which has support for ExtJS 1.1 at the moment.  ExtJS 2.0 support is coming soon and I cannot wait.

Devan,

I use Aptana (and ExtJS) and your right - Aptana works great!

It does support ExtJS 2.0 now.

You should also download SPKET (inside the Aptana environment) and install it for ExtJS as shown here:

http://extjs.com/learn/Manual:Resources#Spket_IDe

Look for the section on the page titled:

Aptana + Spket + ExtJS

Install it per those instructions and you wil still be working in Aptana, but the Spket will give you all the ExtJS code completion when your in a JS file.

(if you get it correct, when you are in the Aptana with a JS file and you type Ext. (note the period), then the Spket will open up with the ExtJS properties for you.

;-)

Enjoy!

Charles