I am working on a project, which features numerous places where it’s possible to select a client from a drop-down. I thought about creating a single class, which will work as a button, but would also contain the logic of actually adding the client through a form in jQuery UI Frame.
As a result, I’ve created a universal “NewEntry” button, which can be added anywhere like this.
$client=$form->addField('autocomplete','client_id');
$client->setModel('Client');
$client->add('Button_NewEntry',null,'after_field')
->setLabel('New Client')->setModel('Client',array('name'));
This produces the following:
- Button is added next to the field
- When button is clicked, new dialog is displayed offering to add new client
- After form is submitted, dialog closes and new client is automatically selected in auto-complete field
- Works with any model, label and list of visible fields can be customized
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Agile Toolkit is awesome because it’s simple. Sometimes it lacks a feature, but it’s simple to add this feature. Having all those features in the core would be an over-kill, so many features are not in there on purpose.
An example is this controller, which will make items in your Grid order-able. Here is the screenshot of how it performs:
This sexy interface is implemented as a stand-alone controller in Agile Toolkit in about 70 lines of code and small bit of HTML, no JS or CSS. But more importantly, it can be added to any Grid out there with just this:
$grid->add('Controller_GridOrder');
Why is it important / cool?
- It uses standard interface and will look right at home inside your project.
- Relies on standard elements of Agile Toolkit.
- Simple enough for you to read through and understand
- Object-oriented so you can extend it to make it behave differently.
- Requires no change to Grid.
- Works with any model (just add numeric field “ord”)
Share your code!
When you develop your software, your goal is to get it done. This controller took me about 30 minutes to implement. To properly document it and share, it would take some more time.
I’m pretty sure it’s same for you. If you are developing with Agile Toolkit, you might have a few interesting bits out there. My plan is to make it super-easy for you to throw a link to your Github repository and then let others convert your code into the properly documented add-on. Instead of re-inventing it, they could clean it up and document.
This way we don’t have to re-implement every bit and we’ll have a great library of add-ons growing!
How to share.
First – put your code into github and make it public. Even if it’s your personal project, it won’t hurt.
I’ll be working on the section on www.agiletoolkit.org where you will be able to “share” some goodies you have in your code. Leave it to other devs to extract it from your code, clean it up and improve. Your contribution to Agile Toolkit community would be highly appreciated.
Once in a while, I see people who are stuck with a problem and who say they have tried everything and it still does not work. I often find myself in a similar situation, but I have found a recipe to resolve it.
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OpenSource is an amazing phenomena, but how safe open-source projects are? Would commercial project be safer over the community-supported project?
Frameworks can’t exist without their core team and In this article I look at how different PHP frameworks are supporting their core developers.
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Agile Toolkit is Open for Business!
I am very pleased to announce that Agile Toolkit is finally ready to be used in your business applications. Not only the code-base, Learning guide and Documentation have matured over the last few months but we’ve got the resources to help you with your questions!
We are running $1.00 license sale. For just a single dollar you will get the following:
- Developing a closed-source application with Agile Toolkit
- Same business day email support
- Instant-messaging support (skype, gtalk)
- Your Code review, suggestions and hints
- Missing a feature? Request it an we’ll make it!
Monday morning the per-domain price will be back to $130, so spend the weekend wisely and get a few licenses for yourself and make sure your friends are in it too.
Click it before it’s too late: http://agiletoolkit.org/commercial/store
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Over the decade now web developers had to constantly evolve and learn more and more skills. The basic knowledge of HTML and the server-side language (such as PHP) is no longer sufficient. Expectations for web applications grow and Web Developers need to know CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, SQL as wall as many other libraries and frameworks – jQuery, CSS Frameworks, PHP Frameworks.
How do we turn it over and make things easier? Answer is — PHP UI Framework.
Thanks to all for your reports of my spelling messages across documentation. Here is how you can help. You would need a GitHub account.
https://github.com/atk4/atk4-web
Click on “Fork” button. This will create your own copy of agile toolkit website. Next in file browser:
- Click on “templates”
- Click on “jui”
- Click on “page”
- Click on “learn”
- Find the file you want to edit. The structure corresponds to the URLs
- When viewing file, click on [Edit File] button in the right-top corner.
- Fill in description of your change and commit changes back.
When you are finished, click to the button “Pull Request” next to the fork button.
That’s all! Thanks for your time and desire to help me out.
Welcome to the series of posts which helps you understand Agile Toolkit if you are coming from one of the other PHP Frameworks.
This post focuses on developers who are already familiar with CI (Code Igniter) and are willing to try Agile Toolkit.
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Agile Toolkit now includes the ability to put all it’s PHP classes into a single file. This way you would only need to distribute one file along with your application.
Bundle would only contain classes from “atk4″, so add-ons will not be bundled. Clever minds should be able to extend the bundler to pack add-ons they require along with their own classes.
As a result, you can have all your PHP in one or two classes. To create the bundle you need most recent copy of Agile Toolkit (4.1.1+ would do) and Unix shell. Execute:
./atk4/tools/mkbundle.sh
Will produce atk4/atk4-bundle.php and also atk4/atk4-bundle.min.php. Replace your include for atk4/loader.php for ‘atk4/atk-bundle.php’ and everything should continue to work. You can then remove atk4/lib.
Please note that Agile Toolkit contains images, styles and JavaScript files which are not minified by this process.
With increasing popularity of Agile Toolkit, I’m getting more requests from volunteers and people who want to actively learn it. While forum and community portal is still in our short-term plans, we are now using chat.stackoverflow.com for daily communication.
http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/2966/agile-toolkit-atk4
You would need to register with stack overflow and get some reputation if you want to chat, so be sure to ask a couple of “atk4″ questions (or answers) http://stackoverflow.com/tags/atk4
