Apotomo

Apotomo is a stateful widget component framework for Rails.

A stateful WHAT?

Well, you know that. In Rails, people tend to have fat controllers. One controller action renders the complete page. While many programmers try to separate their code into helpers, controller actions, RJS logic and partials, it is still the controller that has to care about when to update what, and how!

In Apotomo, it is the opposite. Widgets are small, autonomous components that look and feel like controllers. These tiny monsters listen to events and thus keep updating themselves on the page via AJAX. However, there’s no JavaScript for you - they’re pure Ruby.

Man, gimme code!

Let’s use the famous and tiresome counter example.

 class CounterCell < Apotomo::StatefulWidget
   transition :from => :display, :to => :increment

   def display
     respond_to_event :counterClick, :with => :increment

     @count = 0
     render             # renders display.html.erb
   end

   def increment
     @count += 1        # @count is simply there - that's stateful.
     render :view => :display
   end
 end

Since this widget calls render it surely needs a view.

 <!-- I'm display.html.erb -->

 <h1><%= @count %></h1>

 <%= link_to_event "Increment me!", :type => :counterClick %>

We now plug the widget in a page.

 class ExistingController < ApplicationController
   include Apotomo::ControllerHelper

   def some_action
     # do what you want...

     use_widgets do |root|
       root << cell(:counter, :display, 'my_first_counter')
     end
   end
 end

As soon as the widget is rendered it will jump to its :display state which initializes the counter and renders itself.

Speaking of rendering: how do we place the widget in our controller?

  <!-- I'm some_action.html.erb -->
  <p>
        <%= render_widget 'my_first_counter' %>

Ok, so this renders the widget in our controller page.

When clicking the link it updates automatically on the screen showing the incremented value. Wow.

That’s cool!

Yes, it is.

Is there more?

Apotomo got a load of features.

Give it a try- you will love the power and simplicity of real stateful components!

Bugs, Community

Please visit apotomo.de, the official project page with lots of examples. Join the mailing list and visit us in the IRC channel. More information is here.

License

Copyright © 2007-2010 Nick Sutterer <apotonick@gmail.com>

The MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.