casualjim / ironnails

IronNails
=========

IronNails is a framework inspired by the Rails and rucola frameworks. It offers a rails-like way of developing 
applications with IronRuby and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
This framework uses the pattern Model - ViewModel - View - Controller (M-VM-V-C). It should eventually be able to run on 
both WPF and Silverlight.
The idea is that the views can be created using a design tool like Blend for example and just save that xaml as is. The 
designer should not need to use anything else than drag and drop to create a GUI design. The behaviors are then added to 
the view by using predefined behaviors in the framework or by defining your own behavior.
The framework then generates a proxy for the view which will be used to transparently wire up the commands in the 
behaviors to controller actions. 

As this project evolves and IronRuby becomes more complete we will start to take on dependencies to other rubygems.
At this moment we only have a dependency to get logging going and we need to be able to do require 'logger' and require 
'fileutils'. In controllers, viewmodels, models and view proxies you now have the ability to log things in the same way 
Rails does.

You can run the application by giving the command rake run inside the application directory

You are now able to write the following code for a controller:

# file name: demo_controller.rb
class DemoController < IronNails::Controller::Base
  view_object :status_bar_message, "The status bar message"
  
  view_action :change_message
  
  def change_message
    @status_bar_message = "#@status_bar_message appended"
  end
end

# file name: DemoViewModel.cs
public class DemoViewModel : IronNails.View.ViewModel { }

# file name: demo.xaml
<Window 
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:behaviors="clr-namespace:IronNails.Library.Behaviors;assembly=IronNails.Library"
    Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">
    <StackPanel>
        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Objects[StatusBarMessage].Value}" ></TextBlock>
        <Button Content="Click me" behaviors:ClickBehavior.LeftClick="{Binding Commands[ChangeMessage]}" />
    </StackPanel>
</Window>

If you want to run the project:
update IronRuby to the latest revision (currently r.170)
update the build_conf.yml file in the config folder to point to your ironruby bin folder. We need to copy some 
assemblies there.
type rake run in the ironnails directory ie. C:\projects\ironnails\ironnails\ > rake run

all help is welcome: ivan@flanders.co.nz

Help is wanted for implementing the following items a.o.

* RSpec stories
* Predefined behaviors
* Better xaml integration
* Encapsulation of automatic refreshing of models.
* support for multiple views tied to a controller
* Create a host project in which is an application that hosts the ironruby runtime and executes our nails application.