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#flow FAQ

Can I use double data-binding? How do I bind the model in a flow controller?

Yes. When you set the model in a flow controller which is a subclass of BindingController you'll have available that model in the template and do things like { model. name } to make the template be rendered with the model's properties. Check the RivetsJSTestsController class for more examples.

How do I compose flow controllers?

Controllers can have controllers. See the StuffController for an example on how it's done.

###How does flow routes? How URL changes map to controllers? By reacting to the onhashchange event and reflecting about its new value. It will ask the RouteableController hierarchy to detect who answers true to the isValidFor: anURI message. If you follow flow's convention, you create a YourNamedController subclass of RouteableController and it will be rendered when the URI matches http://flow.dev/YourNamed (tip: you can manipulate that arbitrarily by changing isValidFor: anURI)

Can I use the html canvas or I need to use templates?

Whatever you like it better. You can use the 'traditional' canvas or you can use the also 'traditional' templates.

How do I change the CSS style in a controller?

Editing the .css files found in frontend/css/

How does flow persists models in the localStorage?

Using MiniMapless.

How does flow compare with the other Smalltalk web frameworks already out there like Seaside and Aida?

Seaside and Aida are great full server stack frameworks. They work with the notion of pre-render everything from the server and use the browser to display.

flow, in the other hand, is opinionated on the separation of concerns regarding front and back ends. That makes it a good fit for Single Page Applications where the rendering process happens in the web browser itself and generated by the frontend. That's the main difference you'll find with flow and any full server stack. Secondarily, the backend is RESTful and depending on how you use it, it can be stateless.

Does flow support application localization for languages (e.g., English, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew) as well as language dialects (e.g., American English vs British English)?

Can flow be used for building a CMS (Content Management System)?

Yes. Anything you can think in doing as a Single Page Applications is a great fit for flow.

Seaside can use Magritte for modeling. What about flow?

The only meta-generation of views available in flow is scaffolding.

flow intentionally favours the use of custom microtemplates to leverage designers collaboration.

What is scaffolding?

...

If I want to add a js package to flow's frontend, do I simply place it in frontend/src/? How would I tell system to always grab the latest version of (say) minimongo from the meteor repo? Is there a way to do that in Amber?

Yes. Amber uses requirejs for loading frontend parts of your app. So you need to do two things:

  1. prepare the requisites of the frontend
  2. tell your app to use it

For the requisites, you do it via npm or bower. So you do it in its usual way. For this example, to install minimongo you'll follow the instructions found in npm's site and do:

yourapp/frontend/$ npm install minimongo --save

That command will edit your package.json file adding the latest minimongo as requisite of (re)building the frontend of your app.

To tell your app to actually load it, you do that in index.html in the script section like this:

<script type='text/javascript'>
      require.config({ paths: {
          'app': 'src', //mapping compiled .js files and smalltalk source files
          'bower': 'bower_components'
      }});
      require([
          'amber/devel',
          ...,
          'minimongo',  // telling your app to actually load it
          ... rest of your app's frontend packages

###How do a flow-based app gets deployed?

In flow we have a grunt watch task that rebuilds the public/ directory every time you change any of the frontend's source files. It takes care of css/, img/ and src where Amber stores its .js and .st.

The grunt watch tasks output about Amber sources is to make one ball of js that you'll find in public/js/the.js and use in production.

###Is the framework SEO friendly? Currently, probably not. For now, the advice is to make SEO things with already SEO friendly arctifacts and let flow for the app itself. If the app itself needs SEO really bad (like ecommerce or things like that) then that would be a wall to climb. Good news is Google (and friends) eventually will solve that for us but if you need that in a project now, you can use your favorite tool from any of the listed here. Many of them prerender for the bots and are probably adaptable for flow.