Book Image

Backbase 4 RIA Development

Book Image

Backbase 4 RIA Development

Overview of this book

Backbase is a very powerful and complex JavaScript library, with many user interface components to help make web development easier. It allows the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that run within all major browsers but its powers and complexity mean that the choice of component can be overwhelming. Understanding when and how to use the right component might not always be straightforward. This book makes that easier. This is a practical book that teaches you how to use the Backbase Client Framework effectively, with a complete overview and many examples. A core developer of the framework puts the technologies used into a wider perspective of existing web standards and a seasoned software architect explains why XML-based UI definition produces better web applications. The transparent use of AJAX technologies, for example to submit forms, or to retrieve updates for data grids, can be taken for granted with the Backbase framework. Packed with examples, the book shows you how to get the most from the library of UI components, and then extend the library with its own custom language. With this book in hand, it is easy to enable AJAX within your web application. You will be able to use the Backbase framework effectively, from basic applications to complex, custom-defined UI components. This book contains a complete overview of all the UI libraries available within the Backbase framework and shows examples for each element described. The Backbase framework offers an innovative Tag Definition Language (TDL), which allows developers to create new UI components that can be used as XML elements, in the same way as using the built-in GUI library. Using TDL brings considerable development advantages, and this book explains how. Significant attention is also given to architectural aspects of designing a web-application, showing sample applications using a model-view-controller approach.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Backbase 4 RIA Development
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface

Introduction to the Tag Definition Language (TDL)


The Backbase framework provides a binding language called Tag Definition Language (TDL). The TDL is XML-compliant and has its foundations in object-oriented programming languages. It provides a set of elements and attributes required for the definition of new widgets or tags. The TDL serves as a means to bind classes to document-level markup elements. The Backbase implementation of XHTML and all the BTL widgets are constructed with the TDL.

Widgets

At the start of Chapter 2, we defined a widget as a visible "thing" on a page. Throughout the book, we have tried to avoid confusion by using the term widget in this way and using element for more general "things", not necessarily visible. Control is synonymous to widget, but we try not to use it. A tag is nothing but the name of a widget, as you already know from XML.

In a more technical sense, we are going to use the term widget for any JavaScript object that you can define using TDL. In the Backbase...