In the world of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) development, Ext JS stands out as a cross-browser JavaScript library that offers the applications developer a powerful toolset. With a set of customizable user interface widgets similar to those found in desktop operating systems, an effective data binding model, a comprehensive programming interface for manipulating the Document Object Model and communicating with the server, a committed development team, and an enthusiastic users' community, the Ext JS library is a great choice for today's web builders.
This book addresses many of the library's features, from the perspective of how they can be used to solve the real-world challenges faced by those that develop internet applications.
Chapter 1—The DOM and Data Types, the Ext JS way, covers the Ext JS facilities for working with different browsers, the Document Object Model (DOM), and the Ext JS data types. Its recipes will teach you how to detect browsers and platforms, manipulate the DOM, encode and decode JSON and URL data, and work with arrays, strings, numbers, and dates. In this chapter you will also learn how to augment the features of the Ext JS classes, as well as how to incorporate library features into your own JavaScript classes.
Chapter2—Laying Out a Rich User Interface , will help you to learn how to use layouts to create user interfaces with the Ext JS widgets. This chapter explains the common uses of some of the library's native layouts, and teaches you how to combine and augment these layouts to build great-looking and functional interfaces.
Chapter 3—Load, Validate, and Submit Forms , focuses on forms processing. In this chapter you will find tips and techniques for effective field validation, details on how to load data into forms, as well as advice on how to use forms to upload files to the server. As in previous chapters, in Chapter 3 you will find examples of how to extend the library's classes, in particular, how to create custom form fields.
Chapter 4—Fun with Combo Boxes and Date Fields , is a continuation of the form fields recipes introduced in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 is loaded with examples of how to use the ComboBox and DateField form components. It will teach you how to take advantage of ComboBox features like paging and item templates, as well as how to safely capture master-details and dates range input.
Chapter 5—Using Grid Panels to Display and Edit Tabular Data , consists of recipes that encompass the display of data using Ext JS grid panels. They explain different approaches to loading, editing, and saving data, as well as looking at how to implement features like grouping and group summaries. Chapter 5 uses techniques introduced in Chapter 3 to teach you how the Ext JS GridPanel widget can be enhanced through the use of plugins.
Chapter 6—More Applications of Grid and List views, expands on Chapter 5's examples. It explains multiple ways to use the GridPanel widget to display master-details relationships, approaches to displaying tabular data more efficiently, and how to edit data with the new RowEditor class.
Chapter 7—Keeping Tabs on your Trees, explores the TabPanel and Treview widgets. Besides how to use their main features, in this chapter you will also learn how to take advantage of plugins to enhance these widgets. This chapter also teaches you how to implement usage scenarios involving drag-and-drop and master-details displays with tree views and panels.
Chapter 8—Making Progress with Menus and Toolbars, consists of recipes that examine the commonly-used menu items, as well as the different ways to set up toolbars and progress bars in your applications.
Chapter 9—Well Charted Territory, consists of recipes that explain the typical usage scenarios of the chart widget, as well as approaches to configuring and customizing the look of the slider widget.
Chapter 10— Patterns in Ext JS, provides examples of some important design patterns used to build robust and flexible applications. These examples cover techniques such as resource management using lazy instantiation, prototyping and encapsulating using code modules and pre-configured classes, dependency management with publish/subscribe models, and state preservation.
The recipes in this book use the Ext JS 3.0 SDK, available from the Ext JS website at http://www.extjs.com/products/extjs/download.php. You will need to download and install the SDK in order to run the code for the recipes.
Some recipes use the Sakila sample database, provided by MySQL AB. The Sakila sample database is available from http://dev.mysql.com/doc/. Installation instructions are available at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/sakila/en/sakila.html.
It is recommended that you use a JavaScript debugger when running the code for the recipes.
The Ext JS Cookbook is for Ext JS users who want a book of useful techniques, with explanations, that they can refer to and adapt to their purposes. Developers who are already familiar with Ext JS will find practical guidance and numerous examples covering most of the library's features and components that can be used as a solid foundation to build upon when creating rich internet applications.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "Initialize the global QuickTips instance."
A block of code is set as follows:
var browser = "";
if (Ext.isChrome) {
browser = "Hi! I'm the new kid on the block";
}
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
{ xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-pwd',
fieldLabel: 'Password', inputType: 'password',
allowBlank: false, minLength: 6, maxLength: 32,
minLengthText: 'Password must be at least 6 characters long.'
}
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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