What jAces is

jAces is a Grails plugin that bridges dojo and Grails to create a superior platform for creating rich client web applications.

 

While Its scaffolding template and widgets streamlines the process of creating database applications, jAces in general is not just a framework for developing database applications. jAces will be helpful for developing any kind of rich client web application that combines Grails and dojo features.

 

With the help of jAces, It is very easy to put different views into the same page. Views are WEB 2.0 corresponds of old HTML forms. They have the following new features to overcome the limitations of HTML forms.

 

-          Views can be nested

-          Widgets are bounded to the first parent view found in the dom hierarchy.

-          Views submit only the data in their content instead of submitting the whole page

-          Based on the response, views can take following actions

o        Populate child widget with the data in the result

o        Show the resulting message of the submit

 

Each view must have one view body and all the content of the view is placed into the body. For the time being, jAces has two body widgets:

 

-          If the view body is chosen as jaces.Body, the view will become a full featured WEB 2.0 form.

-          If the view body is chosen as jaces.ViewBody, the view assumes that it works with jAces Scaffolded controller and manages CRUD operations itself. For this kind of view, jaces.form.StandardToolbar might be used to place standard persistence buttons into the view. Additionally a sheet view generated based on the widgets places into the view body to give a listing feature.

 

 

Click here to see a social networking application developed using jAces, dojo, and Grails.

 

In order to login to the application, please enter jaces into the username field and again jaces into the password field.

 

 

Since jAces runs on Dojo and Grails you have the ability of using both them when you want to do something that is beyond the boundaries of jAces.

 

Well, What jAces adds to Grails and dojo?

Grails itself is superior platform for developing web applications while dojo is the leader in the Javascript Rich Client world. You wonder what jAces does to create an additional value. Let us make the idea clear:

 

Grails and dojo together is a good base where you can start building your database application. However you still need a lot to put onto the base to make the development smooth and fast.  Below is a list of major functions jAces puts onto the base to make the development fast and smooth.

 

-          Advanced custom widgets that work with Grails controllers on a well defined protocol

1.       View

2.       ViewBody

3.       Form

4.       DataForm

5.       DataGrid

6.       Store

7.       ComboBox

-          CRUD operations that are integrated with Rich Client widgets in a well defined form

-          Extension points where you can write code to change the default behaviors of jAces and to commit transactions in addition to the seamless jAces transactions

-          A well defined protocol between Client and Server

-          Converters, Parser, and well defined Pagination

-          Direct support for One-to-One, Many-to-One and One-to-Many associations

-          A well defined mechanism to create master-detail views

-          A well defined mechanism to set view attributes that customize the way the user interacts with the application

-          Advanced filtering and sorting capabilities

-          A very advanced and optimized pagination mechanism for very large result sets

-          Persistence without writing a single line of code

-          Layouts that embed dojo into the application