README.md

NOTE This project is a working draft of a Baobab app framework. This is still a bit rough around the edges.

NOTE This README is also a work in progress. I've only written a little bit, and i'm still organizing my thoughts.

The ultimate goal would be to use the research derived to put together a framework which is heavily reliant on Baobab.

Running the App

$ npm install
$ jspm install
$ harp server

AOP logging

this is pretty sweet and it's color coded. With debugging enabled, interactions between views (through mediator) will be logged, along with other useful information.

These include:

• view events view events are logged to the console.

• interactions between views are logged in the console, showing the source and target.

• warnings are logged when code attempts to do something that the convention does not allow.

  • EX: all events fired on a View instance should have arguments: (event, source, data), where event is an object like so:

  {
     source: string
     sourceAction: string // optional
     target: string
     targetEvent: string
     eventData: * // optional
  }
  

Composition

interaction( view( viewFacet( tree ) ) )

Core Principles

Unidirectional Data Flow

Data flows one direction from appTree to interactions, where it flows back into appTree again.

appTree **=>**viewFacet **=>**view **=>**interactions **=>**appTree

Reactive

Components in this framework react to one another. Instead of directly sending messages to one another, components emit that they have been changed. Other components react to these emitted events.

Standard Event Arguments

Events emitted within the framework should follow a standard convention when it comes to arguments. The chosen convention is as follows:

var eventName = 'test';

// Emit
view.emit(eventName, {}, source, data);

// Handle
view.on(eventName, function (event, source, data) {
  // do stuff
});

This is made easier by the wrapEvent and spawnEvent helpers found in lib/events/

1 Cursor Per View

Each view has a namespace. It uses that namespace to reserve a cursor on the appTree. For example, my 'hello-world' view should store all of it's view-modely stuff (like active) on appTree.select('hello-world')

Facets as 'viewModels'

The idea of a facet (as implemented in Baobab) is that it is a read-only view into a data struct. What would be a more perfect fit for unidirectional flow? Facets are used to derive and prepare data from the appTree and present it to the view.

The benefits to this approach are:

• Impossible to break the unidirectional flow (there is no #set on a facet)
• Ability to listen on multiple cursors, or multiple facets, or both

TODO