Page Comparison

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Objectives

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title	Work in Progress

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Updating the course for FarCry 6.x. If you can help let us know! Put your notes in the comments for the page.

Additional topics to be considered for this unit:

introduce the difference between views on the content type (ie type or listing views) and views on individual content items/instances
introduce friendly URLs; these will be covered in more detail in Webskin II
explain the use of the webskin tracer; developers need to learn this immediately
introduce view inheritance ie. views coming from core and plugins as well as the project
explain how headers and footers work
explain in detail the way skin:view works
give examples of relevant @@viewdecorators where possible
explain grid tags; especially with respect to mollio skeleton

Objectives

Excerpt
In this unit we learn about webskins: the "view" for FarCry Framework. Webskins form the presentation tier of any FarCry application. By the end of this unit you should have a basic understanding of how webskins are managed, their relationship to content types and how to create your own.

The COAPI

The FarCry framework is based on a variation of the classic Model-View-Controller pattern. The COAPI (or Content Object API) is a high level name for the MVC engine inside FarCry. Without getting bogged down in the details of the framework, its good to have a high level or "helicopter" view of how things work under the hood. We'll expand on these themes gradually as you go through the course.

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Requests from users are processed by FarCry's built-in "smart controller" which automatically determines wiring based on the URL convention or the friendly URL sub-system. The COAPI always ends up calling a principal content type (a special type of class) that manages how we interact with the model and view. When thinking of views (or webskins) its important to realise that they are always executed in the context of a specific content type.

It's not at all important for developers to understand how the COAPI works, but hey, for those that want the details we've added some advanced info boxes where relevant.

The Webskin

The webskin is a templating layer that effectively translates your data into a view. Typically this is a complete HTML page or fragment of HTML representing a content teaser or some other element used in assembling a page. But a webskin could just as easily be outputting a form, RSS, XML or other format.

In its basic form we can run a webskin on an object by using the following URL Syntax:

Code Block

title	URL Syntax


http://superheroes.local?objectid=E689D66F-96FD-E9F6-B1AF64B8DAE78A69&view=displayPageStandard

The url above is running the webskin "displayPageStandard" on the content item with the objectid of E689D66F-96FD-E9F6-B1AF64B8DAE78A69

Pretty ugly, eh. But not to worry. In practice the Friendly URL (FU) engine dynamically changes these links to beautiful looking URLs. For example, /hero/batman

Where to Find Webskins

Webskins are all located in a single folder under your project root called "webskin" funnily enough. Inside that directory branch you should find a single folder for each content type you want a webskin for.

Code Block

title	Webskin Directory Structure


[install-root]
\farcry-express-install
  \webroot
   \farcry
     \projects
       \myproject
         \webskin
           \dmHTML
           \dmNews
           \dmEvent
           \myContentType

Tip

title	Webskin Inheritance

Webskins can be stored in the core framework, and any plugin as well as your current project. However, any webskin placed in your project with the same name as an existing webskin will always be overridden by your project's webskin.

Walkthrough: Call a Webskin on a HTML Object

In this walkthrough we're going to call the standard dmHTML webskins on the Home Page HTML object.

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title	Example URLs Only

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Excerpt
In this unit we learn about webskins: the "view" for FarCry Framework. Webskins form the presentation tier of any FarCry application. By the end of this unit you should have a basic understanding of how webskins are managed, their relationship to content types and how to create your own.

The COAPI

The FarCry framework is based on a variation of the classic Model-View-Controller pattern. The COAPI (or Content Object API) is a high level name for the MVC engine inside FarCry. Without getting bogged down in the details of the framework, its good to have a high level or "helicopter" view of how things work under the hood. We'll expand on these themes gradually as you go through the course.

Mockup

	mvc-diagram
	mvc-diagram
Version	2
Name	mvc-diagram

Requests from users are processed by FarCry's built-in "smart controller" which automatically determines wiring based on the URL convention or the friendly URL sub-system. The COAPI always ends up calling a principal content type (a special type of class) that manages how we interact with the model and view. When thinking of views (or webskins) its important to realise that they are always executed in the context of a specific content type.

It's not at all important for developers to understand how the COAPI works, but hey, for those that want the details we've added some advanced info boxes where relevant.

The Webskin

The webskin is a templating layer that effectively translates your data into a view. Typically this is a complete HTML page or fragment of HTML representing a content teaser or some other element used in assembling a page. But a webskin could just as easily be outputting a form, RSS, XML or other format.

In its basic form we can run a webskin on an object by using the following URL Syntax:

Code Block

title	URL Syntax


http://superheroes.local?objectid=E689D66F-96FD-E9F6-B1AF64B8DAE78A69&view=displayPageStandard

The url above is running the webskin "displayPageStandard" on the content item with the objectid of E689D66F-96FD-E9F6-B1AF64B8DAE78A69

Pretty ugly, eh. But not to worry. In practice the Friendly URL (FU) engine dynamically changes these links to beautiful looking URLs. For example, /hero/batman

Where to Find Webskins

Webskins are all located in a single folder under your project root called "webskin" funnily enough. Inside that directory branch you should find a single folder for each content type you want a webskin for.

Code Block

title	Webskin Directory Structure


[install-root]
\farcry-express-install
  \webroot
   \farcry
     \projects
       \myproject
         \webskin
           \dmHTML
           \dmNews
           \dmEvent
           \myContentType

Tip

title	Webskin Inheritance

Webskins can be stored in the core framework, and any plugin as well as your current project. However, any webskin placed in your project with the same name as an existing webskin will always be overridden by your project's webskin.

Walkthrough: Call a Webskin on a HTML Object

In this walkthrough we're going to call the standard dmHTML webskins on the Home Page HTML object.

Login to the Webtop and click on the Home Page dmHTML object in the site tree (the white page icon... not the blue dmNavigation object)
Copy the objectid of this object to the ClipBoard (located at the bottom of the summary for the object or in version 6-0-16, under the Miscellaneous tab in the ObjectID section)
Now, locate the ./webskin/dmHTML folder in your project
Take note of the current webskins in that folder.

Now enter a url to call each of the webskins in that folder using the following format

Code Block

title	Example URLs Only


http://localhost:8888/index.cfm?objectid=E689D66F-96FD-E9F6-B1AF64B8DAE78A69&view=displayPageStandard

http://localhost:8888/index.cfm?objectid=E689D66F-96FD-E9F6-B1AF64B8DAE78A69&view=displayPage3Col

http://localhost:8888/index.cfm?objectid=E689D66F-96FD-E9F6-B1AF64B8DAE78A69&view=displayTeaserStandard

Discuss how this forms the basis of almost ALL web applications

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Note

title	Reloading/Restarting The Application To Recognise Webskin Changes

When a FarCry application starts it works out all the available webskins for every content type and stores them in memory. Every time you add create a new webskin file you need to reload the application in order for the system to recognise it. If you are logged in you can reload the application from the "Tray Menu" or by simply running a page with &updateapp=1 at the end of the URL. Alternatively, if you only want to (Note: Your updateapp key may be set to a value other than 1. Check inside your farcryConstructor.cfm in your webroot to confirm).

Alternatively, if you only want to reload part of the application, go into the [ webtop / admin / developer utilities / reload application ] and simply select the options you wish to reload. This is a handy tab to have open at all times while your developing and constantly adding/updating webskins and metadata.

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These are just a few of the regularly used webskin names within the FarCry framework. For a complete list of reserved webskin template names review: https://farcry.jira.com/wiki/display/FCDEV50/Webskin+Templates

Hooking Up The Webskin To Data

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For a complete list of decorators and their uses, see:https://farcry.jira.com/wiki/display/FCDEV60/Summary+of+View+Decorators

Template metadata is always stored in a ColdFusion comment.

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Code Block

title	Sample Project Directory Structure

c:\farcry
    \projects
      \myproject
        \webskin
        \www (standard project webroot)
          \wsimages
          \css\images

Tip

title	Version Control

If you version control your code base you want to make sure that content managed images are not included in your repository but be absolutely sure that images, etc pertaining to the design of the application are in the repository. Hence the clear split in where to store them.

Webskin Tag Libraries

Remember a webskin is just like a ColdFusion template - you can do all sorts of things. The webskin is strictly speaking a VIEW and following good programming practise you should refrain from doing business logic in this area. However, you can reference ColdFusion tags, FarCry service components and custom tag libraries as needed.

FarCry has a special custom tag library dedicated to making life easier when building webskins. In includes all sorts of goodies from building navigation, to breadcrumbs, to rendering other views and more. You can find this library in the core framework at: ./core/tags/webskin To make use of these tags you will need to import them first.

For a complete list of webskin tags see:http://docs.farcrycore.org/p600/

Code Block

title	Importing Custom Tag Libraries


<!--- @@displayname: Home Page --->
<!--- @@author: Matthew Bryant (mbryant@daemon.com.au)--->

<!--- import tag libraries --->
<cfimport taglib="/farcry/core/tags/webskin" prefix="skin" />

<!--- breadcrumb; detects position in the site tree and builds a breadcrumb --->
<skin:breadcrumb />

Tip

title	Project Tag Libraries

We recommend creating your own custom tag libraries under the project folder and importing them in the same way: ./myproject/tags/mytaglibrary

Composite Views

In practice, web pages in FarCry are assembled from multiple webskins. While you can do a lot with custom tags, the best way to build web pages is by compositing multiple webskins together.

Consider the following real world examples of composite views from the Fandango theme.

Mockup

	webskin-composite
	webskin-composite
Version	1
Name	webskin-composite

Note
FarCry doesn't prescribe a specific templating architecture - you can get pretty sophisticated in your approach or keep it dead simple. Fandango is a good best practice starting point.

Building a Composite View

A typical starting point for any composite view is working with headers and footers. Its very common to have a similar header across all web pages, albeit with slight variations such as page title, highlighted navigation and so on. Likewise the footer structure.

You can call another view directly using the skin:view tag. skin:view is a real workhorse - we use it all the time.

Code Block

title	Example from ./dmHTML/displayPageHome.cfm

<div id="main">
	<div class="container_12">
		<div  \wsimages
          \css\images

Tip

title	Version Control

If you version control your code base you want to make sure that content managed images are not included in your repository but be absolutely sure that images, etc pertaining to the design of the application are in the repository. Hence the clear split in where to store them.

Webskin Tag Libraries

Remember a webskin is just like a ColdFusion template - you can do all sorts of things. The webskin is strictly speaking a VIEW and following good programming practise you should refrain from doing business logic in this area. However, you can reference ColdFusion tags, FarCry service components and custom tag libraries as needed.

FarCry has a special custom tag library dedicated to making life easier when building webskins. In includes all sorts of goodies from building navigation, to breadcrumbs, to rendering other views and more. You can find this library in the core framework at: ./core/tags/webskin To make use of these tags you will need to import them first.

For a complete list of webskin tags see: http://docs.farcrycore.org/p600/

Code Block

title	Importing Custom Tag Libraries


<!--- @@displayname: Home Page --->
<!--- @@author: Matthew Bryant (mbryant@daemon.com.au)--->

<!--- import tag libraries --->
<cfimport taglib="/farcry/core/tags/webskin" prefix="skin" />

<!--- breadcrumb; detects position in the site tree and builds a breadcrumb --->
<skin:breadcrumb />

Tip

title	Project Tag Libraries

We recommend creating your own custom tag libraries under the project folder and importing them in the same way: ./myproject/tags/mytaglibrary

class="grid_12 content">
		<skin:view typename="#stobj.typename#" objectid="#stobj.objectid#" webskin="#url.bodyView#" />
		</div>
	</div>
</div>

View Inheritance

FarCry is an object oriented framework. All content types extend the core types component (an abstract class). Any views associated with types are automatically inherited by other content types, such as our dmHTML content type.

More on content types later. Long story short, you can assume that any view located in ./webskins/types is available to all content types.

Looking at our dmHTML content type in Fandango, we have at least the following views available:

displayPageStandard
displayTeaserStandard
displayHeaderStandard
displayFooterStandard
displayBody
displaySimpleSearchResult

Webskin Tracer

The tray that appears at the bottom of the website when you are logged in, contains a marvellous developer utility called the "Webskin Tracer". You can activate it for any page by simply selecting the webskin tracer option.

Image Added

The entire pages composite of views is laid bare; highlighting each webskin executed for the page. Select a specific view and the HTML fragment is highlighted, with a tooltip detailing exactly where the webskin template can be found.

Image Added

FarCry Profiler

The FarCry profiler details how long each part of your request is taking to execute on the server. This is a great tool for identifying slow running pages and candidates for caching.

Image Added

Tip
You can turn on the webskin tracer and profile tools without being logged in by using your projects "secret key" on the URL:http://localhost:8888/index.cfm?objectid=E689D721-B6C9-605B-DE1D813E4CDA3339&tracewebskins=farcry

Walkthrough: Creating a Composite View

turn on the webskin tracer
review various pages with your instructor
Add Header & Footer views to ./dmHTML/displayPageSuper.cfm

Walkthrough: Putting It All Together

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Versions Compared

Old Version 12

New Version Current

Key

Objectives

Objectives

The COAPI

The Webskin

Where to Find Webskins

Walkthrough: Call a Webskin on a HTML Object

The COAPI

The Webskin

Where to Find Webskins

Walkthrough: Call a Webskin on a HTML Object

Hooking Up The Webskin To Data

Webskin Tag Libraries

Composite Views

Building a Composite View

Webskin Tag Libraries

View Inheritance

Webskin Tracer

FarCry Profiler

Walkthrough: Creating a Composite View

Walkthrough: Putting It All Together