Emberella
Ember is an incredibly useful Javascript framework that has helped me and my colleagues craft and ship several web-based tools to our client. It is my hope to offer a grab bag of useful components for the Ember framework here.
Compatibility
Emberella currently targets only Safari on OS X. It's likely some parts of this project will work in other browsers, but your milage will vary.
Is it "Good"?
Although I've followed the development of Ember since its beginnings, I have only recently had the opportunity to develop apps with it. I built the miscellaneous components included in this package as I was learning the intricacies and hidden gems Ember has to offer. Similarly, Ember itself has evolved quickly over the last few months.
While I've made every effort to refactor and update these components as I learn new tricks and the framework matures and will be using them in at least one or two of my own apps, all of these modules should be considered experimental.
What's Included?
Right now, a grab bag of code.
Controller(s)
Emberella.SparseArrayController
In cases where a finite but large amount of data must be fetched from the server (or wherever your app's data persists), it's not always practical to load all the data up front. This controller lazily loads individual records or "pages" of records on demand.
This component can be "taught" how to fetch data by extending the class with
your own didRequestIndex, didRequestRange, and didRequestLength methods.
While waiting for data to load, the SparseArrayController will return
placeholder objects. Loaded records are "cached" in a sparse array until the
reset or unset methods get called.
Emberella.MultiArrayController
Nest multiple array controllers into a single controller. The array of arrays can be used to structure data for a source listing view.
Helper(s)
big_data_helpers
Iterating over a massive array can cause your app to become unresponsive. This
helper adds a single method to the Emberella namespace: forEachAsync(). The
function will iterate over an array in short bursts with timeouts between to
allow the browser to perform other actions and reduce the chances of an
unresponsive browser window.
function_helpers
Sometimes the best way to boost performance is to slow things down. I found myself throttling and debouncing various methods through these components to reduce excessive network chatter or to prevent computationally intensive tasks from running amok.
The function helpers mixin includes the throttle and debounce methods from
Underscore.js.
Mixins
Emberella.AutocompleteSupport
This controller mixin adds a handful of methods that make asynchronously assembling suggestions for an autocomplete view a bit easier.
Emberella.DraggableMixin
Extend a view with this mixin to establish some patterns for responding to the
dragStart and dragEnd DOM events. Namely, adding and removing class names
from the draggable view element.
Emberella.DroppableMixin
Extend a view with this mixin to make it a drop target for draggable views or even files from the desktop. Adds handling for the variety of drag and drop events critical to making a drop target function as expected.
Emberella.FocusableMixin
Extend a view with this mixin to enable it to respond to focus and blur events and become the target of keyboard events (or other events reserved for elements that can become the window's active element).
Emberella.KeyboardControlMixin
Extend a view with this mixin (and Emberella.FocusableMixin) to allow it to
respond to keyboard input. Maps common control keys to easy to remember methods
(e.g. backspacePressed, leftArrowPressed, escPressed) so you don't have
to lookup the key codes.
The alpha-numeric and punctuation keys do still require a key code reference;
if a key isn't mapped to a developer-friendly name, the keyboard event will be
sent along to a method like key65Pressed.
Emberella.MembershipMixin
This view mixin allows tighter integration between Ember views and their ancestors. Views often need property bindings with their parent (or even a grandparent) view to coordinate states, templates, configuartion options, and event handling. This mixin makes binding multiple properties between two related views easier and gives member views a method for sending events and messages to a target ancestor view.
Emberella.MQMixin
Extend an array controller with this mixin to add a processing queue.
If processing an object is computationally expensive (e.g. image processing) or uses too much of a limited resource (e.g. server connections, bandwidth), then each item can wait in the queue until its turn to be processed. Items are processed in the order they are received.
I use this mixin to manage file uploads. If the user wishes to upload 1000 files at once, I place them in a queue and send files to the server a few at a time.
Emberella.QueueableMixin
Deprecated. Use Emberella.MQMixin instead.
Emberella.RemoteQueryBindingsMixin
Extend a controller with this mixin to map specified controller properties into a query object to be transformed into request parameters to be sent to the server.
Ember.ResizeHandler
Extend a view with this mixin to allow it to react to window resize events.
Copied from https://github.com/Addepar/ember-table/blob/master/src/utils/resize_handler.coffee
Ember.ScrollHandlerMixin
Extend a view with this mixin to allow it to react to scroll events.
Copied from https://github.com/Addepar/ember-table/blob/master/src/utils/utils.coffee
Emberella.SelectableMixin
Extend an array controller with this mixin to enable it to manage a set of selected content members.
Ember.StyleBindingsMixin
Extend a view with this mixin to map the values of specified properties to an inline style attribute on the view's DOM element.
Copied from https://github.com/Addepar/ember-table/blob/master/src/utils/style_bindings.coffee
Views
Emberella.ListView
My colleagues and I gave both Ember.ListView and Ember.TableView a try.
Both of these projects are incredibly awesome and promising. As with anything cutting edge, these projects didn't quite suit the needs of our apps. We needed support for...
- responsive layouts
- a grid listing
- more scrolling options
- and the ability to defer data fetching until the user's scrolling speed slowed
Using both of these projects as inspiration, Emberella.ListView offers some
level of support for all of these features. Eventually, once these concepts
are tested, I hope they can be incorporated into the Ember List View project.
So, what is Emberella.ListView? It's an incremental loading list. That is,
it builds enough listing views to fill the viewable area and reuses them to
create the illusion of scrolling through a massively large list of items. If
your app must (or may) display a long list of records, well, that's what this
view is built for. And it can seemingly display thousands of rows (I got up to
one million rows in my own experiments) without killing performance.
Emberella.ListItemView
An individual listing for an Emberella.ListView.
Emberella.GridView
Extends Emberella.ListView with support for columns. If your app needs to
display a long list of records in a grid layout (e.g. a grid of photos), well,
that is what this view is supposed to do.
Emberella.GridItemView
An individual listing for an Emberella.GridView.
Emberella.AutocompleteView
Coordinates a text field and collection view to display a list of suggested completions as the user types.
Emberella.AutocompleteTagsView
An autocomplete view that creates a tag each time the user commits to one of the listed suggestions.
This user interaction is similar to entering email addresses into the "To:" field in OS X Mail (and many other email clients).
Emberella.FlexibleTextArea
A text area with the ability to grow vertically as the line count of its value grows.
Emberella.FlexibleTextField
A text field with the ability to grow horizontally as the value grows in length.
Emberella.ImageView
If an <img>'s src attribute is bound to a property that frequently changes
value, you may notice the image referenced by the previous src continues to be
visible until the image specified by the new src value loads into the browser.
This view adds class names and event handling to (with styling) hide or the
adjust the <img> element in response to updates to the src attribute.
Additionally, the Emberella.ImageView will alert its parent each time a new
image is about to be fetched and when loading is complete.
Emberella.RangeInput
A wrapper for a "range" type input.
Emberella.SourceListView
Renders a source list view that renders multiple lists with headings.
Emberella.StarRating
Want to give something 5 stars? That's what this view is for. You'll need to provide your own stars and styles for the time being.
Emberella.TagsInput
The aim of this view is to present users with an easy to use tag input and
creation experience that approaches the quality of a desktop interaction
pattern. Rather than simply instructing users to "split tags with a comma" in a
plain text input, the Emberella.TagsInput creates distinctive listing views
for each tag. Tags can also be used to represent complex objects. Thus this
tags input view may be used to display an array of words or establish complex
relationships between objects through text entry.
Getting Starting with Emberella
These components are somewhat battle-tested in (non-public) production apps. But they currently lack unit testing coverage, verified cross-browser support, and complete examples and documentation. They are experimental!
As such, I will continue to investigate a means for more easily installing this package of scripts into your projects.
Until I figure that part out, please feel free to clone the project and grab
what you need for your app from the packages/emberella/lib directory.
Of course, like most developers, I am busy building apps in exchange for monetary compensation; I can't say I'll always be available to respond to issues, questions, or concerns in a timely matter.
But, since other colleagues of mine will also be using Emberella, I am sure we will stumble across common questions and needs that will promote enhancements, bug fixes, tests, and documentation that will make this an even more useful package of components.
I appreciate your patience and understanding.
Why is it Called "Emberella"?
I wanted to namespace these components somehow. So, I looked at a thesaurus and found that "cinder" is a synonym for "ember".
Cinderella -> Emberella. Yup.
I hope the name doesn't step on anyone's toes...
Much To Do
I can't list everything here. But here are some major TODOs.
- More/better documentation to explain how to use this stuff
- Examples that showcase these components
- Unit tests
- Refactoring of components
- Adding some packaging to make it easy to install Emberella in your app
- Packaged styling for certain views
Many to Thank
The apps I am building today would not already exist were it not for the Ember framework. Thanks to the Ember Core Team and the project's contributors.
A special thanks to Erik Bryn and the folks behind Ember.ListView. (Erik gets
the extra thanks for answering all my crazy questions.)
Thanks to Addepar for sponsoring Ember.TableView.
And thanks to my colleagues for using these things in your own apps!
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