Laszlo View

[fmourioux]

Hi,

A simple question : is there someone working on a Laszlo View for spring ?

For people who doesn't know Laszlo, it is like Macromedia's Flex, but it is now opensource ;-)

Take a look at http://www.laszlosystems.com/

Fabien.

[Ben Alex]

Yes, it looks quite good from the 10 minute preview and demo apps.

[fmourioux]

you're right i put the direct link for the orthers : http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/laszlo-in-ten-minutes/

[hafor]

I had a quick look at the Laszlo site and what I could see from the architecture docs, the main interface from LPS is through LPS Data connector (SOAP/XML - Web Services).

Do you know if there are other ways to interface with LPS - that is talk to a Spring service layer ?

It looks nice when you browse the sample code. If I understand it correctly LPS is a Client/Server platform that specializes on client experience of look and feel using Flash player technology.

Fabien, have you used LPS outside of the Spring framework? It would be nice if we could find a good integration point to a Spring Service layer.

Hans

[fmourioux]

Hi Hans,

Laszlo is new for me, i find it last night and i think that's it is a good way when u have complex interaction on the view part.

I really think that a good integration of Laszlo in a spring would be nice.

It works with XML data so everything is possible.

I'll try to use it with my current spring app next week if someone has any idea, send it and follow me ;-)

Fabien.

[rollatwork]

Has anyone made any progress here?

I have a spring service serving up an XML view to be consumed by LZX. However, I'd much rather talk directly via Laszlo's <javarpc> remoting.

I don't think this is possible because Laszlo has no idea of our Spring context. Anyone down this road as well?

Roll

[spring04]

I also recently came across Laszlo and it seems good.


Did anyone try to use Laszlo + Spring + Hibernate application. If yes, could you please share your experience regarding how to intergrate Laszlo with Spring framework?

Thanks!

[rollatwork]

I recently deployed a Laszlo view layer with a Spring middle-tier.

I used vanilla Spring MVC that served up XML responses. Laszlo consumed the XML via dataset requests.

The response from the client was phenomenal. RIA rocks!

I'm currently writing a document that I'll post on the Spring, Laszlo, and Liferay sites that demonstrates the usage of Rich Internet Applications via Laszlo with a Spring middle-tier as JSR-168 compliant portlet.

Cheers,
Roll

[spring04]

Thanks very much for your prompt response Roll.

I'm looking forward to your article as i'm seriously considering Laszlo for our project.

I'm not a GUI person. So could you please explain a little bit on what do you mean by:


I used vanilla Spring MVC that served up XML responses. Laszlo consumed the XML via dataset requests.


If you could outline those things in a high-level steps, i'll try to do more research on that.

Thanks!

[rollatwork]

I don't consider myself a GUI person either, which is one reason why I love Laszlo. :)

I'm assuming you already are familiar with Spring MVC. I have a controller that essentially serves up XML. I currently use XStream for swizzling my model into XML. However, you could inject your model directly into your view and have it create the XML there, use XML-RPC, expose as a web service, etc. There are several possiblities here.

Next, walk through the Laszlo developer documentation. There are several sections on developing "data driven applications". Here you'll learn how to make XML HTTP requests to your Spring middle-tier.

They conceivably could exist in the same webapp, however, I chose for development purposes to have two separate web contexts. One for the Laszlo view and the other for the Spring web application that serves up the XML.

Enjoy!
Roll

[rollatwork]

Oh, and if you haven't already go to the IBM alphaworks site and download the Laszlo IDE. That is of course if you use Eclipse. The plugin is fantastic.

It allows you to do WYSIWYG Laszlo development.

Wish I had it on my previous engadgement. Sigh. Prior to this I was deploying LZX files to my web container and refreshing in my browser.

[spring04]

Thanks Roll.

I know MVC and have used structs. I'm yet to go through Spring MVC documentation. What's XStream for? I'll try to goole as well.

I would like to control the GUI from the back-end i.e. the view should be decided dynamically by the server and this input should be in XML. This is what we need.

I'll also go through the Laszlo documentation regarding "data driven apps" that you mentioned.

Another feature that is a must for our application is to add enclosures from the GUI (lots of them) and upload it to the server. Any thoughts? How is the performance with XML-RPC/XML-HTTP?

Thanks!

[twicet]

Thanks Roll.

I know MVC and have used structs. I'm yet to go through Spring MVC documentation. What's XStream for? I'll try to goole as well.

Thanks!

Xstream serializes java objects to XML and back again.http://xstream.codehaus.org/

[pulse1014]

XmlBeans is also really great for marshalling to and unmarshalling from xml.

http://xmlbeans.apache.org/

[bcottel]

I recently deployed a Laszlo view layer with a Spring middle-tier.
[ . . . ]
I'm currently writing a document that I'll post on the Spring, Laszlo, and Liferay sites that demonstrates the usage of Rich Internet Applications via Laszlo with a Spring middle-tier as JSR-168 compliant portlet.

Hi Roll, have you produced this doc yet? Can I prod you into doing so? :)

I'm particularly interested in the following architecture: a logical 3-tier 'business' app (CRUD+reporting+some dashboards) that does smart validation--meaning at the tabbing from field-to-field level--on a rich client, but remoted with all non-validation bus. logic & DB on the server. Essentially an ASP (application service provider) model that's scalable and where we could easily swap in different clients as needed.

Originally thinking to do some kind of SWT, Swing, or Spring Rich client for performance-snappiness/native L&F/validation needs, but to design this system so it'd be easy to swap in or change to a web client when/if needed. After looking at Laszlo, I'm now thinking maybe we could cover both needs with that product (that is, stay with just a web client that is "rich enough").

We would be customizing the (rich - web) client for different end-user applications and their "looks" (if not "feels"!) But all the backend would run from the same server(s), though out of different tables in the DB.

Comments? Anyone else doing something similar? Reasons why Laszlo might not work for this kind of ASP app? (I'll also add a note to the Spring Rich Client forum that points to this post.)

Thanks,
Brad

[Martin Kersten]

It is quite an interesting idea to use a shockwave app instead of a Java client. Quite interesting... . Has someone a success story?


Cheers,

Martin (Kersten)

[spindlenine]

I've been looking in to creating client side validation for form fields in Laszlo, which would involve the field-to-field validate-on-tab behavior that is being described.

I was planning on doing this using a Java-based form validation framework that I wrote in-house several years back, which I'm currently revamping. Effectively, you place all your validation and form field description (is each field a text field, radio button, etc.) in to the framework, and it renders the form in to XML or an HTML/Swing GUI, and provides services for syncing changes to the form (through user input) with the form "model" and allowing the model to be validated using the specified rules. (I know there are ways to do this in web frameworks like Struts, Spring MVC, etc., but I needed a solution that was framework independent and easy to use - so I rolled my own).

My plan with Laszlo was to take the XML generated by the form/validation descriptor and write Laszlo utility classes that could replicate the fields and validation locally (using regexs for pattern validation, and maybe RPC calls for validation that requires interaction with the back end, such as checking an ID against a database table). I haven't gotten to this point yet, but I hope to in the next few months with the project I'm presently engaged in.

Is anybody else working with Laszlo and form validation who can share their experiences or thoughts on the subject?

Thanks,

- max

[andrews]

I'm currently writing a document that I'll post on the Spring, Laszlo, and Liferay sites that demonstrates the usage of Rich Internet Applications via Laszlo with a Spring middle-tier as JSR-168 compliant portlet. Hi Roll,

I was wondering if you've had a chance to write this document yet? My company is interested in writing Spring/Laszlo apps, and your doco would be really useful...

[pacohernandezg]

Hi,

Is there someone working on a OpenLaszlo View for Spring Web Flow Controller?

We are using Spring Web Flow with Spring Web MVC.

We are also using OpenLaszlo with Spring in other projects (javarpc to invoke services).

We are evaluating the possibility to integrate OpenLaszlo with Spring Web Flow. It looks like the most attractive solution.

Thanks.

Paco.

[ggallego]

Hello pacohernandezg,

Could you give a hint about integrating openlaszlo with spring as a service?

I cant inject my spring services using japarpc because openlaszlo doesnot know about Spring context and do some king of 'create new instance' to the service.

[]'s, Glauber

[al0]

Thanks very much for your prompt response Roll.

I'm looking forward to your article as i'm seriously considering Laszlo for our project.

I'm not a GUI person. So could you please explain a little bit on what do you mean by:



If you could outline those things in a high-level steps, i'll try to do more research on that.

Thanks!


Take as well look on ThinWire (www.thinwire.com).

[mmn007]

I was able to create a hack (I wouldn't call it a solution) openlaszlo and SWF to work together. I might write a white paper and provide it, but that depends on when I get time (may not be soon). However these are the steps I followed for getting it working.

I use dhtml compiler from Laszlo (but should be the same for swf as well, I suppose).

1. Write a view (look at jstlview etc.) to compile laszlo files. Look at the Main.lzc and Compiler.compile in Laszlo to find out how it can be done. In the view get the lzx file and compile it to the swf or js file we need.
2. This has to be embedded into html (Look at Browser integration chapter). I am currently using the compiled file embedded, but I think embedding it directly should work as well.
3. After embedding one will be able to get the UI rendered in the browser, but submit will not go to web flow. This is because Laszlo seems to be using XHR for all requests with the file name as the URL. Hence Spring Web Flow is not triggered. For this I have used a workaround where I embed the compiled laszlo file in a form and on clicking the submit button, I fill up a div with all the required inputs (hidden) and submit the form, instead of calling the Laszlo doRequest or submit calls.
4. For embedding and for future data to be embedded I am using Apache velocity to make the job easier. We might be able to use the Velocity view which comes with Spring to make the stuff faster, but I haven't reached there yet.

If you need more details on any of these let me know and I will be more than happy to help.

[dr_pompeii]

For people who doesn't know Laszlo, it is like Macromedia's Flex, but it is now opensource ;-)


i want to learn flex3, its free, the ide/tool is not free,anyway

a simple question, which is better? and why?
is there a list of comparation?

Laszlo in Action , one book,and 2 customer reviews, weird right?

regards