Comments on: Impression of RIFE Web Framework http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/ Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:07:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Atif Khan’s Blog » Blog Archive » Is RIFE dead? http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-4431 Atif Khan’s Blog » Blog Archive » Is RIFE dead? Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:52:28 +0000 http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-4431 [...] wrote a blog entry in April 2007 about RIFE. It has been 2 years since I wrote that entry. I had mentioned that RIFE [...] [...] wrote a blog entry in April 2007 about RIFE. It has been 2 years since I wrote that entry. I had mentioned that RIFE [...]

]]> By: Geert Bevin http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-210 Geert Bevin Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:24:33 +0000 http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-210 What particular part makes you uncomfortable? I know of several people that were not thrilled about the templates until they started to look at them as being entirely different to what they expect from other templating solutions. You really heave to compare RIFE's templates with PowerPoint templates where you provide all content elements and placeholders and then assemble the final result from the template inside your application (which is in Java in this situation). Your comment about the template syntax not being designer friendly is not true however since this is totally up to you. I've been using the comment syntax for years and created many templates that look just fine in the browser. Of course, if you really want the design to show up correctly in a visual manner, you do have to add template content that will not be used in the final result. This is similar to Wicket's template inheritance where they just mark up which part of a child template has to be considered for inclusion in a parent template. With RIFE there's nothing explicitly created for that since block values and block solve all of this implicitly. RIFE 1.6 has a new tag however, which is the comment tag, that allows you to really remove a chunk of content from template processing. Of course, some of this can also be attributed to taste, but many users that didn't like the template syntax at first end up really loving it after using it for a while. It's just totally different from what you've come to expect from other solutions. What particular part makes you uncomfortable? I know of several people that were not thrilled about the templates until they started to look at them as being entirely different to what they expect from other templating solutions. You really heave to compare RIFE’s templates with PowerPoint templates where you provide all content elements and placeholders and then assemble the final result from the template inside your application (which is in Java in this situation). Your comment about the template syntax not being designer friendly is not true however since this is totally up to you. I’ve been using the comment syntax for years and created many templates that look just fine in the browser. Of course, if you really want the design to show up correctly in a visual manner, you do have to add template content that will not be used in the final result. This is similar to Wicket’s template inheritance where they just mark up which part of a child template has to be considered for inclusion in a parent template. With RIFE there’s nothing explicitly created for that since block values and block solve all of this implicitly. RIFE 1.6 has a new tag however, which is the comment tag, that allows you to really remove a chunk of content from template processing.
Of course, some of this can also be attributed to taste, but many users that didn’t like the template syntax at first end up really loving it after using it for a while. It’s just totally different from what you’ve come to expect from other solutions.

]]> By: Atif Khan http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-209 Atif Khan Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:58:00 +0000 http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-209 Thanks Geert. I will look at the information you provided. As I said, I think I didn't get what I wanted due to steep learning curve. May be your links will help me locate the information. Also, I did look at all the template syntax and I must say that I was still uncomfortable with it. Thanks Geert. I will look at the information you provided. As I said, I think I didn’t get what I wanted due to steep learning curve. May be your links will help me locate the information. Also, I did look at all the template syntax and I must say that I was still uncomfortable with it.

]]> By: Geert Bevin http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-208 Geert Bevin Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:02:59 +0000 http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-208 I also posted this comment on my blog. The content is a bit better written since I re-read it a couple of times ;-) http://rifers.org/blogs/gbevin/2007/4/10/re_impressions_of_rife I also posted this comment on my blog. The content is a bit better written since I re-read it a couple of times ;-)
http://rifers.org/blogs/gbevin/2007/4/10/re_impressions_of_rife

]]> By: Geert Bevin http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-206 Geert Bevin Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:43:52 +0000 http://www.khanspot.com/2007/04/10/impression-of-rife-web-framework/#comment-206 Hi Atif, thanks a lot for writing down your impressions, and you see that I did get to your blog entry :-) Which template syntax did you use? If you want the designer-friendly version, you have several to choose from, like the comment based syntax and the real XML syntax. I suppose that this is a matter of being aware of them, which is not easily solved (there's a wiki page about them though: http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Alternative+tag+syntax) The flowlinks and datalinks verbosity are easily solved through different manners. They're like the finest grained possibility. For a lot of people, globalvars and globalexits are totally sufficient and only require one declaration. Another good solution is ust to use autolinks (http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Autolink+declaration+to+simplify+datalink+and+flowlink+declarations), if you combine these with annotations, there's very little setup to do for the logic flow and data flow to work. I agree that there's some lacking in the documentation, the best thing usually is to try to combine what's on the wiki with the Javadocs and the examples. For the annotations, there's some kind of overview here: http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Best+Practices. You can also have a look at the javadocs for them: http://rifers.org/docs/api/com/uwyn/rife/engine/annotations/package-summary.html. I agree though that there should be more information about them, however they are a quite recent addition, so in time this will certainly become better documented. It's a pity that you didn't see the real value of the validation framework, the MetaData classes actually generation the statements for the real validation framework underneath, which is totally customizable. Information about that can be found here: http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Validation, this also contains information about how to customize the error messages and many ways. The javadoc for the Validated interface might be helpful too: http://rifers.org/docs/api/com/uwyn/rife/site/Validated.html. You can basically create any ValidationRule or ValidationError that you want, using MetaData just automates it all. Please don't hesitate to tell me where you find holes in the documentation. I think that a lot of it is documented, it's mainly an issue of finding the right content. Shooting of a message to the mailing list will often get me or someone to point you in the right direction. There were some books in the writing, but sadly I had to cancel them due to time constraints. There might still be some coming up in half a year or so, but it really will be very bound to my availability. Again, thanks a lot for having gone through the trouble of looking at RIFE. Geert Hi Atif,

thanks a lot for writing down your impressions, and you see that I did get to your blog entry :-)

Which template syntax did you use? If you want the designer-friendly version, you have several to choose from, like the comment based syntax and the real XML syntax. I suppose that this is a matter of being aware of them, which is not easily solved (there’s a wiki page about them though: http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Alternative+tag+syntax)

The flowlinks and datalinks verbosity are easily solved through different manners. They’re like the finest grained possibility. For a lot of people, globalvars and globalexits are totally sufficient and only require one declaration. Another good solution is ust to use autolinks (http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Autolink+declaration+to+simplify+datalink+and+flowlink+declarations), if you combine these with annotations, there’s very little setup to do for the logic flow and data flow to work.

I agree that there’s some lacking in the documentation, the best thing usually is to try to combine what’s on the wiki with the Javadocs and the examples. For the annotations, there’s some kind of overview here: http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Best+Practices. You can also have a look at the javadocs for them: http://rifers.org/docs/api/com/uwyn/rife/engine/annotations/package-summary.html. I agree though that there should be more information about them, however they are a quite recent addition, so in time this will certainly become better documented.

It’s a pity that you didn’t see the real value of the validation framework, the MetaData classes actually generation the statements for the real validation framework underneath, which is totally customizable. Information about that can be found here: http://rifers.org/wiki/display/RIFE/Validation, this also contains information about how to customize the error messages and many ways. The javadoc for the Validated interface might be helpful too: http://rifers.org/docs/api/com/uwyn/rife/site/Validated.html. You can basically create any ValidationRule or ValidationError that you want, using MetaData just automates it all.

Please don’t hesitate to tell me where you find holes in the documentation. I think that a lot of it is documented, it’s mainly an issue of finding the right content. Shooting of a message to the mailing list will often get me or someone to point you in the right direction. There were some books in the writing, but sadly I had to cancel them due to time constraints. There might still be some coming up in half a year or so, but it really will be very bound to my availability.

Again, thanks a lot for having gone through the trouble of looking at RIFE.

Geert

]]>