Skip to main content

The Conversion: Take Off and Landing

The first step in my high level development process is to create the landing page and determine it's contents. In the prior post, it was decided that the new travel system landing page will display a list of trips relevant to the user.  These would be trips that they created and / or trips that other users shared with them.

In the MAIN.CFM post, I outlined the folder structure that I generally use get a project off the ground.  For this post, we are going to add the following:
  • routes/routes.js
  • services/dataService.js
  • controllers/landing.js
  • templates/landing.html

ROUTES.JS

I don't use the native ngRoute for AngularJS, but instead settled on the AngularJS UI-Router.  To me, this router seems easier to implement and understand than ngRoute. The route.js file starts out as the following:


Basically, this little bit of code is saying if the route doesn't match any of the $stateProvider.states, then route to the landing route.  The landing route itself is going to load the landing.html template which will require the landing controller.  Any future routes will be added as additional .states.

From a technical standpoint, you don't need to have routing. When I first started using AngularJS, I created this seemingly benign style of putting everything on one page and [ab]using ngShow and ngIf to control the display. Yeah...I don't recommend that all. While this approach may get you in on the ground floor, it's not sustainable for larger applications.

Just a note: angular.module('core') refers to the overarching portal that this code is deployed in. If you were to copy and paste this code, you would need to specify your own module. The Javascript files necessary to support the ui-router would need to be included in your main template as well.

DATASERVICE.JS

The dataService service is basically a wrapper for the HTTP requests that are going to go to the database via Coldfusion.  When I first started working with AngularJS, I leveraged the cfajaxproxy which worked well.  It was easy to implement and use.  However, the fact that it is synchronous can be a barrier to a page loading.  

The basic boilerplate dataservice.js template is very simple.  There is a single method defined called "call" which can be used if there are no object parameters.
  

If a JSON object needs to be passed over to Coldfusion, then a separate method will be created to appropriately handle the JSON.

LANDING.HTML

As stated earlier, this is the page that the user will land on either explicitly or implicitly due to an invalid route.  Starting out the minimal code is simply to connect the controller and put in a heading to see that we are there when we try to hit the page.  


LANDING.JS

The landing.js file is the controller for the landing.html page.  This means that every time the landing page is hit, the code in the landing controller will be executed.  For now, we are going to keep things clean and simple.  But in the next blog post, we will begin filling out the landing page with actual TRIPS data.


In the landing controller, the dataService and $scope are being injected. There could be more later down the road, but that's all that is needed for now.

The next step is to add the function to the portal and make sure it works:  And...it doesn't because I forgot on important file and that is the TRIPS controller.  

TRIPS.JS

The TRIPS controller will be more of placeholder than anything as most of the code will go into the corresponding template controllers.  But it's still necessary to have.

You have reached your destination...

Next up is creating the Coldfusion component file and populate the landing the page with a list of trips.



Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Conversion: Lay of the Landing Page - Part 1

In the last post  the groundwork has been laid for real development to begin. The data service, router, and landing pages have been created and are ready for code. The last thing to add for this part of the process is the Coldfusion component. A data folder has been added to store any cfcs relevant to the TRIPS application. The first is to write the CFFUNCTION that will return the list of trips. My development pattern for creating CF functions is fairly routine.  First, decide on a name, parameters and return type.  Sometimes the naming of a function is the hardest part.  I've settled on actionDataObject.  So in this case, the function will be named: getTrips.    At moment, the landing controller (landing.js) is empty. angular.module('core').controller('LandingController',['$scope','dataService', function($scope,dataService){ }]); The basic task of this controller is getting the list of trips.  First is the establishment of an empty tr...
3 comments
Read more

The Conversion: Introduction

While working as the senior level developer for a small liberal arts college, I've had the luxury of deciding the technology to be used internally for custom applications. When I first started, the college was using Coldfusion 7, HTML, and many MS Access databases. Over the course of the past 11 years, we've moved to Oracle, are on CF11, and utilizing AngularJS / Angular for our front ends.  Coldfusion is still doing the heavy lifting in interfacing with Oracle. During those 11 years, we also found ourselves developing Adobe (now Apache) Flex applications.  Flex was a great tool - easy to develop in and fairly easy to deploy when Flash was ubiquitous. But Flex was not great on mobile platforms.  Hence our move to Angular due to the idea that we wanted to give our users a rich web experience. So over the course of the past two years, we've been either retiring Flex applications altogether due to the direction that some departments have taken (read outside vendor); or r...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Conversion: Background - Development Environment

When we talk about development environment, that could mean many things.  There is the physical environment of where design and programming is done; the software tools that are used develop the application; and the environment where applications are deployed and consumed. Organizational My employer is a small college in Pennsylvania with about 2400 four-year liberal arts students. Our main job is to support the administrative staff and faculty by building custom applications that fill gaps in regard to the ERP system used on campus.  My position as Senior Application Developer falls within Enterprise Systems under Library and Information Services.  As far as developers are concerned, there is just me, my boss (half a developer) and one Application Developer.  When our department is fully staffed there are 15 people: 1 Director, 3 Associate Directors, 2 developers, 2 DBAs, 2 business analysts, 2 Application Administrators, and 3 project coordinators who interface...
Post a Comment
Read more