Contributing to RichWidgets

A JavaScript project containing standalone javascript widgets based on Bootstrap, jQuery UI and other third-party widgets, styled with LESS.

Hacking on RichWidgets

Begin by setting you your environment and making sure you can build RichWidgets as described the README.md.

Widgets are highly visual constructs, and we are more effective in developing them when we get rapid feedback as we introduce changes. Without this rapid feedback, we are like sculptors carving blindfolded!

Run the grunt dev command from the richwidgets root folder to start up a development version of the online demo with integrated live-reload. You will see this demo runnin locally at:

http://localhost:9000

As you make changes to the html, javascript, and LESS source, the source will be compiled and the demo site will be updated.

Additionally, this development version of the demo uses unminified versions of the sources making it easier to debug your widget in your browsers development tools.

The demo pages themselves use handlebars.js for templating. This allows us to keep our demo code DRY by using the same code to both run the page sample as well as display the code on the page. Handlebars is easily extensible through it's helper mechanism. If you find yourself bending over backwards to make something work, consider writing such a helper.

Publishing the demos

Publish the demos to github pages using the grunt task grunt site

Coding Style

It helps to be consistent. Here are the coding style conventions we have agreed to follow in this project. this will be updated as new discrepancies are discovered and cleaned up. Wherever possible these conventions are being monitored by jshint.

• Indentation
  • Use spaces (not tabs)
  • Indentation size is 2 spaces
• Filenames
  • All filenames will use a lowercase-hyphenated naming convention (e.g. popup-panel.js)
• LESS
  • CSS class names use lowercase-hyphenated naming convention (e.g. popup-panel)
  • Define variables centrally in src/widgets/variables.less
  • Define mixins centrally in src/widgets/mixins.less
• JavaScript
  • Functions and variables names use camelCase (e.g. popupPanelWidth, showPopup())
  • Single quotes ' for strings
  • do not use self for capturing a reference to this
    • use widget where it makes sense to do so, that otherwise
  • function white-spaces
    • named functions
      • function name(param1, param2) {}
    • unnamed functions
      • function (param1, param2) {}
• Widget Factory
  • Use the rich jquery plugin namespace
  • No widget name prefix when it is not required
    • i.e. when we extend upstream plugin's functionality, we make sure the API is compatible (e.g. rich.autocomplete extending ui.autocomplete)
  • Widget event prefix: stick with the default name of the widget (eg. no underscores or abbreviating)
  • Initialize all options, using null as default value is required
  • Widget state should be collected for use in _trigger invocations using a method called _uiHash
  • order of methods inside widget definition
    1. lifecycle methods (e.g. _create(), _destroy())
    2. public API methods (e.g. showPopup())
    3. private methods
       1. initialization methods (e.g. _setOption(), _initDom(), _bindListeners())
       2. cleanup methods (E.g. _cleanDom())
       3. common utility methods (e.g. _enable(), _disable(), _uiHash())
       4. event handlers
       5. other private methods (E.g. _uiHash())
  • use this._super(key, value) or this._superApply(arguments) for delegation to parent implementation

Creating a new widget

To create a new widget called "My widget", start by creating the files:

• src/widget/<widget-family>/my-widget.less
• src/widget/<widget-family>/my-widget.js

Create a demo for your widget in

• src/demo/pages/<widget-family/my-widget.hbs

The demo pages use handlebars.js, and will be added to the site navigation automatically.

Testing

Read about our approach to testing in the TESTS.md guide.