WEBIX JAVASCRIPT LIBRARY BLOG

This article is the continuation of the previous blog post that refers to developing a basic website functionality with Webix and Struts 2.

In this part you’ll know how to create the pages “Forthcoming Events” and “Contacts” as well as how to add the information about events and then manage it.

The page with coming events will look this way:

Introduction

Day by day the world is getting faster. News is being spread around the world within minutes while the search for information is reduced just to surfing the Internet. Nowadays developers don’t spend months or years on the implementation of new ideas, this process can take just a couple of days or maybe weeks. At the same time, the process of developing web apps and sites is going up to a new speed level.The tools of building websites are getting smarter and even easier to use.

Code generators, autocomplete, code analyzers, libraries and frameworks have settled down in the developers’ life. They let reduce the time of site development to the minimum. The Internet itself is developing together with these tools.

Not long ago sites have presented static data while their functionality has been rather minimal. Today sites are fully-functional applications which allow performing the actions that earlier have been available on desktop only. One of the tools for fast building of a web app’s interface for both mobile and desktop devices is Webix, a JavaScript UI widgets library.

Let’s consider an example of creating a site aimed for announcing future conferences on front-end development with the help of Webix and a Java-framework Struts 2. It will look as follows:

NodeJS is one of the hottest programming technologies. It allows creating fully functional web apps in a few lines of code. What is more, apps on NodeJS platform can be made completely in JavaScript. Using the same language on client and server side gives us real bonuses.

Let’s see how the client-side code based on Webix UI can be connected to a database with the help of NodeJS.

JavaScript UI library Webix allows redefining the appearance of many elements through templating. For example, in tree view we can define the look of item through the following template:

Here you can see the two main components of webix templates: common helpers and property placeholders. Common helpers are predefined pieces of logic which renders some common elements (tree icon in the above case). Property placeholders are markers that will be replaced with data from related data object.
By using html tags in the template we can change the look of component in many ways.

An Interactive tutorial is an easy-to-use and demonstrative way to learn JavaScript libraries from scratch. Developers may read the guide, code in the neighboring block and preview the results on the same page. All the mistakes that are made by “JavaScript students” are highlighted at once so that you can correct them.

Webix presents several detailed interactive tutorials that are divided into the following topics: a general tutorial for beginners, DataTable tutorial and Form controls guide.