Practical Ext JS Projects with Gears (eBook)

Frank W. Zammetti is a web architect specialist for a leading worldwide financial company by day, and a PocketPC and open-source developer by night. He is the founder and chief software architect of Omnytex Technologies, a PocketPC development house.He has over 12 years of "professional" experience in the information technology field, and over 12 more of "amateur" experience. He began his nearly life-long love of computers at age 7, when he became one of four students chosen to take part in his school district's pilot computer program. A year later, he was the only participant left! The first computer Frank owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1982, on which he wrote a program to look up movie times for all of Long Island (and without the 16k expansion module!). After that, he moved on to a Commodore 64 and spent about 4 years doing nothing but assembly programming (games mostly). He finally got his first IBM-compatible PC in 1987, and began learning the finer points of programming (as they existed at that time!).Frank has primarily developed web-based applications for about 8 years. Before that, he developed Windows-based client/server applications in a variety of languages. Frank holds numerous certifications including SCJP, MCSD, CNA, i-Net+, A+, CIW, MCP, and numerous BrainBench certifications. He is a contributor to a number of open source projects, including DataVision, Struts, PocketFrog, and Jakarta Commons. In addition, Frank has started two projects: Java Web Parts and The Struts Web Services Enablement Project. He also was one of the founding members of a project that created the first fully functioning Commodore 64 emulator for PocketPC devices (PocketHobbit).Frank has authored various articles on topics that range from integrating DataVision into web apps, to using Ajax in Struts-based applications. He is working on a new application framework specifically geared to creating next-generation web applications.

Contents at a Glance 5
Contents 6
About the Author 12
About the Technical Reviewer 13
About the Illustrator 14
Acknowledgments 15
Introduction 16
An Overview of This Book 17
Obtaining This Book’s Source Code 18
Obtaining Updates for this Book 18
Contacting the Author 18
Introducing Web Development with Ext JS 21
The Evolution of the Web: Web Sites vs. Web Applications 21
The Rise of the Cool: Rich Internet Applications 24
Enter Ajax: The Driving Force behind RIAs 27
The Evolution of Web Development 31
Choice Is Good: Toolkits Make It a Breeze 32
Enter Ext JS: The Best of the Bunch 34
Fisher Price 37
Ext JS’s High-Level Organizational Structure 38
The Ext Namespace 52
The Ext.util Namespace 62
But...but...What About the Widgets? 73
One Last Tangential Thing: Ext Core 73
Summary 74
Widgets and Advanced Ext JS 75
Ext JS Widgets: An Overview 75
Working with Data in Ext JS 119
The Template and XTemplate Classes 123
Drag and Drop 127
The “State” of Things 134
For Your Date in the Boardroom: Ext JS Charting 136
Plug-ins 140
These Are the Gears That Power the Tubes! 141
Summary 145
Ext JS for a Busy Lifestyle: OrganizerExt 147
What’s This Application Do Anyway? 147
Overall Structure and Files 149
The Markup 150
The Style Sheet 157
The Code 160
Suggested Exercises 208
Summary 209
Making Project Management Cool: TimekeeperExt 210
What’s This Application Do Anyway? 210
Overall Structure and Files 213
The Markup 215
The Style Sheet 216
The Code 218
Suggested Exercises 272
Summary 273
A Place for Your Stuff: Code Cabinet Ext 274
What’s This Application Do, Anyway? 275
Overall Structure and Files 276
The Markup 278
The Style Sheet 279
The Code 279
Suggested Exercises 323
Summary 323
When the Yellow Pages Just Isn’t Cool Enough: Local Business Search 324
What’s This Application Do Anyway? 325
The < script>
Meet the Yahoo! Web Services 332
Overall Structure and Files 337
The Markup 338
The Style Sheet 341
The Code 342
Suggested Exercises 384
Summary 385
Your Dad Had a Workbench, Now So Do You: SQL Workbench 386
What’s This Application Do Anyway? 386
Overall Structure and Files 388
The Markup 389
The Style Sheet 392
The Code 394
Suggested Exercises 449
Summary 450
All Work and No Play: Dueling Cards 451
What’s This Application Do Anyway? 451
More Fun with Gears: WorkerPool, Worker, and Timer 454
Overall Structure and Files 458
The Markup 460
The Style Sheet 461
The Code 461
Suggested Exercises 509
Summary 509
Managing Your Finances: Finance Master 510
What’s This Application Do Anyway? 510
Overall Structure and Files 513
The Markup 514
The Style Sheet 516
Preliminaries Part I: A Brief History of Portals and Portlets (Apologies to Professor Hawking) 517
Preliminaries Part II: The Publish/Subscribe Model 518
The Code 519
Suggested Exercises 570
Summary 570
Index 571