Posts tagged Virtual Directories

Virtual Directory-Driven ExtJS 4 Development – The Finale

Nov 24th

Posted by existdissolve in ExtJS

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If you’ve been following along the last few posts, you’ve seen how it’s relatively simple to set up your local development environment to leverage global library assets to create ExtJS 4 applications. What you’ve probably also noticed is that there are a number of configurations (some one-time, others per-application) that need to be implemented before it will work. While these are not necessarily that big of a deal (especially in light of the benefits you gain), it’s still a lot. Here’s the full list:

  • Generate application with Sencha Cmd
  • Add virtual directories (ExtJS library, global plugins, and resources)
  • Update ext.dir in /app/.sencha/workspace/sencha.cfg
  • Add workspace.classpath in /app/.sencha/workspace/sencha.cfg
  • Add full host path to /app/resources/theme/{themename}/theme.html
  • Update $ext_path in /app/resources/sass/{themename}/config.rb
  • Add fixes to /extroot/resources/themes/lib/Utils.rb (one time)
  • Update /app/.sencha/app/build.impl.xml to copy theme images to app folder
  • Develop application
  • Build application and theme

So only 9 per-app steps…not too bad. But wouldn’t it be WAY better if this number could drastically reduced?

WARNING!!  WARNING!!  WARNING!!

What follows is a total hack. The steps outlined will show you how to modify your Sencha Cmd installation so that the configurations previously outlined will now be the “default”. These changes apply only to ExtJS 4 app creation and compile/build. I didn’t bother with the more advanced commands in Sencha Cmd, nor with anything relating More >

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Virtual Directory-Driven ExtJS 4 Development – Part Second

Nov 21st

Posted by existdissolve in ExtJS

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In my last post, I outlined a method that can be used to develop compilable-ExtJS 4 applications, with minimal configuration, that leverage a common, global location for shared assets and libraries. This approach works fine if you are merely “compiling” the application (e.g., only the JS part). However, if you do the full “build” you’ll quickly run into a number of issues.

The most significant of the issues is that the full build process will attempt to compile the theme for your app via the compass compile command. Since our approach decouples the app from the library, AND because we didn’t exactly deal with the SASS/theme bits whatsoever, the errors just roll and roll when building the app.

Fortunately, the fix is pretty easy. In the following, I’ll outline some necessary pre-requisites you’ll need to get setup before building, and then I’ll suggest a few options for how to do this.

Another Virtual Directory

Since we’re primarily interested in styles–particularly images–we need another virtual directory that will point to the images for our theme.

In httpd.conf, I’ve added the following:

Alias /sencha/testapp/resources/images "/Users/{username}/sencha/extjs/resources/themes/images"

NOTE: If you are developing your own custom theme that will be app-specific, you can skip this step and just put the theme images in More >

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