[Lazarus] FCL-Web and new WebDesign packages

Michael Van Canneyt michael at freepascal.org
Tue Jan 26 13:27:30 CET 2010



On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Bee Jay wrote:

>> That's about it. It will use Qooxdoo-calls for the server-events. You
>> can add more, offcourse... (does Qooxdoo also use some sort of
>> 'readyscript'?)
>
> My main reason using ExtPascal and this new fcl-web is I'm too lazy to study 
> JS programming and getting my hand dirty of it. Every JS framework out there, 
> due the nature of JS, has its own OO concept and implementation that also 
> need to be learned. If I really have to study them, I think it might be 
> better and faster if I build the application directly in JS, instead of using 
> ExtPascal or fcl-web which would double my work and slow down my application 
> development. But I don't like it. So, obviously, I can't avoid this JS thingy 
> in order to develop dynamic web application using pascal. It's a bit ironic, 
> don't you think? :D
>
> My main motivation in dynamic web application using pascal is I want to show 
> some people that pascal is able to do that and would perform much better than 
> those resource hog scripting languages.

I finally decided to bite the bullet, and to dump the idea of extpascal and
the likes for the moment. All these conversion tools have the same problems:
- Always behind the latest versions of the corresponding JS toolkits.
- They only do a subset of what the JS toolkits support natively.
- For anything reasonably advanced, you need to write JavaScript anyway.

So, my development plan:
- Server in pascal.
- Client in JavaScript. (using ExtJS, but this could be anything)
All is implemented in fcl-web, and I will put the result back in fcl-web.

I have the first server-side things ready, namely: the server-side
interface to ExtJS's data API. It's a breeze in FPC, and lightning fast.

Next step is creating a SOAP bridge using WST and implement the ExtDirect 
API.

At a later stage the following will be added:
- Write the client in Pascal, but transformed to JS using a code converter.
   (as Morfik or GWT does)
I've contracted Mattias Gaertner to do the first step for the code
converter. Sources will be donated to and released with FPC.
I also wrote a JavaScript parser, which will be introduced in FPC's SVN
shortly.

I also submitted some ideas to Mattias so the Lazarus IDE will be able
to do code completion for Javascript (in fact for any language out there).
Mattias has (if I'm correct) started work on that too.

Michael.




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