GSoC 2008: Groovy Forms getting some AJAX!

No, not the cleaning product! The "Web 2.0" kind of AJAX! Now where will this goodness be placed? The pages for creating the forms and managing the forms.

First off, I used Direct Web Remoting (DWR) to provide a link between my backend java codebase and the front-end javascript! It's quite amazing. You can choose to publish/unpublish the forms with the tick of a checkbox and DWR will magically set the published attribute on the form to the proper state. I then decided to go one step furthur, and provide a mechanism to backup the forms via xstream to XML. Now, with the XML files, two files are maintained, one individual XML file for each form, and one global one, which makes up the model for the entire system. The rationale for having the XML file for each form is that you can just zip up the form folder, and unzip it into another OpenMRS install and you're good to go. Adding the ability to re-generate the XML files via the management interface is especially handle so that if you make a quick change on one system, then want to install it onto another you can.

Now, DWR will be used for creating the forms as well. This will be done mostly to easily relay errors, such as syntax errors in the Controller and the Model of the groovy form. Don't fear, I'm going to go overboard with AJAX! It'll only be used up until the point of where templates are generated. After that point, a Servlet will take over the bulk of the work (I am undecided on the Servlet bit.).

Now what's next? Several things need to happen.

First, creating the form:

1. We need to validate that form fields are not empty; also the input must be checked for validity.
   
2. The model's syntax needs to be compiled and syntax errors need to be relayed to the user.
   
3. We need to get the fields of the class and store them.
4. We need to generate templates like: <%= textArea(...); %> -- They will not be run it through the template engine immediately until the user has confirmed what they want,
5. After the view has been tweaked -- it is run through the template engine; at this point we will also run the controller through and generate that and present it at the same time the final view is presented.
6. The user will be presented with the HTML of the view and Groovy controller and given a final opportunity to tweak it before it is saved to the system.
   
7. The form is added to the system -- by default the form is not published.
   
8. Finally, to publish the form so that it can be used to enter data, they go to the management screen and tick the checkbox.
   
9. The form is now ready to be used for data entry.

Pictures are worth a thousand words so here we go: One and Two.

First one contains one form which is published, the rest are not. The second, no forms are published.

The user interface is intuitive and easy to use. It's a great design, of course I'm biased since It was was me who designed it.

GSoC 2008: Updates and such

Okay, let's see what was accomplished in the past few weeks:

1. I tweaked the domain class interrogation code a bit. Basically, now there is a 1:1 relationship between a field and the domain model metadata storage container class instance.
   
2. I've started the templating work -- most of it right now is just methods which will be called like: <%= textField(...) %> -- that will generate a text field html form widget.
   

I know I haven't accomplished much, but there's a reason, I swear!

June 11th I went to Rockville, MD to the Hypoparathyroidism Association's 3rd Annual Hypoparathyroidism Conference. I just got home tonight.

Let me stray off a bit to explain what hypoparathyroidism is. Basically, the parathyroid is a gland in your neck, underneath the thyroid. Most people get it via surgical error, where the surgeon cuts out, or damages the parathyroid. When this occurs, the PTH (Parathyroid Hormone) is no longer produced. Now, this is responsible for regulating among other things, Calcium. Without this present, the calcium levels in the blood drop, and patients start to experience Tetnay, where their muscles involuntarily contract. It's not fun. If the levels drop low enough, you can go into convulsions, and ultimately seizures. Death is also a possibility, which is why it's important for patients with hypoparathyroidism to take their meds (Calcium Supplements, sometimes Magnesium, Vitamin D (usually D2 or D3), and a medication which is the active form of Vitamin D called Calcitriol.) Some patients also take other meds as well. These must be continued for the rest of their lives. I got Hypoparathyroidism idiopathically -- which means the origin nor the cause is known.

Back to the point: I was at this conference, and it's such a rare disease that I don't know many people. So I wound up talking with the people there. As a result, not much work was done. Monday, I plan to get the templating working, then probably do some Front end UI work.

Well, that's so NOT groovy

So, I was working on my summer of code project, and I have groovy code along side my java code. I needed to add the groovyc ant task. While i assumed that groovy-all-1.5.6.jar, (note the all) contained everything that was needed, guess what folks, it doesn't! I spent the greater part of the evening tracking down this problem, and then i added the ant-1.7.0.jar and ant-launcher.jar jars, after that suddenly everything worked. That begs the question though, why isn't everything included in the groovy jar?

The problem: NoClassDefFoundError on MatchingTask class.


I figured I would put this out there for others in case they too experience what I did.