TiConf NY 2014 - Alloy 2.0
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This document discusses plans for a major update to the Alloy MVC framework for Titanium called Alloy 2.0. It aims to make Alloy faster, simpler to use and develop with, and more integrated with modern JavaScript practices. Key changes proposed include pure JavaScript controllers, separating concerns between controllers and views, externalizing non-essential modules, adding unit testing, and migrating existing Alloy apps to the new version. The goals are to improve developer experience, speed up compiles, enable contributions more easily, and better support writing apps that work across platforms.
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TiConf NY 2014 - Alloy 2.0
- 4. MVC framework for Titanium Declarative UI via XML Styling via TSS Models & data bindings Widgets Embeds best practices and high performance techniques aimed at delivering the most stable, high quality Titaniums apps possible.
- 5. 3 types of people Those who love Alloy Those who have never used Alloy Those who have founded Apperson Labs
- 6. Why Alloy Works Community-driven effort Feedback loop Iterations & experience Features based on need
- 7. How can we do better? Vision & Transparency Road map Ownership
- 8. app development Features, best practices, and stability “If builders built buildings like programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.” — Gerald Weinberg
- 10. Parity Mode Aims for a higher degree of a write once, run anywhere experience Parity where parity matters, but still provide native experience Large, integrated effort Intelligently creating new normalized APIs
- 11. XML Templating
- 12. view modules Same views you know and love Compiled to separate modules Promotes reuse and export Possible to generate entirely new syntax (i.e., hyperloop)
- 14. How do you export your own controller definition? How can you do true prototype inheritance on controllers? How do you create a controller-specific model in code and use it with view-model binding? How do I get arguments in my controller without this hideous syntax: var args = arguments[0] || {}; How do you skip time-consuming AST parsing on controllers that don’t need it? Controller Trivia
- 15. How do we solve all of that with one fundamental change?
- 17. TSS.. more or LESS Alternates forms of style syntax? What about something like LESS? Improvements to the core of TSS, driven by external TSS pre-processor development
- 18. data models Simpler and more focused No more masking Backbone Expose a programmatic interface for view- model binding Faster, more intelligent data binding
- 19. Existing format exports.definition? What happens to it? Why separate definition from models and collections? extendModel & extendCollection… WAT?!
- 20. Hey look, Backbone! Use Backbone conventions Simpler, pure CommonJS format Unnecessary Cruft
- 21. nested collections Very specific use cases: TableView & ListView Efficiency and convention
- 22. bidirectional binding Very specific use cases: TextField & TextArea Convenience where it makes sense.
- 23. dev experience faster, happier development “I love it when a plan comes together” — John “Hannibal” Smith
- 24. local installs Have as many non-conflicting alloy installs as you want. Can be global or per-project Allows you to take Alloy updates on a needed basis, just like Titanium. Alloy as a dependency
- 25. export widgets Widgets in traditional Titanium apps Fully functional Native or plain CommonJS modules
- 26. scaffolding robust generators for widgets, builtins, adapters, commands, and generic commonjs modules Configurable to your environment Not just code structure, but ready for distribution
- 27. ridiculously fast compiles No builtins Pure JS controllers to handle inheritance Separation between controller and views There’s full runtime version of the Alloy library
- 28. No more AST parsing!!! 100x speed up with Alloy compiles Leave the AST parsing to optional pre-processors LiveView, TiShadow, and RapidDev just got extremely more powerful
- 29. parallel compiles Android Blackberry iOS MobileWeb $ alloy compile —platform all
- 30. rock solid with metrics ! “What’s measured improves” — Peter F. Drucker
- 31. unit testing
- 32. Travis CI for continuous integration Covers master, branches, and even pull requests
- 33. test coverage
- 34. ti-mocha
- 35. contributing made easy “In open source… to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.” — Linus Torvalds
- 36. npm 70K+ modules, 1/4 billion downloads a month distribution for all widgets, “builtins”, adapters, commands, and anything we come up with. It’ll just work with Ti.Next require() will work like node.js ti-commonjs in the meantime
- 37. ti-commonjs Library and CLI hook that provides a node.js-style commonjs implementation to ti.current Using npm for package management just works Initially supported on android and ios Initially alloy, but could work for traditional titanium
- 38. VS Undo incremental growth and expansion of repo grok-ability Externalize non- essential modules widgets “builtins” tools
- 39. git-style subcommands Add arbitrary commands that can make use of Alloy configuration data Extensibility allowing for out-of-band contributions
- 40. module API ! Use Alloy as a node.js module, not just a CLI No more expensive, unreliable sub-processing natural progression with git-style subcommands
- 41. get on board migrating to the awesomeness “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” — Woodrow Wilson
- 42. 1.X -> 2.0 Migration will be a driving force behind the new features, not an afterthought. Old formats will be deprecated, but most will still work New controllers, views, models, styles, widgets, and even builtins will be able to be migrated through an automation script. You could very well be porting to 2.0 with no manual intervention
- 43. wrap-up
- 44. try to keep up http://bit.ly/alloy_2
- 45. Special Thanks Fokke Zandbergen Mads Moller Aaron Saunders Paul Egli David Bankier Tim Poulsen