The details of my development strategy to automatically build YUI 3 Custom Modules that I outlined in my talk at YUICONF 2009.
YUI 3’s modularity and instance sandboxing invites developers to create their own custom modules, breaking apart their specific application logic.
YUI 3 Modules Categories from General to Specific
Having developed over 30 Custom YUI 3 Modules in the last year I quickly realized I needed a sane way to go from writing code to running it in the browser. So, I set out to connect the YUI Builder with my IDE.
For the last three or more years I’ve been using Aptana Studio IDE for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code development. Aptanta, which is built on Eclipse, can be used standalone or as a plugin to Eclipse. The concepts here are not specific to Eclipse; the details of my technique on implementing the concepts are however.
Goals and Reasons
- Synchronize UI building with the rest of the project code.
Compiling of JavaScript (when needed) should occur along with any server-side code compilation. IDEs such as Eclipse, ‘Build Automatically’ a project’s Java code; I want my YUI 3 Custom Modules to ‘Build Automatically’ as well. - Faster turn-around.
I don’t want to switch from my IDE to another program to run builds on my UI code. The IDE should recognize when it needs to re-build my UI code. I want a process where I: hack… hack… save… refresh-browser… - Easier for non-UI developers.
Teams of developers are usually working on a shared code-base; a mixture of server-side and client-side code wrapped up into one project. If the UI code is built automatically, like the server-side code, the non-UI developers won’t bitch don’t have to do anything UI-related. - Cmd + S = JSLint, Compress, & Deploy.
Anytime the source file(s) to a YUI 3 Custom Module change, the YUI Builder tool runs, giving me: JSLint-ing, YUI Compressor-ing, and YUI 3 Module wrapping.