Starting point for CMP development

I’ve started with the first steps of developing CMP’s for my project.

I’ve read (most of) the available online docs. From this I get the impression that there’s far more than the docs describe.

Ideally I would like to stick as much as possible to the overall experience of MODx manager, which probably means using smarty and ExtJs.

Are there any front-to-back examples (maybe a part of MODx manager) which I can use as a starting point? Especially ExtJs is uncharted territory for me...

Thanks.

At the moment probably the best thing to do is to take a 3PC as and
example and follow what was done. Good ones should be doodles or batcher,
Quip and the like could be quite complicated...

Hello

You can have a look at modExtra too, an addon especially developped by splittingred as a start point to develop your own 3PC or at least as a sample...

Hope this helps
Cheers

Thanks for your pointers!

I also found http://rtfm.modx.com/display/~splittingred/2008/06/26/Writing+a+3rd+Party+Component+in+MODx+Revolution,+Pt.+I
This and its follow-up articles together with the sample projects give a good picture of the required approach and coding.

Are there any tutorials directly about the CMP development? I am getting over a bad case of the flu and am critically behind on a project for a client and am really having a difficult time with the terminology and with ExtJs.

Hello

No ’step-by-step’ tutorial(s) drectly about 3PC’s (I guess it’s what you mean by CMP’s developpement)nor directly about CMP.

If you just plan to build a CMP (Custom Manager Page) and your problems are essentially with ExtJS, you should have alook at the existing developped ones to help you. (like we all do at this time I guess)

The "native" modx CMPs can be find at "your_modx_folder/manage/assets/modext", and the CMP for a specific component is usually in "your_modx_folder/assets/components/name_of_component/js/"

You have also the docs provided by Splittingred (see previous posts), the Sencha site (formerly ExtJS site) provides some tutorials at http://www.sencha.com/learn/

The ExtJS API can help you too (http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/dev/docs/)

I found some interesting examples on "http://examples.extjs.eu/".

About the building of 3PC (your own component) I think the best way today is to read the existing few docs by Splittingred or BobRay, and to use the modExtra component (can be found Extras) as a starter point to understand what files are required and how all of this work together...

Read some posts on ExtJS (skndn60, splittingred, and myself are a lot posting these days about CMPs and ExtJS...)

And after all that, you can ask for help here in forum...

Don’t give up because of the lack of tutorials, in this case I think the best way to learn is to try, and fail and try again... and ask for some help when you’re facing a wall...

Cheers and good luck...

Hi anso,


Thank you for taking the time to respond back to my post. I’m pretty disappointed about the lack of a step-by-step tutorial as it has cost me a lot of time in experimentation and it hasn’t really been a great week for that. I realize, as a developer, that documentation pretty much is the worst part of being a programmer and that it can be difficult to see why somebody doesn’t understand or need something.

I’ve been looking at modExtra and doodles for a starting point and guidance.


Thank you for the suggested ExtJS links they appear to be quite helpful. Do you have any ExtJS posts in mind that I should look at and use as an example?