Backbase and MODx

Recently i found a backbase framework (http://www.backbase.com). And it impressed me much. It covers two major problems for me: representation layouts and understandable AJAX interaction. So I recommend you to take a look at it.

But of course it’s not so smooth. In spite of easy integration with MODx it’s not so "right". Backbase uses XML templates for AJAX forms, it looks like: .

So is there any way to call a chunk instead of a file?

Well, you could just have the XML template as a MODx document, surely?

Thanks Paul, it worked out. (I just digged too deeply, in russia we say "didn’t notice an elefant").

People, help!

Another issue with backbase. When I’m trying to put some snippet on backbase panel it’s not proccessed. At user end (in browser) it remains as snippet call, not the snippet output:

I can’t understand why that happens, because at backbase site they say that backbase tags (b:panel in my case) are proccessed by browser at client side. And snippet calls are proccessed by MODx at server side. So, MODx is the first, why then it doesn’t do that?

Hi AltTeo,

I’m having a guess that the snippet name is not typed correctly, you have ’Weblogin’ where it should (I think!) be ’WebLogin’.

Hope that helps,
Garry

Thank, Garry. You are right. Snippet call is case sensitive. But now the page is not displayed at all. But it’s certanly a backbase issue.

I took some interrest in BackBase a while ago, but now it seems documentation is quite nice and the framework is really smartly built, relying on web standards for styling, I like that.

The only thing I don’t like is it’s commercial license for commercial websites... about this : any idea how much are those license ? Any idea of alternative opensource frameworks ?

First about integrating backbase and MODx.

I solve my problem (not displaying a page with WebLogin). And there were two issues:
1. It’s not possible to use ampersand (&) in backbase they use &amp inspite. And WebLogin put some JavaScript code on a page. It is easy to solve it you just need to put all JavaScript code in a file and just call it (but you need to modify WebLogin php files).
2. Backbase don’t work if there are mistakes in html. And there are several mistakes in original WebLoginSideBar chunk (like <span>...<span> but it should be <span>...</span>) etc...

Now I’ve got a new problem: I want to make a real Ajax login. It’s very easy to make it with backbase:
a) you need to create a form description in XML, there you point to php file which will proccess post data from the form
b) then you just make a php file which will send data back to your form.
So, I tried to make a proper php file using WebLogin as a source to process a form. But It stops and write in backbase debugging tool (cool thing) that "Call to a member function escape() on a non-object". A string that causes it is:
Why that happens? Maybe I should do something before calling that function?

Second, about backbase and other Ajax frameworks.
If you use backbase on a commercial site you need to pay money (I don’t know how much), but I’m not doing it at the moment. And still it is very intersting how they implement that...
As I digged around I found a lot different ajax approachs. But it worth to mention I think only two of them: Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and Dojo.
GWT makes incredible things - it took Java code and converts it to JavaScript.
+ absolutly free
+ big community
+ it wouldn’t just "die", google will support it
- you need to know Java
- it’s not so simple to understand how it works
- there ara no good IDE’s for it (when it’s not just a hyper text but a real program in Java you will need one). There are several projects that attemp to make an IDE on Eclipse basis, but they still more a concept then a tool.
Dojo more likely libraries for JavaSript.
+absolutly free
+ big community
+ easy use
+ easy learning curve
- may "die" (but big companies like IBM support it)
- it’s not a framework, but good libraries

I think Google as always will rule. It’s approach has a great potential. It’s now needs only two things: a good manual and IDE...

But still I found another way. It has it’s limits but...

Regarding my problem: it seems that when form calls back php file MODx is not used. So I could’t use MODx API. The only way I see is to call main index.php and some how get needed php code executed. But maybe I need just to include_once some core MODx file?

Any ideas how can I implement that (run third party php file with ability to use MODx API in it)?

Though you can probably make that work now, I don’t think this is going to be possible until the release following 0.9.5 without incurring some performance problems with the third-party script, or potentially conflicting with some global variables. It’s possible you could duplicate the logic in index.php, load the MODx config file and get an instance.

There is a MODxAPI in the repository that might help you out, though I’ve not used it and know little about what it does.