Documentation - For Sam... and others working on the docs

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Jason Meckley

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Aug 27, 2011, 9:19:13 PM8/27/11
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Sam, this is in response to your earlier posting about documentation.

first, a little background on where I'm comming from. I started using the castle stack about 4 years ago after getting fed up with webforms, so i'm not a total noob to MVC. I haven't spent anytime with MS MVC other than reading about it on a few blogs I follow. I decided to pick up FUBU because it looked simpler and, to some degree, safer (strongly typed) than Castle.

For me the biggest hurdle is understanding what is available to work with. Since FUBU utilizes composition so heavily it's difficult to know what components are available to work with and what the scope of those objects are. Right now the best/only solution is to dive in the source and unit tests. container.WhatDoIHave() and ~/_fubu have been invaluable resources.

I think it would be beneficial to explain the different components of the behavior graph. for simple behaviors you probably won't need but a few common components, but knowing what is available and how to put them together would be good to have. for example explicitly defining behavior dependencies using IBehaviorConfiguration and ObjDef.

there is no information on static resources anywhere on the net. scripts, css, images. the only way to figure that out is dive into the unit tests. which, to there credit, only took be about 1 hour to understand how all that works. very slick how
#this.Script("my script");
!{this.RenderScripts()}
and all the scripts I need are available!

I find Routing is a black-box operation. I understand actions are routed based on the input type but getting from the route to the input type and parsing all the values properly. All I know is it works if I put the parameter names in the controller actions, or if I define a UrlPattern attribute.

some things I haven't groked yet are
  • authorization/authentication
  • the anti-forgery policy
  • packages
  • bottles.
  • and what appears to be a fubu site installer? the console app?
I think the bottles/installer is a separate topic altogether. You use and deploy FUBU without them, but, as i understand it, they are suppose to make deployment of complex sites much easier.

so to sum up:
  1. knowing what's available
  2. what each component's role is
  3. what their scope is
will go a long way in helping noobs, like me, understanding what's possible.

it may be that translating some of the test fixtures into formal documents would go a long way. although I also know that documentation is the first thing to fall to the way side as functionality changes.

As a side note on the source. fixing the bug with ContinuationHandler Basic Behavior and IncludeDiagnostics(true) would be a great help. I like to sprinkle my apps with ajax where appropriate, but i don't go all out with it. trying to learn FUBU w/ diagnostics and having a behavior dependency on IContinuationDirector (ContinuationHandler) creates a problem that is really confusing at first.

Mike O'Brien

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Aug 27, 2011, 9:32:06 PM8/27/11
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+1 on covering whats wired up in the container and scope. That was a hurdle for me as well.

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jmarnold

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Aug 27, 2011, 9:37:23 PM8/27/11
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+1 on this. The guides need to quickly catch up to everything so that
people can hit the ground running.

@Jason - I cover the routing concepts in my F101 webinar if you want
to dive into that a little deeper while we catch up on the guides.
Also, Rex Morgan threw together some great posts on Authentication
and Authorization that we link to from the new portal:
http://rexflex.net/2011/07/fubumvc-authentication/ and
http://rexflex.net/2011/07/fubumvc-authorization/

Regarding the continuation issue, it's on my plate (after getting to
Sam's pull request) to fix this while I do some validation work.

On Aug 27, 8:32 pm, "Mike O'Brien" <m...@mikeobrien.net> wrote:
> +1 on covering whats wired up in the container and scope. That was a hurdle
> for me as well.
>
> >    - authorization/authentication
> >    - the anti-forgery policy
> >    - packages
> >    - bottles.
> >    - and what appears to be a fubu site installer? the console app?
>
> > I think the bottles/installer is a separate topic altogether. You use and
> > deploy FUBU without them, but, as i understand it, they are suppose to make
> > deployment of complex sites much easier.
>
> > so to sum up:
>
> >    1. knowing what's available
> >    2. what each component's role is
> >    3. what their scope is

Sam Merrell

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Aug 28, 2011, 4:53:59 PM8/28/11
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Thanks for the input Jason and Mike! It's definitely appreciated since
we have a long ways to go with the documentation. Any pointers as to
what to cover is extremely helpful.

Sounds like the biggest focus should just be to document what's all
available and then dive into each piece of that. I'll start putting up
on the wiki to organize that documentation effort and start going from
there. Thanks!

Keep the awesome feedback coming!

Sam Merrell

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Sep 1, 2011, 3:25:36 AM9/1/11
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Ok I'm starting on documenting a brief overview of the main features
of FubuMVC at the wiki here:
https://github.com/DarthFubuMVC/fubumvc/wiki/Fubu-Documentation---Features

I could use some help fleshing out the top features that really sell
FubuMVC to developers and then go into a brief overview with possibly
some simple code examples. From there, I think we can dig into more
detail about each one and what's available where, but the main focus
should be on just what it is Fubu has to offer in one document.

Michael Murray

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Sep 1, 2011, 9:05:40 AM9/1/11
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Hmmm, I remembered there being a wiki page for a similar purpose; I found this one:

https://github.com/DarthFubuMVC/fubumvc/wiki/Documentation

Is this the fleshing out of features you are looking for?

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Sam Merrell

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Sep 1, 2011, 9:13:17 AM9/1/11
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On Sep 1, 2011 7:05 AM, "Michael Murray" <charlie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hmmm, I remembered there being a wiki page for a similar purpose; I found this one:
>
> https://github.com/DarthFubuMVC/fubumvc/wiki/Documentation
>
> Is this the fleshing out of features you are looking for?
>
>

Yep I'm aware of that page and I'm working from it. The new page is for organizing the top Fubu features and then elaborating on them to give a brief overview of what's available

Josh Arnold

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Sep 1, 2011, 10:38:02 AM9/1/11
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I noticed you mentioned "elevator pitch". Maybe we can use this on mvc.fubu-project.org to help paint a picture of FubuMVC from a high-level?

smerrell

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Sep 6, 2011, 11:03:03 AM9/6/11
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On Thursday, September 1, 2011 8:38:02 AM UTC-6, jmarnold wrote:
I noticed you mentioned "elevator pitch". Maybe we can use this on mvc.fubu-project.org to help paint a picture of FubuMVC from a high-level?


Yep I think that would work really well on the mvc.fubu-project.org site as well. 
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