May 1st Presentation - Carson Gross - intercooler.js

[Steve]

Hey folks!

Member and friend of SacGRU Carson Gross has agreed to give a presentation on a new project he has been working on.  Also, we will be voting on the new SacGRU name, alternative JVM news and Jobs report by our sponsors at TekSystem.  Hope to see you all there!

Simple, Declarative AJAX with intercooler.js

intercooler.js is a library for adding AJAX to your web applications using simple HTML attributes.

 

It is one of a new breed of Partial-View-Controller libraries: it communicates with the server via AJAX, but rather than expecting JSON responses it expects fragments of HTML (i.e. "Partial Views") which are then loaded into the DOM. This is in contrast with client side Model View Controller frameworks such as Ember.js or Angular.js which communicate with the server using JSON requests and JSON responses.

 

Why intercooler.js?

 

First and foremost, simplicity: adding intercooler.js to your application is as simple as adding a few HTML attributes. Since it uses concepts familiar to all web developers you can become productive quickly, without adopting new rendering tools, creating complex models, managing new routing tools, etc. 

Additionally, intercooler.js is incremental: you can start using it in a high-value part of existing application with a minimum of effort and without "rewriting the world".

 

The Demo

 

To demonstrate IntercoolerJS, we will convert a standard Rails CRUD UI for a Contact model into an AJAX-powered UI:

• We will start by converting the edit and create actions over using Intercooler annotations and a few Intercooler HTTP directives.
  
  
• With that done, we will implement infinite scrolling on the index/list page.
  
  
• Finally, if time allows, we will implement inline server-side validation of the email field in the contact editing form.