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Introduction to Dojo
EPiServer uses the Dojo Toolkit as the JavaScript framework on which all client-side development is done. The Dojo toolkit is a client-side framework for building rich internet applications hosted in a web browser. Dojo is an open source framework that helps speed up the development of cross-platform rich internet applications by giving us a lot of features for free. Some key features include:
- Rich UI widgets using the Dijit widget system
- Asynchronous communication
- Class declaration and modular development
- Desktop and mobile support
The Dojo Toolkit consists of three main components:
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| dojo | This is the core API of the framework and contains features for DOM manipulation, class declaration, event listening, message publishing and subscription, and asynchronous requests and processing. |
| dijit | This is the user interface system built on top of the Dojo core. It is primary feature is the widget system which is used to manage and manipulate visual elements in a modular manner. |
| dojox | This is a collection of sub-projects built on top of the Dojo core. This could be considered a repository of Dojo plugins or a testing ground for new features that will in future be part of the Dojo or Dijit namespace. |
Resources
Dojo has a good selection of tutorials, blogs and other resources that will help new developers quickly come up to speed with the framework. Here is a list of resources that you may find useful:
| Tutorials | Here you can find a list of Dojo tutorials. They are broken down into several topics and each tutorial has a clearly labeled difficulty level and the version of Dojo it was written for. In particular we recommend reading through the following: |
| API | This is the documentation for the Dojo API. It is generated from the code and it is structured in a way that makes it very easy to navigate around all the objects within the framework. |
| Blog Posts | There are many blogs about Dojo features on the internet and in many cases it is simply a matter of searching for a topic. Sitepen in particular is dedicated to Dojo development and have very good blog posts. Worth reading is their excellent series of blog posts for anyone new to Dojo development, it is called their quick start guide. |
| Bug Tracking | It is always worth knowing where the bug tracking system is in case you discover some strange behavior. It is likely that someone else has discovered it already and there may be a patch for it. |
Last updated: Feb 23, 2015
