User Interface

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Introduction to Dojo
• Client Side Messaging Using Publish/Subscribe
• Client Side Service Location
• Using jQuery

Introduction

The creation of user interface elements is based on JavaScript and the Dojo toolkit. When the application starts up, a user interface definition is retreived from a REST store on the web server, and then instantiated on the client.

The server side user interface definition, called a view, is declared dynamically, composed from a definition in code, or configuration on the server. More information about the server side assembly of user interface components can be found in the document View Composition.

Introduction to Dojo

The Dojo toolkit is a client side framework for building rich internet applications hosted in a web browser, see Introduction to Dojo.

Client Side Messaging Using Publish/Subscribe

Publish/subscribe is a well known pattern for promoting decoupled messaging and communication between independent application building blocks. The Dojo toolkit provides functionality to facilitate this kind of communication, see Publish/Subscribe Pattern.

Client Side Service Location

The epi.dependency implementation is a light weight service locator implementation to facilitate a decoupled client side architecture. The service locator is used for registering dependencies shared in a loosely coupled fashion, see Service Location Support.

Using jQuery

Even though the user interface is based on the Dojo Toolkit, support for jQuery based UI components still remains. The jQuery core javascript functionality is generally available throughout the user interface, but any additional jQuery dependencies must be added separately.