NAME
Reaction::Manual::FAQ
INTRODUCTION
What is Reaction?
Reaction is an MVCish framework that is designed with two goals in mind: "don't repeat yourself" and "components rule".
How is it different from other MVC frameworks?
Reaction is more flexible and abstract. Web development is only a specialized set of what Reaction is designed to provide - the inner classes are general enough to be used in many different environments and for solving non-web problems.
It is planned to go a lot further than just the web - we want to develop GUIs and CLIs as easily and painlessly as possible, using Reaction. How about writing your web application and instantly getting a CLI to go with it? That's only part of the flexibility we have in mind.
How is it different from Catalyst?
Catalyst is MVC-based whereas Reaction splits the Model into 2 parts: The "Domain Model" and the "Interface Model". Web development is only a sample of what Reaction can do - but it already comes bundled with the basic components that you would have to program in Catalyst. At the moment, Reaction runs on Catalyst for web development.
What's a Domain?
A domain is the field where an abstraction makes sense. For example, to build a web site a programmer may come up with an abstraction of a User, Products, User roles, etc. These concepts are just one particular implementation of all the possible abstractions for that web site -- the set of all these possible abstractions make up the Domain.
What's a Domain Model?
A Domain Model is an actual computational model of an abstraction. In most cases these models are business-based, as in the set of objects that make up the representation for a particular domain, such as Users, Products, User Roles, etc.
What's an Interface Model?
A well defined model for the common operations involved in a particular mode of interaction with the domain. In other words, it's a layer around the Domain Model that provides interaction with it. One example would be an authorization procedure for different views of the same data, based on the user's credentials.
I'm lost! What does "Model" mean?
The term "model" can mean two things: "model as in Computer Model" and "Model as in MVC". For this document, the former will be written as just "Model" whereas the latter will be referred to as "Model as in MVC."
Haven't I seen these definitions elsewhere?
Yes, similar terms have been used in Java-land and Smalltalk-ville. Note that for the sake of simplicity we are not giving rigorous (and more complex) definitions.
What's a View?
What's a Viewport?
ListView and ActionForm are subclasses of ViewPort.
What's a Focus Stack?
What are Tangents?
Can I have a pony?
USING REACTION
Where do I put my HTML?
Packages involved
ComponentUI
ComponentUI::Controller::Bar
ComponentUI::Controller::Baz
ComponentUI::Controller::Foo
ComponentUI::Controller::Root
ComponentUI::Model::TestDB
ComponentUI::Model::Action
ComponentUI::View::XHTMLCRUD
AUTHORS
See Reaction::Class for authors.
LICENSE
See Reaction::Class for the license.