Tutorial Part 1 - Getting Started

Before we look further at each step needed to use the full power of the plugin, we're going to look at the jQuery Hello World example.

You can open this example by looking at it directly on the documentation website, or by opening the examples/jquery/000-hello-world/ directory found under the plugin root.

Looking at the controller

First of all, open action.class.php and look at the execute() method. It's as simple as:

sfDynamics::load('jquery');

It asks sfDynamics to load the jquery package, after each of its dependances (if there are any). A package is not only one javascript file. It's a set of javascripts and stylesheets, a list of dependances and conflicts (in term of sfDynamics package)s, and eventually a list of theming and i18n assets.

For now all you have to remember is that this line just made the jQuery library available in the view.

Looking at the view

It's now time to look at the template. Nothing complex there, just a little snippet of javascript to toggle visibility of an "Hello World" div.

I already hear some people muttering about the bad practice of putting inline styles and scripts within templates. This is just the most basic example, and we choosed to keep it simple.

Behind the scene

But hey, why did the sfDynamics::load() method understand the jquery name?

The plugin comes with a bunch of configuration files, written in XML, describing the packages. For example, in config/dynamics-jquery.xml, you'll find the following information:

<dynamics>
  <package name="jquery">
    <description>
      The jQuery Javascript Framework
      ===============================
      see http://www.jquery.com/
    </description>
    <conflict>prototype</conflict>
    <conflict>yui</conflict>
    <javascript>jquery/jquery-1.2.6</javascript>
  </package>
 
  <!-- some irrelevant informations (for us) about other packages -->
</package>

So even if I do not use jQuery library, configuration will parse all this? Nope.

The fact thoose packages were available is that the application's config/dynamics.xml package contained the following:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
 
<dynamics>
  <import resource="dynamics-jquery.xml" />
</dynamics>

The XML schema of both files are the same. Any dynamics*.xml file, except for dynamics-plugin.xml which has a little namespacing feature added, obey to the same rules.

The default fallback configuration files are found under the plugin's config directory, and thoose are completely overriden by the project's one (if named the same), which are completely overriden by the application's one.

To know more about this, you can read the full configuration documentation which has a reference page for each tag available in dynamics*.xml files.

You now know enough to go ahead in the tutorial and start using the plugin.