Engine for Web Applications

Overview

Downloads

• Engine License (BSD)
• engcomp.js(v 2.1) (compressed source)
• engcomp.readable.js(v 2.1) (readable source)
• Engine Source Code and Compiler (850Kb)
• All widgets and features seen on this Web site are available in the Account Manager 4 and Core Web projects.

Configuration Templates

• application_components.xml : Skeleton for application components.
• config.xml : Basic configuration file.
• engine.config.xml : Skeleton engine configuration file, including many widely-used configuration definitions.
• FunMonInject.xml : Injectable script as seen in the Function Monitor project, used to measure script performance, used by Script Profiler.
• ScopeViewer.xml : Injectable script for modeling a page DOM, used by Active Source.
• tasks.xml : Basic task list for starting an engine.
• ValidationPatterns.xml : Validation patterns for use with org.cote.js.xhtml.validator.XHTMLValidator. Refer to Demonstration #5 for a complete implementation example.

Application Components

• component.canvas.xml : Canvas utilities.
• component.draggable.xml : Decorate an element with drag-and-drop capabilities. Requires component.drag-tracker.xml.
• component.drag-tracker.xml : Used to govern component.draggable.xml components.
• component.hierarchy.xml : Hierarchical organization chart. Requires component.canvas.xml.
• component.hierarchy-decorator.xml : Drag-and-drop, and visual decorators for hierarchy canvas component. Requires component.hierarchy.xml.
• component.manager.xml : Window Manager. Used to govern component.window.xml components.
• component.steps.xml : Add procedural steps to HTML content (as seen on Engine Project Page).
• component.tab.xml : Add tabs to HTML content (as seen on Engine Project Page).
• component.templateloader.xml : A basic example to load a template from a component. (eg: <div acid = "TemplateLoader" appcomp_path = "component.templateloader.xml" Template = "XslTransformer.xml"></div>
• component.tree.xml : Turn an HTML list into a collapsible tree. Uses Account Manager ExplorerHandler for data provider.
• component.wideselect.xml : Loads a WideSelect control, which supports pagination and data buffering for large result sets.
• component.window.xml : DHTML Window (as seen on this site). Requires component.manager.xml.

Application Component Templates

Use templates to encapsulate application UIs.

• EngineAPIBrowser.xml : Browse the Engine API: Open API Browser).
• EngineProfiler.xml : Development and debug tool for the Engine framework. (Live Demo: Open Profiler).
• XslTransformer.xml : Development and debug tool used to test XML and XSL. (Demo available in Profiler)

Application Component Fragments

Use fragments to augment templates with additional XHTML and context-scoped script.

• ActiveSource.xml : As seen in the JavaScript Profiler context plug-in, provides a UI into the live page DOM. Used by Engine Profiler.
• EngineStats.xml : Drill into a the internals of a running Engine framework. Used by Engine Profiler.
• ScriptProfiler.xml : As seen in the JavaScript Profiler context plug-in, provides a UI and script parsing features for navigating through JavaScript files and functions. Used by Engine Profiler.
• RichSelect.xml : Fragment for representing paginated data acquired from an XML data source.
• TemplateTools.xml : Script utilites that can be loaded into a component template as a fragment.

Examples

Live Demonstrations

The following demonstrations run in this page.

• Engine Framework Profiler
• Engine API Browser
• Canvas Example

Quick Start

<script type="text/javascript" src="{path}/engcomp.js" ></script>
<div
   is-engine = "1"
   engine-action = "{path}/tasks.xml"
   engine-action-type = "xml"
   engine-handler = "engine_driver"
   engine-handler-type = "import-task"
   engine-config = "self"
>
   <h2>Engine Example</h2>
   <p>[ example text ]</p>
</div>

Framework Reference Demonstrations

The following reference demonstrations highlight key framework features.

• Engine Demonstrations

Documentation

• API (or, Browse the API right here)
• Engine Configuration
• Web Page Monitoring
• Separation of Functionality from Content
• Background

What's New

Version 2.1.1 : 2009/07/25

• Add Distributed Component class, which decorates the Application Component class, for creating Distributed Components. This replaces the current DWACControl.xml Gizmo which served to decorate the Application Component.
• Core Web and Account Manager 4 were updated to include the DWACHandler, and a set of templates and tools for creating DWAC project files and deployable solutions.
• Updated org.cote.js.xhtml to discover elements with the is-dwac attribute, and auto-instrument the Distributed Component class.

Version 2.0.1 : 2009/06/29

• Include DWAC Templates for building Fragments, Templates, and Components.
• Minor framework fixes and enhancements.

Version 2.0 : 2009/02/16

• Including org.cote.js.storage API.
• Engine Source Code and Compiler

Version 1.9.6 : 2008/11/01

• Working on Engine V2. Upcoming features and changes include a stand-alone cross-browser storage library (similar to libXmlRequest), and Distributed Web Application Components (DWAC).
• Updated org.cote.js.util.config to lend support to the upcoming storage libraries.
• Updated org.cote.js.appcomp to include a token callback to a component loading a template. This allows a component to define custom tokenization within any supporting templates.

Version 1.9.22 : 2008/01/06

• Updated org.cote.js.engine to correct support for Internet Explorer 8.

Version 1.9.18 : 2008/27/04

• Updated org.cote.js.xml to better support filesystem access in Internet Explore 7.
• Revised org.cote.js.ui.wideselect and org.cote.js.util.url. These are currently made available in the extra download.

2008/25/03

• Engine is a central building block in the Core Web project (which in turn makes use of the Account Manager 4 project. In particular, the Application Component and Template features are heavily used for Blog, Forum, Media, and Administration features.

2007/04/02

• A recent paper, JavaScript Hijacking (2007/03/13 Fortify Software), highlighted in a Slashdot post (2007/04/02) have raised security concerns regarding AJAX Frameworks. In particular, the Fortify article draws attention to privacy and security risks associated with using JavaScript as a data delivery mechanism, particularly JSON. Engine for Web Applications does not use script evaluations to load external data and is therefore not susceptible to this type of attack. However, as the developers of the Dojo Toolkit noted in a recent post, the attention paid to this article should draw closer scrutiny to how developers secure their data and authenticate their requests regardless of the toolkit.

Version 1.9.3 : 2006/12/03

• Add properties gadget_base_path, gadget_control, and gadget_mode for using the org.cote.js.xml package with Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets.
• Add Engine Gadget Demo #1 download, and Engine Gadget Demo #1 source (Visual Studio 2005 Solution).
• Add Demonstration 19 showing further details of the Engine Gadget Demo #1 example.

Version 1.8.2 : 2006/07/10

• Add Demonstration #17 and Demonstration #18 to highlight the latest features.
• Add support for easily loading and reusing Engine contexts within an using XML-based templates.
• Add support for embedding Application Component script within a template, including automatic clean-up when the template is unloaded or changed.
• Add optional callback handler to setInnerXHTML method, and virtual _handle_xhtml_token handler.
• Add Processor support to Engine objects, allowing XML configuration to be pre-processed.
• Update loadEngines method to accept processer and XHTML callback references.
• Add template methods loadTemplate, getTemplateContainer, getTemplateEngine, setTemplateIsEngine,template_init, template_destroy, embedded_init, embedded_destroy, importEmbeddedScript, cleanTemplate, getTemplateObjectByName, and setTitle.

Version 1.7.8 : 2006/04/11

• Add Demonstration #16, which shows how to make a more complicated DHTML Window widget with Engine.
• Fix bug in org.cote.js.dom.event package in motion capture methods.
• Add new virtual method call to component_post_init for application components in org.cote.js.xhtml.XHTMLComponent. This allows application components to receive a callback after all child nodes have been processed and loaded.
• Add optional context parameter to loadEngines method in the org.cote.js.engine.EngineService class.

2006/03/31

• Add Engine Configuration overview. This document describes the various XML formats that are used within Engine.

Version 1.6.40: 2005/12/21

• Add Demonstration #15, which shows how to make a simple image slide show widget with Engine.
• Updated ApplicationComponent class to automatically use the containing engine id when available, and when a transaction participation is not otherwise specified.
• Updated Thread to include the restart method, and optionally suppress virtual member invocation when calling start and run.

2005/12/11

• Add Web Page Passive Monitoring article describing one way to use the Monitor Service.
• Add engineMonitor.js release which is a scaled down build that only includes the minimum requirements to host the Monitor Service.

Version 1.6: 2005/11/13

• Improved API Documents with example code.
• MonitorService for easily creating beacon and AJAX/XML monitoring solutions for your Web applications. This is the same API used by the IMNMotion Web Experience Monitor (relocated).
• Configurable Deployment temporarily removed. This will be replaced by a new package manager with the following features: Encode JavaScript and other files into Java and C# classes for distribution; Configure JavaScript files directly from encoded classes; Generate JavaScript API documentation. At present, the UI to enter the final configuration is still missing.