Dvelum or as i was looking for a silver bullet

    Hi everybody.

    I recently had such a task. I needed to make a small web application that was supposed to help the doctor. There are not many Use-Cases there, to see who is booked today, the opportunity to see the medical history, enter new data and create a new patient. Business then ...

    I had a lot of time, nowhere to hurry. At first I thought of programming for fast on GWT + SmartGWT , but I thought that it was time to see something new. In addition, there were obvious hints that there would be small orders of this kind for libraries of all kinds and small firms. I wanted something simple on the one hand, but at the same time quite powerful.

    A short google made it clear that there wasn’t much choice, so I turned my eyes toExtJS . I had already seen this thing, and now God himself ordered me to get to know this miracle of programmer thought closer.

    What is done in such cases? That's right, we looked at examples, downloaded, started picking. There you will change, add here, my joy knew no bounds. True, right up to the moment when I started to do exactly what I need. I quickly realized that I would have to smoke manuals. And since I'm lazy, I got in search of all sorts of tutorials on the Internet, including here, on the hub The more I read, the better I realized that ExtJS, just like that you won’t take it from the spot, here you need a serious approach to business. A few hours later, porridge from ExtJS and its various components formed in my head.

    I had an interesting thought, but didn’t I make a mistake by chance, can I be dumb with trochs for such a serious thing? Helped again to look for reviews. And I found ... I’m not alone so smart, I have brothers by mistake. Everyone wrote that the entry threshold was at least high, and most claimed that it was just awful.

    But do not leave the case halfway! This time I was looking for something that is friends with ExtJS and at the same time simplifies my work. Found Ext4Yii . I looked at this miracle and realized that I would exchange an awl for soap. At that moment I was really moody, but then an article caught my eyewhere miracles of usability were promised and my productivity increased a great many times. It was a sin not to see. And I started with this video (by the way, quality is not a fountain, but what can be done there you can understand):



    For the first time this morning, I was happy, for hope was again dimmed in my soul. I downloaded this thing , tormented myself a bit with the Apache, ordering him to show the www folder on the project folder, and not the top folder (I later expressed my indignation to the authors of this project, to which they said that they made such a feint not from a good life, but soon remake humanly). And now I already see the installation page, and after another minute I'm inside.

    And you know what? The video, of course, is not entirely true, not everything is so cloudless, but in general, it is. I inspired my first simple test application in less than an hour, everything worked. Prozhka didn’t do anything supernatural, but I realized that I could make prototypes and show them to customers in just a couple of hours. Yes, no kidding. To pluck a couple of windows and small connections between them, this is a business for about twenty minutes. The whole server side is generated by itself, JavaScript is certainly needed, but at the whole primitive level. In general, the whole approach reminded me of the good old Borland Delphi 7.0 (it didn’t work with later versions, but the seven then pleased me very much). Later, I spent a couple of days to get to know this product better. The cool thing about this is that I also figured out a bit with ExtJS as I became familiar with it, Dvelum helped me a lot in this by lowering the entry threshold. In general, I am very pleased. I recommend you in case of nothing to do and a desire to simplify your own life to dig this project a little. With a very high probability you will like it and you will spend all this weekend with this process.

    A bit about the structure of the project. The entire GUI is written in ExtJS itself, so you can consider Dvelum itself as a Showcase. The interface you create through Drag and Drop, all in an adult way. And even if you need to resize the window, then you don’t go into the code and do not look in its width and height properties, but simply pull it outside the window, Dvelum will understand what you are doing. This is really cool.
    The whole server side is made in PHP. If you don’t need anything special, then you don’t have to go there at all, all the code is generated by itself. MySQL is used as a database. And yes, you have nothing to do there either, all tables, indexes and other things will be done for you by Dvelum.
    The project is divided into two parts: Frontend and Backend. And the fact that you now thought is absolutely wrong. Backend is not something that is spinning on the server, it is the admin panel, where actually all Web Mords are made. There you can create users and assign them rights who can see which table and what he can do with it (change, delete). You can also create pages for Frontend there. Frontend is the part that an ordinary visitor will see. On the basis of Dveluma, you can quickly bungle a site, it is also something like a CMS.

    Naturally, there are also disadvantages, I would call the following negative points:

    • Apache must say that DocumentRoot points to www, and not to the top folder of the project. A trifle, but not nice, in the end is an extra gesture.
    • It is necessary to have at least the slightest idea of ​​ExtJS. The simplest application can be done this way, but if you want something more serious, you will have to smoke manuals, although you don’t have to drag out so deeply.
    • First, you need to spend time familiarizing yourself with the interface and with the design and logic of the project in general. At the very beginning, I was a little lost, though as soon as I understood the idea of ​​how everything works, things went quickly and quickly.
    • We must not forget to save the design of your interface, for this there is a special button. When you change a parameter, for example, the height of the window, a window appears with a message that the property of the object has been saved. But this does not mean that the entire project has been preserved. If you leave Dveluma without being preserved, then excuse me, your work will be ashes, which happened to me once.
    • There is little documentation and it is “a bit dry.”


    Pros are much more important to me:

    • You can quickly, I mean really quickly, within a couple of hours to make a prototype. And it will work and even look pretty good. This prototype can be made even by a student who works for you for cookies.
    • If you need something more serious, then this is also possible, but you will have to get acquainted with ExtJS.
    • As a side effect of the previous paragraph, you will know how ExtJS works, the entry threshold is reduced.
    • If you have forgotten some field in the table or form, then you do not need to look frantically for this place in the whole sheet of the declarative code, insert a couple more lines there and be blasphemed that you did not miss any bracket that breaks everything for you. No, everything is much simpler, you open the plate, click the button and in the window that appears, create another field, give it a name, format, etc. Everything is simple, clear and intuitive. Exactly as it should be in 2013 from the Nativity of Christ.
    • The product was made in Russia, so you can safely write on the forum in Russian.
    • The developers answer the questions very quickly, which cannot but rejoice.
    • Moped free


    PS The moped is not mine, I just ride on it.

    PSS Probably what I wrote looks like a description of a product for quick prototyping. It's right. And it’s not true ... Right now I’m doing a pretty serious application on Dvelume with dozens of windows and perverted logic on the server and frontend. While the flight is normal.

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