History Support
Many classes have shortcut names used when creating (instantiating) a class with a
configuration object. The shortcut name is referred to as an alias (or xtype if the
class extends Ext.Component). The alias/xtype is listed next to the class name of
applicable classes for quick reference.
Framework classes or their members may be specified as private or protected. Else,
the class / member is public. Public, protected, and private are access
descriptors used to convey how and when the class or class member should be used.
Public classes and class members are available for use by any other class or application code and may be relied upon as a stable and persistent within major product versions. Public classes and members may safely be extended via a subclass.
Protected class members are stable public members intended to be used by the
owning class or its subclasses. Protected members may safely be extended via a subclass.
Private classes and class members are used internally by the framework and are not intended to be used by application developers. Private classes and members may change or be omitted from the framework at any time without notice and should not be relied upon in application logic.
static label next to the
method name. *See Static below.Below is an example class member that we can disect to show the syntax of a class member (the lookupComponent method as viewed from the Ext.button.Button class in this case).
Let's look at each part of the member row:
lookupComponent in this example)( item ) in this example)Ext.Component in this case). This may be omitted for methods that do not
return anything other than undefined or may display as multiple possible values
separated by a forward slash / signifying that what is returned may depend on the
results of the method call (i.e. a method may return a Component if a get method calls is
successful or false if unsuccessful which would be displayed as
Ext.Component/Boolean).PROTECTED in
this example - see the Flags section below)Ext.container.Container in this example). The source
class will be displayed as a blue link if the member originates from the current class
and gray if it is inherited from an ancestor or mixed-in class.view source in the example)item : Object in the example).undefined a "Returns" section
will note the type of class or object returned and a description (Ext.Component in the
example)Available since 3.4.0 - not pictured in
the example) just after the member descriptionDefaults to: false)The API documentation uses a number of flags to further commnicate the class member's function and intent. The label may be represented by a text label, an abbreviation, or an icon.
classInstance.method1().method2().etc();false is returned from
an event handler- Indicates a framework class
- A singleton framework class. *See the singleton flag for more information
- A component-type framework class (any class within the Ext JS framework that extends Ext.Component)
- Indicates that the class, member, or guide is new in the currently viewed version
- Indicates a class member of type config
- Indicates a class member of type property
- Indicates a class member of type
method
- Indicates a class member of type event
- Indicates a class member of type
theme variable
- Indicates a class member of type
theme mixin
- Indicates that the class, member, or guide is new in the currently viewed version
Just below the class name on an API doc page is a row of buttons corresponding to the types of members owned by the current class. Each button shows a count of members by type (this count is updated as filters are applied). Clicking the button will navigate you to that member section. Hovering over the member-type button will reveal a popup menu of all members of that type for quick navigation.
Getting and setter methods that correlate to a class config option will show up in the methods section as well as in the configs section of both the API doc and the member-type menus just beneath the config they work with. The getter and setter method documentation will be found in the config row for easy reference.
Your page history is kept in localstorage and displayed (using the available real estate) just below the top title bar. By default, the only search results shown are the pages matching the product / version you're currently viewing. You can expand what is displayed by clicking on the button on the right-hand side of the history bar and choosing the "All" radio option. This will show all recent pages in the history bar for all products / versions.
Within the history config menu you will also see a listing of your recent page visits. The results are filtered by the "Current Product / Version" and "All" radio options. Clicking on the button will clear the history bar as well as the history kept in local storage.
If "All" is selected in the history config menu the checkbox option for "Show product details in the history bar" will be enabled. When checked, the product/version for each historic page will show alongside the page name in the history bar. Hovering the cursor over the page names in the history bar will also show the product/version as a tooltip.
Both API docs and guides can be searched for using the search field at the top of the page.
On API doc pages there is also a filter input field that filters the member rows using the filter string. In addition to filtering by string you can filter the class members by access level and inheritance. This is done using the checkboxes at the top of the page.
The checkbox at the bottom of the API class navigation tree filters the class list to include or exclude private classes.
Clicking on an empty search field will show your last 10 searches for quick navigation.
Each API doc page (with the exception of Javascript primitives pages) has a menu view of metadata relating to that class. This metadata view will have one or more of the following:
Ext.button.Button class has an alternate class name of Ext.Button). Alternate class
names are commonly maintained for backward compatibility.Runnable examples (Fiddles) are expanded on a page by default. You can collapse and expand example code blocks individually using the arrow on the top-left of the code block. You can also toggle the collapse state of all examples using the toggle button on the top-right of the page. The toggle-all state will be remembered between page loads.
Class members are collapsed on a page by default. You can expand and collapse members using the arrow icon on the left of the member row or globally using the expand / collapse all toggle button top-right.
Viewing the docs on narrower screens or browsers will result in a view optimized for a smaller form factor. The primary differences between the desktop and "mobile" view are:
The class source can be viewed by clicking on the class name at the top of an API doc page. The source for class members can be viewed by clicking on the "view source" link on the right-hand side of the member row.
Sencha Touch comes with fully history and deep-linking support. This gives your web applications the following two important benefits:
The result is an application that feels much more in tune with what users expect from native apps, especially on Android devices which fully support the built-in back button.
Setting up history support for your apps is pretty straightforward and is centered around the concept of routes. Routes are a simple mapping between urls and controller actions: whenever a certain type of url is detected in the address bar, the corresponding Controller action is called automatically. Let us take a look at a simple Controller:
Ext.define('MyApp.controller.Products', {
extend: 'Ext.app.Controller',
config: {
routes: {
'products/:id': 'showProduct'
}
},
showProduct: function(id) {
console.log('showing product ' + id);
}
});
By specifying the Route in the previous code sample, the Main controller is notified whenever the browser url looks like "#products/123". For example, if your application is deployed onto http://myapp.com, any url that looks like http://myapp.com/#products/123, http://myapp.com/#products/456, or http://myapp.com/#products/abc, automatically causes the showProduct function to be called.
When the showProduct function is called this way, it is passed the 'id' token that was
parsed from the url. This happens because we used ':id' in the route - whenever a route
contains a ':' character, it attempts to pull that information from the url and pass it
into the called function. Note that these parsed tokens are always strings (because urls
themselves are always strings), so hitting a route like 'http://myapp.com/#products/456'
is the same as calling showProduct('456').
You can specify any number of routes and your routes can each have any number of tokens, as shown in the following example:
Ext.define('MyApp.controller.Products', {
extend: 'Ext.app.Controller',
config: {
routes: {
'products/:id': 'showProduct',
'products/:id/:format': 'showProductInFormat'
}
},
showProduct: function(id) {
console.log('showing product ' + id);
},
showProductInFormat: function(id, format) {
console.log('showing product ' + id + ' in ' + format + ' format');
}
});
The second route accepts urls such as #products/123/pdf, which route through to the showProductInFormat function and console log 'showing product 123 in pdf format'. Note that the arguments are passed into the function in the order in which they appear in the route definition.
Of course, your Controller function probably will not just log a message to the console, it can do anything needed by your app - fetching data, updating the UI, or anything else.
By default, wildcards in routes match any sequence of letters and numbers. This means that a route for "products/:id/edit" would match the url "#products/123/edit" but not "#products/a ,fd.sd/edit" - this is because the second contains a number of letters that do not qualify (space, comma, dot).
Sometimes though we want the route to be able to match urls such as these, for example if an url contains a file name, we may want to be able to pull that out into a single token. To achieve this, we can pass a configuration object into our Route:
Ext.define('MyApp.controller.Products', {
extend: 'Ext.app.Controller',
config: {
routes: {
'file/:filename': {
action: 'showFile',
conditions: {
':filename': "[0-9a-zA-Z\.]+"
}
}
}
},
//opens a new window to show the file
showFile: function(filename) {
window.open(filename);
}
});
In this example, instead of an action string we have a configuration object that contains
an 'action' property. In addition, we added a conditions
configuration which tells the :filename token to match any sequence of numbers and
letters, including a period ('.'). This means our route will now match urls such as
http://myapp.com/#file/someFile.jpg, passing 'someFile.jpg' in as the argument to the
Controller's showFile function.
One challenge that comes with supporting history and deep linking is that you need to be able to restore the full UI state of the app, in order to make it as if users navigated to the deep-linked page themselves. This can sometimes be tricky, but it is the price paid for making life better for the user.
Let us take the simple example of loading a product based on an url such as http://myapp.com/#products/123 and let us update the Products Controller from the previous example:
Ext.define('MyApp.controller.Products', {
extend: 'Ext.app.Controller',
config: {
refs: {
main: '#mainView'
},
routes: {
'products/:id': 'showProduct'
}
},
/**
* Endpoint for 'products/:id' routes. Adds a product details view (xtype = productview)
* into the main view of the app then loads the Product into the view
*
*/
showProduct: function(id) {
var view = this.getMain().add({
xtype: 'productview'
});
MyApp.model.Product.load(id, {
success: function(product) {
view.setRecord(product);
},
failure: function() {
Ext.Msg.alert('Could not load Product ' + id);
}
});
}
});
In this example the 'products/:id' url endpoint results in the immediate addition of a view into our app's main view (which could be a TabPanel or other Container), then uses our Product model (MyApp.model.Product) to fetch the Product from the server. We added a callback that populates the product detail view with the freshly loaded Product. We render the UI immediately (as opposed to only rendering it when the Product has been loaded) so that we give the user visual feedback as soon as possible.
Each app will need different logic when restoring state for a deeply-linked view. For example, the Kitchen Sink sample application needs to restore the state of its NestedList navigation, as well as rendering the correct view for the given url. To see how this is accomplished in both Phone and Tablet profiles, check out the showView functions in the Kitchen Sink's app/controller/phone/Main.js and app/controller/tablet/Main.js files.
In most cases you will want to share exactly the same route structure between your Device Profiles. This way a user that is using your Phone version can send their current url to a friend using a Tablet and expect that their friend will be taken to the right place in the Tablet app. This generally means it is best to define your route configurations in the superclass of the Phone and Tablet-specific Controllers:
Ext.define('MyApp.controller.Products', {
extend: 'Ext.app.Controller',
config: {
routes: {
'products/:id': 'showProduct'
}
}
});
In your Phone-specific subclass you can then implement the showProduct function to give
a Phone-specific view for the given product:
Ext.define('MyApp.controller.phone.Products', {
extend: 'MyApp.controller.Products',
showProduct: function(id) {
console.log('showing a phone-specific Product page for ' + id);
}
});
In your Tablet-specific subclass you can then proceed in a similar way, this time showing a tablet-specific view:
Ext.define('MyApp.controller.tablet.Products', {
extend: 'MyApp.controller.Products',
showProduct: function(id) {
console.log('showing a tablet-specific Product page for ' + id);
}
});
There are some exceptions to this rule, usually having to do with linking to navigation states. The Kitchen Sink example has phone and tablet specific views - although in both profiles a NestedList is used for navigation, on the Tablet, NestedList only takes up the left hand edge of the screen, while on the Phone it fills the screen. In order to make the back button work as expected on phones, each time a user navigates in the NestedList, the new url is pushed into the history, which means that the Phone-specific controller has one additional route. Check out the app/controller/phone/Main.js file for an example of this.
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