evolutility

Evolutility.js

Evolutility provides a set of generic Backbone Views to browse, edit, filter, export and chart Backbone models and collections of different structures. With it you can make web applications by configuring views with metadata instead of hand-coding templates, Javascript and CSS.

Demo apps

To Do list, AddressBook, Wine Cellar, Graphic Novels.

These demos use the browser local storage for their data but Evolutility can also be configured for REST (using Evolutility-server or your own REST API).

Installation

You can use NPM to install Evolutility. evolutility is available as an npm package:

# To get the latest stable version, use Bower from the command line.
npm install evolutility

You can also use Bower to install Evolutility.

# To get the latest stable version, use Bower from the command line.
bower install evolutility

# To get the most recent, latest committed-to-master version use:
bower install evolutility#master

... or download it from GitHub.

Views

Evolutility's views have a Backbone model (to define the data) and also a UI-model (to define the UI to display the data and interact with it).

All views for a Backbone model and collection share a single UI-Model which defines of all UI elements across views in a simple declarative way.

Evolutility provides 3 types of view

• Views for a model: Browse, Edit, Mini (quick edit), JSON.
• Views for a collection: List, Cards, Bubbles, Charts.
• Views for actions on a model or collection: Export, Filter.

A large part of the API (methods, options and events) is common to all views. Some views have additional API.

Views for One model

Browse

Shows all fields for viewing (read only). Fields are grouped in panels and tabs.

var vw = new Evol.ViewOne.Browse({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            model: myModel
        });

Edit

This view shows all fields for edition to create or update models. It automatically performs validation based on the UI-model and supports the Master-Details pattern (nested collections). Fields are grouped in panels and tabs.

var vw = new Evol.ViewOne.Edit({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            model: myModel
        });

Mini (Quick Edit)

Only shows important fields (required or showing as a column in grids). Fields are grouped in a single panel.

var vw = new Evol.ViewOne.Mini({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            model: myModel
        });

JSON

JSON representation of the data.

var vw = new Evol.ViewOne.JSON({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            model: myModel
        });

Views for a collection of Many models

List

Gives a tabular view of a collection with paging.

var vw = new Evol.ViewMany.List({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            collection: myCollection
        });

Cards

Shows records side by side as cards.

var vw = new Evol.ViewMany.Cards({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            collection: myCollection
        });

Bubbles

The "Bubbles" view displays the data as bubbles with controls to group them and set their color and size (this view uses D3.js). A tooltip with the Card view of the item show on mouse over.

var vw = new Evol.ViewMany.Bubbles({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            collection: myCollection
        });

Charts

Draws charts about the collection.

var vw = new Evol.ViewMany.Charts({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            collection: myCollection
        });

Views for Actions

Backbone Views for actions on a collection or a model.

Export

View to define export options and preview the collection export in different data formats (CSV, TAB, HTML, XML, SQL and JSON).

var vw = new Evol.ViewAction.Export({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel,
            collection: myCollection
        });

Filter

View used to build a structured query to filter a collection.

var vw = new Evol.ViewAction.Filter({
            el: myElement,
            uiModel: myUIModel
        });

Live demo of these views.

More Views will be added in the future (thinking of Summary, Import, Mass update, Group, Dashboard, Report, PDF, Auto-documentation and specs...).

UI-model

Views are not defined in templates but configured with a UI-model using a vocabulary with words like "field", "panel" and "tab" rather than "INPUT" and "DIV" to describe UI elements.

Here is the UI-model used to configure all views for the "Graphic Novels" app demo:

var uiModels_comics = {
    id: 'comics',
    label: 'Graphic Novels',
    name: 'graphic novel serie',
    namePlural: 'graphic novel series',
    fnTitle: 'title',
    fnBadge: function(m){
        var hNb=m.get('haveNb'),
            sNb=m.get('serieNb');
        return (hNb==sNb)?hNb:hNb+'/'+sNb;
    },
    elements: [
        {
            type: 'panel', label: 'Serie', width: 70,
            elements: [
                {
                    id: 'title', attribute: 'title', type: 'text', 
                    label: 'Title', required: true, 
                    maxLength: 255,
                    width: 62, inMany: true
                },
                {
                    id: 'genre', attribute: 'genre', type: 'lov', 
                    label: 'Genre', width: 38, inMany: true,
                    list: [
                        {id: 'adv', text: 'Adventure'},
                        {id: 'conte', text: 'Fairy tale'},
                        {id: 'eros', text: 'Erotic'},
                        {id: 'fantasy', text: 'Fantastic'},
                        {id: 'hf', text: 'Heroic Fantasy'},
                        {id: 'hist', text: 'Historic'},
                        {id: 'humor', text: 'Humor'},
                        {id: 'nocat', text: 'One of a kind'},
                        {id: 'youth', text: 'Youth'},
                        {id: 'pol', text: 'Thriller'},
                        {id: 'sf', text: 'Science-fiction'},
                        {id: 'sh', text: 'Super Heros'},
                        {id: 'wwest', text: 'Western'} 
                    ]
                },
                {
                    id: 'authors', attribute: 'authors', type: 'text', 
                    label: 'Authors', width: 62, inMany: true
                },
                {
                    id: 'language', attribute: 'language', type: 'lov', 
                    label: 'Language', width: 38, inMany: false,
                    list: [
                        {id: 'FR', text: 'French'},
                        {id: 'EN', text: 'English'}
                    ]
                },
                {
                    id: 'serieNb', attribute: 'serieNb', type: 'integer', 
                    label: 'Albums', width: 15, inMany: false,
                    inCharts: false 
                },
                {
                    id: 'haveNb', attribute: 'haveNb', type: 'integer',
                    label: 'Owned', width: 15, inMany: false, 
                    inCharts:false 
                },
                {
                    id: 'have', attribute: 'have', type: 'text',
                    label: 'have', width: 32, inMany: false 
                },
                {
                    id: 'complete', attribute: 'complete', type: 'boolean',
                    label: 'Complete', width: 19, inMany: true, 
                    labelFalse:'Incomplete', labelTrue:'Complete'
                },
                {
                    id: 'finished', attribute: 'finished', type: 'boolean', 
                    label: 'Finished', width: 19, inMany: true,
                    labelTrue:'Finished', labelFalse:'Unfinished', css:'cBlue'
                },
                {
                    id:'amazon', type:'formula', 
                    label:'Amazon', width:100, css:'evol-ellipsis',
                    formula:function(m){
                        var urlData=m.get('title')+' '+m.get('authors'),
                        link=m.get('language')=='FR' ?
                            'http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=sr_nr_n_1?keywords='
                            :'http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?field-keywords=';
                        return '<a target="a" href="'+link+encodeURI(urlData)+'">'+
                            _.escape(urlData)+'</a>';
                    }
                },
                {
                    id: 'notes', attribute: 'notes', type: 'textmultiline', 
                    label: 'Notes', maxLength: 1000,
                    width: 100, height: 6, inMany: false
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            type: 'panel', label: 'Cover', width: 30,
            elements: [
                {
                    id: 'pix', attribute: 'pix', type: 'image',
                    label: 'Cover', width: 100, inMany: true
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
};

See UI-Model documentation for the UI vocabulary available (structure of UI-models or metamodel).

UI-Models for the demo apps: To Do list, AddressBook, Wine Cellar, Graphic Novels.

With Evolutility, a single UI-model defines a full single page applications (SPA) to view, edit, filter and export a Backbone.js model or collection.

Try it now: Download Evolutility.JS, make modification to the demo UI-models by adding and modifying fields and panels and see the demo apps become your apps.

Stack and dependencies

Javascript, HTML5, CSS3, [Backbone.js] (http://backbonejs.org), [Underscore.js] (http://underscorejs.org/), [jQuery] (http://jquery.com), [D3.js] (http://d3js.org), [Bootstrap] (http://getbootstrap.com/), [Bootstrap-datepicker] (http://eternicode.github.io/bootstrap-datepicker/), [Select2] (http://ivaynberg.github.io/select2/), [Toastr] (https://github.com/CodeSeven/toastr).

Note: For convenience, all dependencies are minified together in a single file "dependencies.min.js". The dependencies list is specified in "Gruntfile.js".

Documentation

The (beginning of a) documentation is in progress: ui-models and views.

Previous incarnation

Evolutility.js is a re-write of [Evolutility] (http://www.evolutility.org) generic CRUD UI for ASP.net.

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Olivier Giulieri.

Evolutility.js is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 GNU AGPLv3.