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Getting Started with Enyo 2

Development Environment

As an Enyo developer, you have a great deal of freedom in choosing the platform and tools you use to code your applications. You may work in a Windows, Mac, or Linux environment; to write Enyo code, all you need is a text editor. Just about any text editor will suffice, including basic freeware options such as Notepad++ (Windows) or TextWrangler (Mac).

During your development, you may test your code using any modern Web browser. While it is possible to test by loading files into the browser directly from the local file system, we strongly suggest that you access the application through an http server. This approach provides numerous benefits, including the ability to test from remote devices.

If you are not currently running a local Web server, you may find it convenient to install an Apache/MySQL/PHP software bundle, such as BitNami WAMPStack (Windows) or MAMP (Mac).

Note: Because of security restrictions, if you choose to develop in Chrome and load your app directly from the file system, you'll need to launch the browser using the command-line switch "--allow-file-access-from-files". On Windows, you can do this by creating a shortcut to chrome.exe and adding the switch to the end of the shortcut's Target property. Then use the shortcut each time you launch the browser. A similar approach should work on Mac and Linux as well.

Obtaining the Enyo Source Code

(Note: Instructions for grabbing the Enyo code and starting an app as quickly as possible are available in the Bootplate and Dupliforking documents. This article provides more detailed background information and, as such, you may benefit from reading through it at least once before making use of the bootplate template.)

The Enyo source is available as a downloadable zip archive from enyojs.com, or via git source control from the enyojs project on GitHub.

If you decide to work with the Enyo repositories on GitHub, the code retrieval process follows standard practice.

For example, from a command-line git client,

git clone [email protected]:enyojs/bootplate.git <myapp>

will clone the "bootplate" app template to a directory called <myapp> on your local computer, and

git clone [email protected]:enyojs/enyo.git <local-enyo-dir>

will clone the core Enyo code to a local directory called <local-enyo-dir>.

(Note: If you plan to submit changes back to a repository, create your own fork of the repository and clone the fork to your local machine.)

Enyo Core and Plugins

Whichever way you obtain the source, if you are developing an application, you will most likely want to embed a copy of the core Enyo code in the app. By convention, this code resides in a directory called enyo within the application directory.

It can sometimes be helpful to think of Enyo projects in terms of discrete tiers of code, with the Enyo core forming the foundation. A typical Enyo application will have two additional tiers--one consisting of reusable libraries (or "plugins"), and the other of actual application source.

Plugin code may come from the Enyo project itself (e.g., the Onyx widget library), from the open source community, or from one's own development efforts. By convention, plugins are placed in a directory called lib, giving us the following app structure:

<app>
	enyo/
	lib/

(Note: A more detailed discussion of application structure may be found in Managing Your Project.)

Starting an App

At this point, everything is in place for you to begin writing Enyo applications. Your first app can be as simple as a single HTML file.

For example, we can create a minimal "HelloWorld" app by placing the following code in index.html:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>Enyo Hello</title>
	<!-- load debug version of Enyo -->
	<script src="enyo/enyo.js"></script>
	<!-- load debug plugin -->
</head>
<body>
	<script>new enyo.Control({content: "Hello From Enyo"}).write();</script>
</body>
</html>

Now our app folder looks like this:

<app>
	enyo/
	lib/
	index.html

If we decide to use a plugin, we can load it directly via <script> tag, e.g.:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>Enyo Hello</title>
	<!-- load debug version of Enyo -->
	<script src="enyo/enyo.js"></script>
	<!-- load debug version of plugin -->
	<script src="lib/aPlugin/source/package.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
	<script>
		// make a custom Control based on CoolKind from aPlugin
		enyo.kind({
			name: "App",
			kind: "aPlugin.CoolKind",
			coolness: true
		});
		new App().write();
	</script>
</body>
</html>

Notice that to load the plugin, we load a package.js file. An Enyo resource can use a package.js file as a manifest--that is, a description of what is needed to load the plugin. Typically, it's a list of scripts and stylesheets.

Factoring into Files

In the early stages of development, it's not unusual to create a fair amount of application code directly in this HTML file. However, we soon reach a point where the single file becomes unmanageable and we want to split its contents into separate files.

The convention in Enyo is to place an application's source code in a subdirectory called source. The source directory typically starts out with a file of application source code (App.js) and a file of CSS styles (App.css).

Once the app source and styles have been factored out, we have the following file structure:

<app>
	enyo/
	lib/
	source/
		App.js
		App.css
	index.html

And our index.html has the following contents:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>Enyo Hello</title>
	<!-- load debug version of Enyo -->
	<script src="enyo/enyo.js"></script>
	<!-- load debug version of plugin -->
	<script src="lib/aPlugin/source/package.js"></script>
	<!-- load our application css -->
	<script src="source/App.css"></script>
	<!-- load our application source -->
	<script src="source/App.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
	<script>new App().write();</script>
</body>
</html>

Notice that as the application grows in complexity, so, too, does the <head> section of the index file.

package.js

We saw earlier that aPlugin has a package.js file with instructions for loading the plugin; now it makes sense to create a package.js file for the application itself:

enyo.depends(
	"$lib/aPlugin/source",
	"App.css",
	"App.js"
);

Some things to note about this file:

  • The $lib alias: Enyo uses $ aliases to simplify paths. By default, there are only two such aliases, $enyo, which refers to the enyo root folder, and $lib, which refers to a lib folder, peer to enyo (aka $enyo/../lib).

  • Loading a plugin will create an alias for that plugin. After loading the package.js file for aPlugin, we will have the alias $aPlugin. Such aliases are particularly useful for referencing static content from the referenced folders (e.g., images or JSON data).

  • Non-absolute paths are relative to the folder containing package.js, so App.css and App.js are in the same folder as package.js. (In this example, they are all in the source folder.)

  • This package file can be used as input to the minifier tool. The minifier concatenates and compresses source files into one file each for JavaScript and CSS. The two concatenated and compressed files load much faster than numerous regular files would, but they are much less readable and are therefore bad for debugging. Typically, we use compressed files only when we are nearly done with our application and want to optimize load-time performance.

  • As your application grows, be sure to add the new files and plugins to package.js, e.g.:

      enyo.depends(
  	"$lib/aPlugin/source",
  	"$lib/bPlugin/source",
  	"$lib/cPlugin/source",
  	"MyView.js",
  	"App.css",
  	"App.js"
  );

Ready for Growth

Now our HTML file looks something like this:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>Enyo Hello</title>
	<!-- load debug version of enyo -->
	<script src="enyo/enyo.js"></script>
	<!-- load debug version of application-->
	<script src="source/package.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
	<script>new App().write();</script>
</body>
</html>

And our application folder looks like this:

<app>
	enyo/
	lib/
	source/
		MyView.js
		App.css
		App.js
		package.js
	index.html

At this point, our app's structure closely resembles the basic scaffold described in Managing Your Project and embodied in the bootplate template. The stage is now set for the project to grow to an arbitrary level of complexity. Source files may be added and arranged in source (or subdirectories thereof), additional libraries may be added, and the project is set up correctly for pre-deployment optimization (minification).