Hello all,
I started working on a {{map}} macro
(
http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-2784).
This raise the question of how (or if) we should work when writing
macros depending on JS APIs (being here google maps, yahoo maps, etc.).
The variants I've envisaged so far :
1a. We write all the needed JavaScript in the macro itself. We do it in
Strings we transform in lists of WordBlock + SpaceBlock we append as
children of a XMLBlock "script". I find this a little painful and not
very natural.
1b. We write all the needed JavaScript in the macro itself. We do it in
Strings we pass as content of a html/xhtml macros blocks.
2a. We write most of the JavaScript in a JSX object (for example a sort
of facade to some google maps APIs), and only the needed calls in the
macro itself (for example the call to load a map in a div element).
For the code in the macro, we use the same strategy as 1a, except that
there is just one of such XML block, and it's relatively short.
The JSX Strategy in 2a/2b has that clear advantage to make it much
simpler on the server side, but as a counterpart, the macro needs to be
distributed as a xar + jar, while in 1) it's a jar only.
2b. Same as 2a using the strategy in 1b for the part in the macro. This
is the way I have my prototype working right now. I admit I don't really
know what to think about the fact I'm building macros blocks (a velocity
one for the jsx "use" call, and a html one for the javascript call)
inside the macro itself. I hope you can tell more about this, and let me
know if it's a bad practice.
3. We don't do such macro :) We consider it's not what wiki macro should
be and we decide to have such macros only as velocity macros which are
much simpler to write in that case. This does not change anything for
the wysiwyg users, as far as I understand, but it does for the wiki
users.{{map location="Paris, France"}} is much more elegant than
{{velocity}}#map("Paris, France"){{/velocity}} ; and is much better too
in terms of configuration (in velocity we would need to give values to
all parameters, even if we want to use default value for most of them).
WDYT ? Are there some variants I did not envisage ?
Regards,
Jerome.