Manoj's Blog: August 2014

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

SPA with AngularJs

AngularJS is a JavaScript frame work which use to create dynamic web applications. Its runs with plain JavaScript and HTML, so you don’t need use any other things when you are creating a web applications. You can read and learn more about the AngularJs from this link. In this post going to explain about the steps needs to follow when creating a SPA (Single Page Application) with AngualrJS.

Open your visual studio and create an empty web application. Install AngularJS core and router files using NuGet. After that create a folder called “app”. In this folder going to hold the old AngularJS related scripts files. Inside of this folder create a file calle “app.js”. In this JavaScript file is going to initialize all configurations when angular start up. Folder structure would be like as shown in below.

app

---------controller

--------------main.js

--------------submain.js

---------app.js

views

---------main

------------main.html

index.html

inside app folder contain the controller folder. It hold two angular controllers such as main and submain. And there is views folder for keep all the views. There is another subfolder call “main” to hold the views belongs to main controller. Index view is the initial view start in the application. In app.js file place the following code snippets.

var app = angular.module('spaapp', ['spaapp.controllers', 'ngRoute']);

var appctrl = angular.module('spaapp.controllers', []);

app.config(['$routeProvider', '$locationProvider', function ($routeProvider, $locationProvider) {
    $routeProvider
      .when("/",
      {
          templateUrl: "views/main/main.html",
          controller: "main"
      })
      .when("/sub",
      {
          templateUrl: "views/main/submain.html",
          controller: "submain"
      })
      .otherwise({
          redirectTo: '/'
      });

    $locationProvider.html5Mode(true);
}]);

In here main module create as “spaapp”. Its getting inject with “ngRoute” and “spaapp.controllers”. The “ngRoute” use for client side routing inside the application and “spaapp.controllers” use as module of the controllers in the application. after that shows routing configuration of the application. When user navigate to root url, route configuration load the main controller with main.html view. As the same way it does for the “/sub” path.

So lets create content of the index.html view.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title></title>
    <base href="/" />
</head>
<body ng-app="spaapp">

  <ng-view></ng-view>

    <script src="Scripts/angular.min.js"></script>
    <script src="Scripts/angular-route.min.js"></script>
    <script src="app/app.js"></script>
    <script src="app/controller/main.js"></script>
    <script src="app/controller/submain.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Now what we left to do is creation of the main and submain controllers.

main controller

appctrl.controller('main', ['$scope', function ($scope) {
    $scope.message = 'main';
}]);

In main controller use the controller module created earlier in app.js file. This controller inject with $scope for handle the model. In this controller bind message to the $scope property called “message”. Following shows the main.html view for the above controller. This view contain route for the sub controller.

main.html view

<p>The controller name is {{message}}!</p>

<a href="/sub"> Sub Controller </a>

submain controller

appctrl.controller('submain', ['$scope', function ($scope) {
    $scope.message = 'sub main';
}]);

The submain controller is doing same thing as the main controller. In below showing a submain.html view. This view also same likes the main.html view. It has a link to navigate to the main view.

sub main view
<p>The controller name is {{message}}!</p>

<a href="/"> Back to Main Controller </a>

In this SPA, we load to views dynamically to the index.html. This magic happens through “<ng-view>” tag in the index.html. main and submain views get append to the “<ng-view>” tag when it called through the router. Route configuration handle the controller and view according to the route. Now run the application.

Main View

Sub Main View, you can see url of the browser.

So we created SPA using an AngularJs. Give a try on this.

Happy Coding

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Windows 8.1 : Flyouts

In windows 8 apps development if wants to integrate flyout for app you don't have any straight forward way to do it. For this kind of a things I used popup control as flyout or third party library like callisto. But in windows 8.1 app development you don't need to be struggle like that way. Because now its integrate with base control library.

Let's get a scenario like needs to get information from the button click. Now you can do this very simply way setting up the flyout property in the button.


        <Button x:Name="AddButton" Content="Add" Foreground="Black" Height="66" Margin="-3" Width="157" BorderBrush="Black" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Right" FontSize="26.667">
                <Button.Flyout>
                    <Flyout Placement="Bottom">
                        <StackPanel Height="439" Width="294" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,5,0,0">
                            <TextBlock Style="{StaticResource BaseTextBlockStyle}" Text="Add Task" Height="29" FontWeight="Bold" SelectionHighlightColor="{x:Null}" FontSize="21.333" Margin="10,0,10,20"/>
                            <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="24" Margin="10,0,0,10" TextWrapping="Wrap" Width="145" Text="Projects" FontSize="18.667"/>
                            <ComboBox Height="35" Margin="10,0,10,10"/>
                            <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="20" Margin="10,0,0,10" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Task" Width="199" FontSize="18.667"/>
                            <ComboBox Height="35" Margin="10,0,10,10"/>
                            <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="30" Margin="111,0,0,10" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Hours" Width="77" FontSize="18.667"/>
                            <Slider Height="42" Margin="10,0"/>
                            <TextBox Height="30" Margin="111,0,106,20" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="1" TextAlignment="Center" BorderThickness="2"/>
                            <CheckBox Content="Billable" Height="37" Margin="7,0,54,10" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" FontSize="18.667"/>
                            <Button Margin="0,5,0,0" Content="Done" Width="120"/>
                        </StackPanel>
                    </Flyout>
                </Button.Flyout>
            </Button>

When you click on the add button flyout will shows up like below.

The place where flyout shows up can change using the placment property in the flyout. In above example I used placement position as bottom. You can select top, right, left, full or bottom as placement options. But this depends on the space available on the screen.

This flyout can have one content item, because of that reason complex UI component must wrapped with StackPanel or Grid item. In this example I used StackPanel. Adding the click event to the button inside the flyout you can perform the action and hide the flyout programmatically.