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Step by step guide for Beginners in Web Development for Open Event Frontend

Post author:harshitagupta30
Post published:June 30, 2017
Post category:Event Event Management FOSSASIA GSoC Open Event Tutorial
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Originally the frontend and backend of the Open Event Server project were handled by FLASK with jinja2 being used for rendering templates. As the size of the project grew, it became difficult to keep track of all the modifications made on the frontend side. It also increased the complexity of the code. As a result of this, a new project Open Event Frontend was developed by decoupling the backend and frontend of the Open Event Orga Server. Now the server is being converted fully into functional API and database and the open event frontend project is primarily the frontend for the Open event server API where organisers, speakers and attendees can sign-up and perform various functions.

The Open Event Frontend project is built on JavaScript web application framework, “Ember.js”. To communicate with the server API Ember.js user Ember data which is a data persistence module via the exposed endpoints. Suppose if you’re coming from the Android background, soon after diving into the web development you can relate that the web ecosystem is much larger than the mobile one and for the first timers it can be difficult to adopt with it because of the reason that in web there are multiple ways to perform a task which can be restricted to very few in the case of Android. For web applications, one can find that much more components are involved in setting up the project while in android one can easily start contributing to project soon after compiling it in Android Studio. One thing which is relatable for both the android and web development is that in the case of android one has to deal with the varying screen sizes and compatibility issue while in the web one has to deal with adding support for different browsers and versions which can be really annoying.

Now let’s see how one can start contributing to the Open event frontend project while having no or a little knowledge of web development. In case if you’ve previous knowledge of JavaScript then you can skip the step 1 and move directly to another step which is learning the framework.

(Here all the steps have been explained in reference if you’re switching from Android to Web development.)

Step 1. Learning the Language – JavaScript

Now that when you’ve already put your feet into the web development it’s high time to get acquainted with the JavaScript. Essentially in the case of Ember which is easy to comprehend, you can though start with learning the framework itself but the executables file are written in JavaScript so to write them you must have basic knowledge of the concepts in the language. Understanding of JavaScript will help in letting know where the language ends and where the framework starts. It will also help in better understanding of the framework. In my opinion, the basic knowledge of JavaScript like the scope of variables, functions, looping, conditional statements, modifying array and dictionaries, ‘this’ keyword etc. helps in writing and understanding the .js files easily. Also, sometimes in JavaScript, an error might not be thrown as an exception while compiling but it may evaluate the program to undefined, knowledge of the language will help in debugging the code.

Step 2. Learning the Framework – Ember

Ember is a JavaScript Framework which works on Model-View-Controller(MVC) approach. The Ember is a battery included framework which generates all the boilerplate code including components, routes. Templates etc. required for building an application’s frontend. It is very easy to understand and comprehend. In Ember, we can easily define the data models and relationships and ember will automatically guess the correct API endpoints. Apart from this, the documentation of the ember on its website is very much sufficient to start with. One can easily start developing applications after going through the tutorial mentioned on the ember’s website.

Step 3. Testing

In the case of Android application development to write test we use android libraries like Mockito and Robolectric. Also, testing is a bit more difficult in Android app development because we have to explicitly write the test but it is a lot easier in the case of web development. In the case of Ember, it provides an ease of testing which no other framework and libraries provide. While generating a component or template ember itself generates the test files for them and all we have to do is to change them according to our requirement. Ember generates unit, acceptance and integration tests by making testing easier. So we don’t have to write the test explicitly we only have to modify the test files generated by ember.

Step 4. Styling

In Android we have colors.xml, styles.xml, drawables, gradients, shapes etc. for styling our application but in the case of Web, we have Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for styling our application. Simply using pure CSS make design complicated and difficult to understand, so to make it easier we combine a bunch of design elements with a style file and use Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets (Saas) with mixins to do that which makes creating styles a lot easier and more straightforward. So for styling, our web application one should have the knowledge of HTML as well as CSS.

In conclusion, I can say that learning web development requires learning a few things in parallel which includes learning a language, learning a framework, how to perform testing and different styling skills to make an application beautiful. Due to dynamic nature of the JavaScript and the sheer number of packages and components involved, as opposed to the safe environment that Android Studio provides, it can be sometimes really frustrating. However, once learned the basics, the knowledge and skills can be easily transferred and applied over and over again.

Adding dynamic segments to a route in Open Event Frontend Project

Post author:harshitagupta30
Post published:June 30, 2017
Post category:Event Management FOSSASIA GSoC Open Event
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When we talk about a web application the first thing comes up is how to decide what to display at a given time which in most of the application is decided with the help of the URL. The URL of the application can be set either by loading the application or by writing the URL manually or may be by clicking some link. In our Open Event Frontend project which is written in Ember.js, an incredibly powerful JavaScript framework for creating web applications, the URL is mapped to the router handlers with the helper of router to render the template for the page, to load the data model to display, to navigate within the application or to handle any actions within the page like button clicking etc.

Suppose the user opens the open event application for the very first time what s/he will see a page containing the list of all the events which are going to happen in the near future along with their details like event name, timings, place, tags etc. If the user clicks one of the events from the list, the current page will be redirected to the detailed specific page for that particular event. The behaviour of changing the content of the page which we observed during this process can be explained with the help of the dynamic segments concept. The dynamic segment is a section of the path for a route which changes based on the content of a page.
This post will focus on how we have added dynamic segments to the route in the open event frontend project.

Let’s demonstrate the process of adding the dynamic segments to the route by taking an example of sessions routes where we can see the list of all the accepted, pending, confirmed and rejected sessions along with their details.

To add a dynamic segment, we need to have a route with path which we add to the route definition in app/router.js file

this.route('sessions',  function() {
   this.route('list', { path: '/:sessions_state' });
});

Dynamic segments are made up of a : followed by an identifier. Ember follows the convention of :model-name_id for two reasons. The first reason is that routes know how to fetch the right model by default if we follow the convention. The second is that params is an object, and can only have one value associated with a key.

After defining the path in app/router.js file we need to add template file, app/templates/events/sessions/list.hbs which contain the markup to display the data which is defined in the file, app/routes/events/sessions/list.js under the model hook of the route in order to display the correct content for the specified option.

Code containing the markup for the page in app/templates/events/sessions/list.hbs file

<div class="sixteen wide column">
  <table class="ui tablet stackable very basic table">
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th>{{t 'State'}}</th>
        <th>{{t 'Title'}}</th>
        <th>{{t 'Speakers'}}</th>
        <th>{{t 'Track'}}</th>
        <th>{{t 'Short Abstract'}}</th>
        <th>{{t 'Submission Date'}}</th>
        <th>{{t 'Last Modified'}}</th>
        <th>{{t 'Email Sent'}}</th>
        <th></th>
        <th></th>
      </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      {{#each model as |session|}}
        <tr>
          <td>
            {{#if (eq session.state "confirmed")}}
              <div class="ui green label">{{t 'Confirmed'}}</div>
            {{else}}
              <div class="ui red label">{{t 'Not Confirmed'}}</div>
            {{/if}}
          </td>
          <td>
            {{session.title}}
          </td>
          <td>
            <div class="ui ordered list">
              {{#each session.speakers as |speaker|}}
                <div class="item">{{speaker.name}}</div>
              {{/each}}
            </div>
          </td>
          <td>
            {{session.track}}
          </td>
          <td>
            {{session.shortAbstract}}
          </td>
          <td>
            {{moment-format session.submittedAt 'dddd, DD MMMM YYYY'}}
          </td>
          <td>
            {{moment-format session.modifiedAt 'dddd, DD MMMM YYYY'}}
          </td>
          <td>
            {{session.emailSent}}
          </td>
          <td>
            <div class="ui vertical compact basic buttons">
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'View') class='ui icon button' position='left center'}}
                <i class="unhide icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'Edit') class='ui icon button' position='left center'}}
                <i class="edit icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'Delete') class='ui icon button' position='left center'}}
                <i class="trash outline icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'Browse edit history') class='ui icon button' position='left center'}}
                <i class="history icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
            </div>
          </td>
          <td>
            <div class="ui vertical compact basic buttons">
              {{#ui-dropdown class='ui icon bottom right pointing dropdown button'}}
                <i class="green checkmark icon"></i>
                <div class="menu">
                  <div class="item">{{t 'With email'}}</div>
                  <div class="item">{{t 'Without email'}}</div>
                </div>
              {{/ui-dropdown}}
              {{#ui-dropdown class='ui icon bottom right pointing dropdown button'}}
                <i class="red remove icon"></i>
                <div class="menu">
                  <div class="item">{{t 'With email'}}</div>
                  <div class="item">{{t 'Without email'}}</div>
                </div>
              {{/ui-dropdown}}
            </div>
          </td>
        </tr>
      {{/each}}
    </tbody>
  </table>
</div>

Code containing the model hook in app/routes/events/sessions/list.js to display the correct content. We access the dynamic portion of the URL using params.

import Ember from 'ember';

const { Route } = Ember;

export default Route.extend({
  titleToken() {
    switch (this.get('params.session_status')) {
      case 'pending':
        return this.l10n.t('Pending');
      case 'accepted':
        return this.l10n.t('Accepted');
      case 'confirmed':
        return this.l10n.t('Confirmed');
      case 'rejected':
        return this.l10n.t('Rejected');
    }
  },
  model(params) {
    this.set('params', params);
    return [{
      title         : 'Test Session 1',
      speakers      : [{ name: 'speaker 1', id: 1, organization: 'fossasia' }, { name: 'speaker 2', id: 1, organization: 'fossasia' }],
      track         : 'sample track',
      shortAbstract : 'Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.',
      submittedAt   : new Date(),
      modifiedAt    : new Date(),
      emailSent     : 'No',
      state         : 'confirmed'
    },
    {
      title         : 'Test Session 2',
      speakers      : [{ name: 'speaker 3', id: 1, organization: 'fossasia' }, { name: 'speaker 4', id: 1, organization: 'fossasia' }],
      track         : 'sample track',
      shortAbstract : 'Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.',
      submittedAt   : new Date(),
      modifiedAt    : new Date(),
      emailSent     : 'Yes',
      state         : 'confirmed'
    }];
  }
});

After the route is fully configured, we need to start linking it from the templates which mean we need to link it in our parent template, app/templates/events/view/sessions.hbs file using the {{link-to}} helper. The code for the linking looks like this:

    {{#tabbed-navigation isNonPointing=true}}
        {{#link-to 'events.view.sessions.index' class='item'}}
          {{t 'All'}}
        {{/link-to}}
        {{#link-to 'events.view.sessions.list' 'pending' class='item'}}
          {{t 'Pending'}}
        {{/link-to}}
        {{#link-to 'events.view.sessions.list' 'accepted' class='item'}}
          {{t 'Accepted'}}
        {{/link-to}}
        {{#link-to 'events.view.sessions.list' 'confirmed' class='item'}}
          {{t 'Confirmed'}}
        {{/link-to}}
        {{#link-to 'events.view.sessions.list' 'rejected' class='item'}}
          {{t 'Rejected'}}
        {{/link-to}}
      {{/tabbed-navigation}}

The User Interface for the above code looks like this:

Fig. : The page containing all the accepted session

To conclude this, we can say the task of the route is to load the modal to display the data. For example, if we have the route this.route(‘sessions’);, the route might load all of the sessions for the app but we want only the particular type of session so the dynamic segments help to load the particular model and make it easier to load and display the data.

Reference: The link to the complete code is here. For getting more knowledge about dynamic segments please visit this.

Using semantic UI components in Open event frontend project

Post author:harshitagupta30
Post published:June 30, 2017
Post category:FOSSASIA Open Event
Post comments:0 Comments

When we talk about reusability in terms of web application framework then Ember has a significant role. It provides a lot of components which can be reused again in different scenarios inside the project. Along with reusability if we bring responsiveness in the picture then Semantic UI has no match. It is an open source HTML/CSS framework having self-explanatory syntax for building the user interface. It helps in building the responsive layouts which are written in the human-friendly HTML. Most of the class names are closer to normal spoken English words which seem to flow naturally and requires less to refer the documentation. For example, if we want to create a checkbox in semantic UI then we can simply use the following piece of code to create a checkbox.

The table is collections of data which are grouped together and arranged in the rows. Semantic UI offers a variety of table layouts for creating the customised table according to the requirement. The table follows responsive behaviour where they automatically stack their layouts according to the mobile devices and using the keyword, ‘tablet stackable’ they can stack themselves for the tablet which helps in avoiding the overflow of UI in the small devices.Semantic UI offers 6 types of “Collections” which are breadcrumb, form, grid, menu, message and table. However, in this article, we’ll keep our focus on two main collections which have been widely used in the entire project Table and Grid.

The grid is used to realign the space in the page. It divides the entire horizontal space into units called “columns” where all columns must specify their width as a proportion of the total available row width. The Semantic UI’s by default theme uses 16 columns means it divides the entire space into 16 indivisible proportionate columns.

Let’s illustrate how these grids and tables have been used in the Open Event Frontend project by taking example two scenarios where the tables and grid both have been used along with the code snippets for better understanding.

Scenario 1: Suppose we are creating a new event and we want to add the list of sessions along with their details for the event which will be visible to the user while navigating through the public page of the event. The page where we will be making changes will be visible only to the person who will be creating the event and authorised to add, remove and edit the sessions.

The page where we can create, modify and see the other details of the sessions look like this.

Fig. 1: Table used in Session in event/event_id/sessions page

As we can see in the above image that the entire data containing the session details of all, pending, accepted, confirmed and rejected sessions are wrapped around a row of 16 columns grid in the page. The table has been put on the grid which helps in managing the flow of the content. Also, after each column there is vertical spacing, added to separate each column, creating vertical rhythm.

To display all the data collection and make it readable, the ‘table’ component of the semantic UI has been used. The table used here belongs to the “ui very basic table” class of semantic UI. Since the table can stack their layout on mobile devices so we have added explicitly, ‘tablet stackable’ responsive behaviour to make the layout stackable on tablet devices as well since our application will be used on the tablets as well.

The code for the above UI looks like this.

<div class="row">
  <div class="sixteen wide column">
    <table class="ui tablet stackable very basic table">
      <thead>
        <tr>
          <th>{{t 'State'}}</th>
          <th>{{t 'Title'}}</th>
          <th>{{t 'Speakers'}}</th>
          <th>{{t 'Track'}}</th>
          <th>{{t 'Short Abstract'}}</th>
          <th>{{t 'Submission Date'}}</th>
          <th>{{t 'Last Modified'}}</th>
          <th>{{t 'Email Sent'}}</th>
          <th></th>
          <th></th>
        </tr>
      </thead>
      <tbody>
        <tr>
          <td>
            <div>
              <div class="ui green label">{{t 'Confirmed'}}</div>
            </div>
          </td>
          <td>Test Session</td>
          <td>
            <div class="ui ordered list">
              <div class="item">Mario Behling</div>
              <div class="item">Test</div>
            </div>
          </td>
          <td>Blockchain</td>
          <td>Get an outlook of the awesome program of the weekend from track organizers and the content team.</td>
          <td>March 18, 2017 <br> 09:30 AM</td>
          <td>March 25, <br> 09:30 PM</td>
          <td>No</td>
          <td>
            <div class="ui vertical compact basic buttons">
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'View') class='ui icon button'}}
                <i class="unhide icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'Edit') class='ui icon button'}}
                <i class="edit icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'Delete') class='ui icon button'}}
                <i class="trash outline icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
              {{#ui-popup content=(t 'Browse edit history') class='ui icon button'}}
                <i class="history icon"></i>
              {{/ui-popup}}
            </div>
          </td>
          <td>
            <div class="ui vertical compact basic buttons">
              {{#ui-dropdown class='ui icon bottom right pointing dropdown button'}}
                <i class="green checkmark icon"></i>
                <div class="menu">
                  <div class="item">{{t 'With email'}}</div>
                  <div class="item">{{t 'Without email'}}</div>
                </div>
              {{/ui-dropdown}}
              {{#ui-dropdown class='ui icon bottom right pointing dropdown button'}}
                <i class="red remove icon"></i>
                <div class="menu">
                  <div class="item">{{t 'With email'}}</div>
                  <div class="item">{{t 'Without email'}}</div>
                </div>
              {{/ui-dropdown}}
            </div>
          </td>
        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
  </div>

Scenario 2: Suppose we want to purchase a ticket for an event. From the event page under the ticket section we selected the type and number of tickets required, entered the promotional code and clicked on “Order Now” button which redirects us to the page a new page which shows the event details, order summary and a form to be filled by the buyer for purchasing the ticket and making the payment. The order summary contains the details whaveh has been selected by the user before redirecting to the current page. The order summary table looks like this.

Fig. 2: The semantic UI component “table” used in order summary on purchase new ticket page

The table contains the details about the type of ticket, their individual price, their quantity which is chosen by the user and the total amount which needs to be paid.

The semantic UI class the table belongs to is “ui very basic tablet stackable table” which is same as the one we have used in the earlier scenario. The only difference which we have in this and above scenario is that in this one we have added a table header “Order Summary” as well using the semantic UI segment which is used to create the grouping of the content.

The code for the above table looks like this.

<div class="ui segments">
  <div class="ui secondary segment">
    <h3 class="weight-400">{{t 'Order Summary'}}</h3>
  </div>
  <table class="ui very basic tablet stackable table">
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th class="four wide">{{t 'Ticket Type'}}</th>
        <th class="four wide">{{t 'Price'}}</th>
        <th class="ui aligned two wide">{{t 'Fee'}}</th>
        <th class="one wide">{{t 'Quantity'}}</th>
        <th class="ui aligned two wide">{{t 'Subtotal'}}</th>
      </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr>
        <td>
          <div class="ui small">
            {{t 'Student/In'}}
          </div>
        </td>
        <td>$ {{number-format 4.0}}</td>
        <td>$ {{number-format 4.0}}</td>
        <td>1</td>
        <td>
          $ {{number-format 4.0}}
        </td>
      </tr>
    </tbody>
    <tfoot class="full-width">
      <tr>
        <th></th>
        <th></th>
        <th></th>
        <th>
          <div class="ui aligned small primary icon">
            {{t 'Order Total'}}:
          </div>
        </th>
        <th colspan="4">
          <div class="ui aligned small primary icon">
            $ {{number-format 4.0}}
          </div>
        </th>
      </tr>
    </tfoot>
  </table>
</div>

To conclude this I can say that these are only two scenarios which have been taken as examples to explain how open event frontend uses semantic UI components to incorporate responsiveness in the design, but there are a lot more such examples or scenarios where these components have been used with little variation in the code. These components proved to be very handy and useful when it comes to consistency and readability along with responsiveness to the design.
Reference: The link to the code for fig. 1 and fig.2

Using Ember.js Components in Open Event Frontend

Post author:harshitagupta30
Post published:June 30, 2017
Post category:Event Event Management FOSSASIA GSoC Open Event
Post comments:0 Comments

Ember.js is a comprehensive JavaScript framework for building highly ambitious web applications. The basic tenet of Ember.js is convention over configuration which means that it understands that a large part of the code, as well as development process, is common to most of the web applications. Talking about the components which are nothing but the elements whose role remain same with same properties and functions within the entire project. Components allow developers to bundle up HTML elements and styles into reusable custom elements which can be called anywhere within the project.

In Ember, the components consist of two parts: some JavaScript code and an HTMLBars template. The JavaScript component file defines the behaviour and properties of the component. The behaviours of the component are typically defined using actions. The HTMLBars file defines the markup for the component’s UI. By default, the component will be rendered into a ‘div’ tag element, but a different element can be defined if required. A great thing about templates in Ember is that other components can be called inside of a component’s template. To call a component in an Ember app, we must use {{curly-brace-syntax}}. By design, components are completely isolated which means that they are not directly affected by any surrounding CSS or JavaScript.

Let’s demonstrate a basic Ember component in reference to Open Event Frontend Project for displaying the text as a popup. The component will render a simple text view which will display the entire text. The component is designed with the purpose that many times due to unavailability of space we’re unable to show the complete text so such cases the component will compare the available space with the space required by the whole text view to display the text. If in case the available space is not sufficient then the text will be ellipsized and on hovering the text a popup will appear where the complete text can be seen.

Generating the component

The component can be generated using the following command:

$ ember g component smart-overflow

Note: The components name needs to include a hyphen. This is an Ember convention, but it is an important one as it’ll ensure there are no naming collisions with future HTML elements.This will create the required .js and .hbs files needed to define the component, as well as an Ember integration test.

The Component Template

In the app/templates/components/smart-overflow.hbs file we can create some basic markup to display the text when the component is called.

<span> {{yield}} </span>

The {{yield}} is handlebars expressions which will be helpful in rendering the data to display when the component is called.

The JavaScript Code

In the app/components/smart-overflow.js file, we will define the how the component will work when it is called.

import Ember from 'ember';

const { Component } = Ember;

export default Component.extend({
  classNames: ['smart-overflow'],
  didInsertElement() {
    this._super(...arguments);
    var $headerSpan = this.$('span');
    var $header = this.$();
    $header.attr('data-content', $headerSpan.text());
    $header.attr('data-variation', 'tiny');
    while ($headerSpan.outerHeight() > $header.height()) {
      $headerSpan.text((index, text) => {
        return text.replace(/\W*\s(\S)*$/, '...');
      });
      $header.popup({
        position: 'top center'
      });
      this.set('$header', $header);
    }
  },
  willDestroyElement() {
    this._super(...arguments);
    if (this.get('$header')) {
      this.get('$header').popup('destroy');
    }
  }
});

In the above piece of code, we have first taken the size of the available space in header variable and then taken the size of the content in header span variable. After that, we’re comparing both the sizes to check if the content is greater than the available space then we are ellipsizing the content and create a popup to display the complete text to produce good user experience.

Passing data to the component

To allow the component to display the data properly, we need to pass it in.

In the app/templates/components/event-card.hbs file we can call the component as many times as desired and pass in relevant data for each attribute.

<div class="ui card {{unless isWide 'event fluid' 'thirteen wide computer ten wide tablet sixteen wide mobile column'}}">
    {{#unless isWide}}
      <a class="image" href="{{href-to 'public' event.identifier}}">
        {{widgets/safe-image src=(if event.large event.large event.placeholderUrl)}}
      </a>
    {{/unless}}
    <a class="main content" href="{{href-to 'public' event.identifier}}">
      {{#smart-overflow class='header'}}
        {{event.name}}
      {{/smart-overflow}}
      <div class="meta">
        <span class="date">
          {{moment-format event.startTime 'ddd, MMM DD HH:mm A'}}
        </span>
      </div>
      {{#smart-overflow class='description'}}
        {{event.shortLocationName}}
      {{/smart-overflow}}
    </a>
    <div class="extra content small text">
      <span class="right floated">
        <i role="button" class="share alternate link icon" {{action shareEvent event}}></i>
      </span>
      <span>
        {{#if hasBlock}}
          {{yield}}
        {{else}}
          {{#each tags as |tag|}}
            <a>{{tag}}</a>
          {{/each}}
        {{/if}}
      </span>
    </div>
  </div>

Now if you view the app in the browser at localhost:4200, you will see something like this.

Fig. 1

In the end, we can say that with the components, the code remains much clear and readable. It makes more sense to the developers who happen upon them. The best part about them is their reusability across the application making the development process faster and much more efficient.

Reference: The Complete source for the smart overflow can be found here.

Forms and their validation using Semantic UI in Open Event Frontend

Post author:harshitagupta30
Post published:June 30, 2017
Post category:Event Event Management FOSSASIA GSoC Open Event
Post comments:0 Comments

A web form acts as a communication bridge that allows a user to communicate with the organisation and vice versa. In the Open Event project, we need forms so users can contact the organisation, to register themselves, to log into the website, to order a ticket or to query for some information. Here are a few things which were kept in mind before we designed forms in the Open Event Frontend Project:

The forms were designed on the principle of keeping it simple which means that it should ask only for the relevant information which is required in actual.
They contained the relevant fields ordered in a logical way according to their importance.
They offered clear error messages instantly to give direct feedback and allow users to make instant corrections.
The clear examples were shown in the front of the field.
Proper spacing among the fields was maintained to display proper error messages to the respective form fields.
The mandatory fields are highlighted using ‘*’ to avoid confusion.
Proper colour combinations have been used to inform the user about the progress while filling the form. For eg. red for any ‘error or incomplete’ information while green signifies ‘correct’.
Saving the current data in case the user has to go back to make any corrections later.
Allowing to toggle through the form using the keyboard.

The above designing principles helped in avoiding the negative user experience while using the forms.

Let’s take a closer look at the form and the form validation in case of purchase a new ticket form on the Orders page in Open Event Front-end application.

Creating a form

Let’s start by writing some HTML for the form:

<form class="ui form" {{action 'submit' on='submit' }}>
  <div class="ui padded segment">
    <h4 class="ui horizontal divider header">
      <i class="ticket icon"></i>
      {{t 'Ticket Buyer'}}
    </h4>
    <div class="field">
      <label class="required" for="firstname">{{t 'First Name'}}</label>
      {{input type='text' name='first_name' value=buyer.firstName}}
    </div>
    <div class="field">
      <label class="required" for="lastname">{{t 'Last Name'}}</label>
      {{input type='text' name='last_name' value=buyer.lastName}}
    </div>
    <div class="field">
      <label class="required" for="email">{{t 'Email'}}</label>
      {{input type='text' name='email' value=buyer.email}}
    </div>
    <h4 class="ui horizontal divider header">
        <i class="ticket icon"></i>
        {{t 'Ticket Holder\'s Information'}}
    </h4>
    {{#each holders as |holder index|}}
      <div class="inline field">
        <i class="user icon"></i>
         <label>{{t 'Ticket Holder '}}{{inc index}}</label>
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        <label class="required" for="firstname">{{t 'First Name'}}</label>
        {{input type='text' name=(concat 'first_name_' index) value=holder.firstName}}
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        <label class="required" for="lastname">{{t 'Last Name'}}</label>
        {{input type='text' name=(concat 'last_name_' index) value=holder.lastName}}
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        <label class="required" for="email">{{t 'Email'}}</label>
        {{input type='text' name=(concat 'email_' index) value=holder.email}}
      </div>
      <div class="field">
        {{ui-checkbox label=(t 'Same as Ticket Buyer') checked=holder.sameAsBuyer onChange=(action 'fillHolderData' holder)}}
      </div>
    {{/each}}
    <p>
      {{t 'By clicking "Pay Now", I acknowledge that I have read and agree with the Open Event terms of services and privacy policy.'}}
    </p>
    <div class="center aligned">
      <button type="submit" class="ui teal submit button">{{t 'Pay Now'}}</button>
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

The complete code for the form can be seen here.

In the above code, we have used Semantic UI elements like button, input, label, icon, header and modules like dropdown, checkbox to create the basic structure of the form.

The form is created using the Semantic markup. Along with semantic UI collection “form”, the segment element has been used to create the grouping of similar content like we have a timer and its related description that after 10 minutes the reservation will no longer be held are put together in a segment where they are arranged using semantic UI view “statistic”. Due to the vastness of semantic UI, all the styling has been done using it like fields inlining, button styling, segment background coloring etc.

The form is created using the Semantic markup. Along with semantic UI collection “form”, the segment element has been used to create the grouping of similar content like we have a timer and its related description that after 10 minutes the reservation will no longer be held are put together in a segment where they are arranged using semantic UI view “statistic”. Semantic UI elements like button, input, label, icon, header and modules like dropdown, checkbox have been used. Due to the vastness of semantic UI, all the styling has been done using it like fields inlining, button styling, segment background colouring etc.

The page for the above HTML code looks like this:

Fig. 1: Order Form to purchase a ticket

The complete form can be seen on this link.

Adding form validations

We can also add validation in HTML format but writing the validation in JavaScript file is considered good practice.

Let’s see how we can add validation to fields in Javascript.

  getValidationRules() {
    let firstNameValidation = {
      rules: [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your first name')
        }
      ]
    };
    let lastNameValidation = {
      rules: [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your last name')
        }
      ]
    };
    let emailValidation = {
      rules: [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your email')
        }
      ]
    };
    let validationRules = {
      inline : true,
      delay  : false,
      on     : 'blur',
      fields : {
        firstName: {
          identifier : 'first_name',
          rules      : [
            {
              type   : 'empty',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your first name')
            }
          ]
        },
        lastName: {
          identifier : 'last_name',
          rules      : [
            {
              type   : 'empty',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your last name')
            }
          ]
        },
        email: {
          identifier : 'email',
          rules      : [
            {
              type   : 'email',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter a valid email address')
            }
          ]
        },
        zipCode: {
          identifier : 'zip_code',
          rules   : [
            {
              type   : 'empty',
              prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your zip code')
            }
          ]
        } 
    };

Let’s break this up, first, we have an array of validation rules.

  zipCode: {
     identifier : 'zip_code',
        rules   : [
        {
          type   : 'empty',
          prompt : this.i18n.t('Please enter your zip code')
         }
      ]
   }

The first part zipcode is the identifier in Semantic.

The next bit of the identifier, this can match against either id, name or data-validate attributes on the element. We have here picked up the name which we’re using on our labels.

Next bit of the rules, which is an array of objects defining the type of validation, and the message to prompt the user with.

The second part is the settings:

inline : true,

delay : false,

on : 'blur',

This part says we want validation to occur on blur, delayed and to be inline. This gives us the following effect:

Fig. 2: Order Form after validation

To summarise the post, one can say we have seen here how the form to purchase the event ticket has been designed, coded and styled. The complete form can be seen on this link and the complete code can be seen here. The entire form has been designed in such a way to keep it simple, clear and trustworthy without losing the user interaction.

References:

Diving into the codebase of the Open Event Front-end Project

Post author:harshitagupta30
Post published:June 27, 2017
Post category:Event FOSSASIA GSoC Open Event
Post comments:0 Comments

This post aims to help any new contributor to get acquainted with the code base of the Open Event Front-end project.

The open event front-end is primarily the front-end for the Open Event API server. The project provides the functionality of signing up, add, update and view events details and many other functions to the organisers, speakers and attendees of the event which can be concert, conference, summit or a meetup. The open event front-end project is built on a JavaScript web application framework Ember.js. Ember uses a library Ember data for managing the data in the application and for communicating with server API via endpoints. Ember is a battery included framework which means that it creates all the boilerplate code required to set up the project and create a working web application which can be modified according to our needs.

For example: When I created a new project using the command:

$ ember new open-event-frontend

It created a new project open-event-frontend with all the boilerplate code required to set up the project which can be seen below.

create .editorconfig
create .ember-cli
create .eslintrc.js
create .travis.yml
create .watchmanconfig
create README.md
create app/app.js
create app/components/.gitkeep
Installing app
create app/controllers/.gitkeep
create app/helpers/.gitkeep
create app/index.html
create app/models/.gitkeep
create app/resolver.js
create app/router.js
create app/routes/.gitkeep
create app/styles/app.css
create app/templates/application.hbs
create app/templates/components/.gitkeep
create config/environment.js
create config/targets.js
create ember-cli-build.js
create .gitignore
create package.json
create public/crossdomain.xml
create public/robots.txt
create testem.js
create tests/.eslintrc.js
create tests/helpers/destroy-app.js
create tests/helpers/module-for-acceptance.js
create tests/helpers/resolver.js
create tests/helpers/start-app.js
create tests/index.html
create tests/integration/.gitkeep
create tests/test-helper.js
create tests/unit/.gitkeep
create vendor/.gitkeep
NPM: Installed dependencies
Successfully initialized git.

Now if we go inside the project directory we can see the following files and folders have been generated by the Ember-CLI which is nothing but a toolkit to create, develop and build ember application. Ember has a runtime resolver which automatically resolves the code if it’s placed at the conventional location which ember knows.

➜ ~ cd open-event-frontend
➜ open-event-frontend git:(master) ls
app  config  ember-cli-build.js  node_modules  package.json  public  README.md  testem.js  tests  vendor

What do these files and folders contain and what is their role in reference to the project, “Open event front-end”?

Directory structure of open event frontend project

Fig 1: Directory structure of the Open Event Front-end project

Let’s take a look at the folders and files Ember CLI generates.

App: This is the heart of the project. It is responsible for deciding how our application will look and work. This is the place where folders and files for models, components, routes, templates and styles are stored. The majority of our application’s code is written in this folder. The adapter directory contains the application.js file which is responsible for authorising all outgoing API requests. Since our application is an event application so it has various screens which display the list of events, sessions, schedule, speakers, functionality to add, delete, modify the event details etc. Most of the screens have some features in common which can be reused everywhere inside the application which is kept in components directory. The controllers directory contains the files which will be responsible for the front-end behaviour which is not related to the models of our application. For example actions like sharing the event details. The data of the event is fetched by API but when the share functionality has to work is decided by the controller. Models directory helps in mapping the format of data i.e. in which format the data is fetched from the API. As we interact with the application, it moves through many different states/screens using different URLs. The routes directory decides which template will be rendered and which model will be loaded to display the data in the current template. The services directory contains the services which kept on running in the application like authentication service to check whether the current user has logged in or not, translation service to translate the details into some other language other than English which is supported by the app if required. The styles directory contains .scss files for styling of layouts. The template directory contains the layouts for the user interface of the application in form of Handlebar Templates which contains the HTML code which will be rendered on the screen when the template will be called via routes. The utils directory contains all the utility files like the format of date and time, demographic details, event type, type of topics etc.

Directory structure of App folder

Fig 2: Directory structure of the app folder

Config: It contains files where we can we configure the settings of our application. The environment.js file contains the details like application name and API endpoints and other details required to configure the application. The deploy.js file contains the configurational details about the deployment.

Directory structure of config folder

Fig 3: Directory structure of config folder

Mirage: It contains the files which are required to mock the API server. Since we need to fetch the data from the server so whenever we make a request to get and post the data, mirage will respond to that data. It also contains the file which helps in seeding fake data for the application. Here mocking means creating objects that simulate the behaviour of real objects. The default.js application handles the seeding the fake data but currently, we don’t require that hence it’s empty. The config.js file has the method which sets the API host and namespace of the application.

Directory structure of mirage folder

Fig 4: Directory structure of mirage folder

Node_modules: As we know that Ember is built with Node and uses various node.js modules for functioning. So this directory contains all the files generated from the running the npm package manager which we run at starting while installing and setting up the project on the local device. The package.json file contains all the file maintains the list of npm dependencies for our app.

Public: This directory contains all the assets such as images and fonts related to the application. In the case of our application, to add images apart from the ones that are fetched from the API, they have to be placed here.

Directory structure of public folder

Fig 5: Directory structure of public folder

Translations: Since our application provides various languages support so this directory contains the files to translate the messages.

Directory structure of translations folder

Fig 6: Directory structure of translations folder

Tests: This is the best feature which Ember has provided. We don’t have to generate test they are automatically generated by the Ember-CLI which can be modified according to our requirements. Ember generates three types of test which are Acceptance, Integration and Unit tests. Other than that Ember offers testing for helpers, controllers, routes and models. Test runner of Ember-CLI testem is configured in testem.js. All three types of test have been used in our application.

Directory structure of test folder

Fig 7: Directory structure of test folder

ember-cli-build.js: This file contains the detail how Ember CLI should build our app. In the case of our project, it contains all the metadata such as app imports and other details to build the app.

Vendor: This directory usually contains all the front-end dependencies (such as JavaScript or CSS) which are not managed by Bower go (which is a package manager for managing components that contain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, fonts). But in the case of our project, we have only kept .gitkeep inside this since we have not included any dependency which Bower doesn’t maintain.

To summarise, this post explains about the content and the role of different files and folders in the directory structure of the Open Event Front-end Project which may help a new contributor to get started by getting a basic understanding of the project.