Client Dependency Framework Beta Released

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 15:08:14 Z

This post was imported from FARMCode.org which has been discontinued. These posts now exist here as an archive. They may contain broken links and images.

I’ve posted a new Beta release on CodePlex, you can get it here: http://clientdependency.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx. On the releases tab includes a sample web site that has most of the functionality that you can do so please download it for a documentation reference.

Newest changes & additions

Namespace and codebase changes/steamlining
Proper versioning added

Versioning is done on a global basis in the config
Old versions are retained and can still be accessed from the Client Dependency URL that was previously used (if necessary)
Versioned composite files names are prefixed with the version number (i.e. version 2 files will be prefixed with '2_') so it's easy to figure out which files are old
The composite file map also reflects which composite file sets are under a specific version

Provider model extended to support 2 types of providers:

File Registration Providers
- Still comes with 2 providers: page header provider and a lazy loading JavaScript client based provider
Composite File Providers:

Comes with the standard provider: CompositeFileProcessor
You can implement your own provider to customize the way that files are combined, compressed, minified, etc... if the standard provider isn't exactly what you are after

Forced providers! You can now force a dependency to use a particular provider. This can be useful if you want to ensure that a particular script or stylesheet is rendered on to the page differently. For example, you may want to ensure that a script is lazy loaded (using the lazy load provider) but the rest are rendered in the page header.
Utility methods added to the ClientDependencyLoader for more dynamic implementations
A test website is included in the release which doubles as documentation, it includes:
- Standard page header provider example
- Forced providers example
- Lazy load provider example
- Dynamically registering dependencies in your code behind
- Registering dependencies with attributes and via aspx controls

Things //TODO:

I’ve finished off versioning so at least i can cross that off from the previous list. But there’s still more to do:

Implement functionality for jQuery CDN

This will be a new control/attribute to easily include jQuery in your project
You will have the option to select which CDN you want to use (Microsoft or Google), or you can supply an address (like your own CDN/web server)
Though this framework will be included in Umbraco 4.1, we’ll be leaving this functionality out of the Umbraco build as we realize that there are quite a few installs that operate behind a firewall that won’t have access to the CDN.

Implement skeleton for Microsoft AJAX 4 CDN

Again, this will be another new control/attribute to easily include Microsoft’s new brand of AJAX with their CDN solution

Add support for MVC
Support for JS/CSS Minification with options to disable per dependency

The reason this hasn’t been implemented yet is that I’ve found a lot of scripts/stylesheets break with minification so we need to be able to turn this on/off on a per file basis

Some more documentation/examples in the example web application

Shazwazza

Client Dependency Framework Beta Released

Newest changes & additions

Things //TODO: