Rails devs using Ext - what to do?

[j_l]

So our app is coming along nicely using Ext. In fact, it's made all the difference. However, we use Rails on the back end and it's tied in tightly with Prototype, specicifally via RJS.

Ext uses YUI and jQuery, obviously. At some point, for a Rails developer wanting to use Ext, this can be a lot of js to dowload to the client. The main reason I passed over Dojo for Ext was the fact that Dojo is a bloated mess.

I know with Ext and YUI you can selectively choose what js files/components to use. After a while, it's sometimes not only easier to just include everything, but depeneding on what you use, it becomes necessary to almost just include all Ext js files (or one big one). I don't think there's any getting rid of Prototype/Scriptaculous in Rails (altho, I am looking to see how an Ext plugin could change that) either.

So I guess I'm just sorta trying to see how others are dealing with this issue, if at all. It's going to become more important for me in the future when I move to Ext 1 and end up using more of the library than I am now. I'll probably want to cut out jQuery (if possible) all together. For my app, the goal is less js libs on startup, which minimizes load time.

Anyway, thoughts? Comments?

[brian.moeskau]

If you search the forum, there was another Rails thread where someone mentioned they had "commented out" proto-taculous in Rails and were using Ext, but I don't know the details.

[j_l]

Good to know. I'll search and see what I can find. I think it would be possible to sorta reqire RJS via a plugin. But this is a whole issue in itself. Thanks.

[jack.slocum]

Keep you eyes open for an Ext for prototype too. :)

[hunkybill]

Hi,

My bud Chris seems to have dropped PHP Framework (with YUI-ext .33 wrapped into a very sweet ajax machine) for RoR. He now has EXT working pretty slick, although he does not use Rails quite the way it was intended (his words). My only point is that the RoR/EXT application I've seen works great (much faster than PHP for callbacks).