Extending generic components

We often discover, late in the development process, that the components we rely on are lacking something we need. If the base component we're using is designed well, then we can extend it, plugging in the new properties or functionality we need. In this section, we'll walk through some scenarios where we might need to extend the common generic components used throughout our application.

If we're going to scale our code, we need to leverage these base components where we can. We'll probably want to start extending our own base components at some point too. Some tools are better than others at facilitating the extension mechanism through which we implement this specialized behavior.

Identifying common data and functionality

Before we look at extending the specific component types, it's worthwhile to consider the common properties and functionality that's common across all component types. Some of these things will be obvious up-front...