Concepts and frameworks used

You should already know that the CTools work on the back end using Java, and make use of the Pentaho API, and on the client side, work on top of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

CDF and implicitly CDE are HTML pages that employ JavaScript to make dashboards more interactive and dynamic. These tools also make use of CSS to make the user interface the most astounding it can be.

To leverage the code and work on the CTools side, but also to make it possible to use the most recent and advanced technology, they include some frameworks/libraries that you can take a look at. The most used ones and the ones you should take a look at are as follows:

Utilities:

• jQuery (https://jquery.com/)
• jQueryUI (http://jqueryui.com/)
• jQuery i18n (https://plugins.jquery.com/i18n/)
• Mustache (https://github.com/janl/mustache.js)
• Backbone (http://backbonejs.org/)
• Underscore (http://underscorejs.org/)
• Moment (http://momentjs.com/)
• Require (http://requirejs.org/)

Layout-related:

• Modernizr (http://modernizr.com/)
• Bootstrap (http://getbootstrap.com/)
• Blueprint (http://www.blueprintcss.org/)
• Font-awesome (http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/)

Components:

• Raphael (http://raphaeljs.com/)
• Protovis (http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/)
• DataTables (https://www.datatables.net/)
• Community Charts Components – CCC (www.webdetails.pt/ctools/ccc/)
• Select2 (https://select2.github.io/)
• Chosen (http://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/)
• Sparkline (http://omnipotent.net/jquery.sparkline/#s-about)
• Fancybox (http://fancybox.net/)

Some of these frameworks and libraries are covered in the book, at least a part of the libraries and frameworks. To make the most out of them, you should read their documentation. It's not the purpose of this book to teach you how to work with them.