Table of contents

Subpages

Getting started

Blueriq provides an API for interacting with a Blueriq session and obtaining page changes, see UI REST API for documentation on all endpoints and their request/response bodies. This section describes the theming possibilities that may be used to let Blueriq serve a context-dependent page, configured according to the theme/language settings of e.g. shortcuts.

Key benefits MVC UI

Modern web application architecture

• Provides clean separation of concerns (SoC)

• Easy integration with JavaScript frameworks

• Enables the full control over the rendered HTML

• Less server load

Better User experience

• Single page
• Partial updates
• More responsive user experience
• Easy integration with UI libraries
• Responsive web design

Guidelines

The following guidelines are advised while developing a custom theme for the Blueriq MVC UI.

• Single page oriented application design
  • Separate content in small relevant blocks of information, only deliver relevant and valuable content.
  • Use conditions to show only context relative information
    
    
• Page model size constraints
  • A large page model can have significant impact on the performance of the frontend. It is especially advised that lists/tables, which have a large page model representation, are limited to 10-20 items per page.
  • The performance on mobile devices strongly differs per device, having a small page model is even more important here.

Initial Page

The purpose of the initial page is to load all the required resources (eg javascript or css) and to provide a base layout.

StringTemplate is used as the template engine, the main template file is expected to be:

• A Template Group File: meaning multiple templates can be used and referred to.
• The main template name has the context as parameter. The name of the main template can be configured.

The Main Template accepts the context parameter. On this object the following properties are available:

• theme: The name of the current theme
• apiBasePath: The path to the root of the web api
• webResourcePath: The path to the root of the webresources
• extensions: The extension context with the following properties:
  • cssExtensionUrls: List of custom css files
  • jsExtensionUrls: List of custom javascript files
• sessionId: The id of the current session
• currentPage: Content object of the current page
• currentPageJson: Current page serialized in json form
• isDevelopmentMode: Indicator whether the development mode is activated.
• sessionTimeout: session timeout in milliseconds

Configuration

In java the following options can be configured in the aquima.properties file:

mvc.themes=forms,dashboard
mvc.forms.templateGroupFile=UI/mvc/forms.stg
mvc.forms.templateName=main
mvc.dashboard.templateGroupFile=UI/mvc/dashboard.stg
mvc.dashboard.templateName=main
mvc.developmentMode=true

The corresponding configuration in .net:

<webApplication>
   ...
    <!-- UI -->
    <ui>
 	  ...
      <mvc developmentMode="true">
        <themes>
          <theme name="forms" templateGroupFile="UI/mvc/forms.stg" templateName="main"/>
          <theme name="dashboard" templateGroupFile="UI/mvc/dashboard.stg" templateName="main"/>
        </themes>
      </mvc>
    </ui>
</webApplication>

Rendering

The mvc UI does not restrict to a particular mvc framework. However Blueriq has chosen for Knockout for the implementation of our default themes. 

Blueriq provides the forms and dashboard theme. Themes can be developed from the ground up or the default themes can be extended/customized.

After the initial page is loaded the knockout implementation retrieves it's data via the json web api. This data is transformed using the knockout mvc framework.

...