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Rinvex Widgets

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Rinvex Widgets is a powerful and easy to use widget system, that combines both the power of code logic and the flexibility of template views. You can create asynchronous widgets, reloadable widgets, and use the console generator to auto generate your widgets, all out of the box.

Installation

1. Install the package via composer:

2. Done!

Usage

Create your widget

Let's assume that we want to make a list of recent posts as a widget, and reuse it in several locations.

First, we can create a Widget class using the following command:

That command will generate a new widget class with App\Widgets\RecentPosts namespace, and located at app/Widgets/RecentPosts.php path by default.

The basic content of a widget is as follows:

All widgets MUST extend the Rinvex\Widgets\Models\AbstractWidget, and MUST have a public make method, you can return whatever you want from inside that method, with complete freedom and full flexbility to write your own logic and return your results whether it's pure data array/json, or rendered view or whatever. It's really up to you. Treat this method as a normal PHP method, or a controller action. You may return view('view.path.here') or other content to be rendered and displayed.

Call your widgets

Widgets are called by their fully qualified namespaces, for example check the following code:

Now you can use that $recentPosts anywhere you want in your view, it contains the widget result.

For your convenience, Rinvex Widgets include also a widget helper for easy usage. Example:

You can also call widgets inside views using blade directive with same signature as follows:

And last but not least, there's a Widget facade that's automatically registered into your application, so you can use Widget::make('App\Widgets\RecentPosts') too.

The Widget::make() method (and similarly all the above alternative calling methods) accepts three parameters; The first parameter is the only mandatory parameter which is the fully qualified namespace of the widget you're calling, the second parameter is for optional arguments to be passed to the widget constructor, and the third parameter is a boolean flag with true or false for asynchronous loading, will talk about that later.

Widget parameters

As mentioned before, the widget creation takes three parameters; The first parameter is the only mandatory parameter which is the fully qualified namespace of the widget you're calling, the second parameter is for optional arguments to be passed to the widget constructor, and the third parameter is a boolean flag with true or false for asynchronous loading.

As you can see, this widget is now loaded asynchronously, more about this feature later.

Asynchronous widgets

In some situations it can be very beneficial to load widget content with AJAX.

Fortunately, this can be achieved very easily! All you need to do is to pass true as the third parameter to the Widget Facade or the blade directive. Example: Widget::make('Widget\Class\Path', [], true), and simirally @widget('Widget\Class\Path', [], true).

Note: When calling widgets asynchronously, the parameters are sent encrypted in the request, so make sure they are json_encoded and json_decoded before and afterwards.

By default nothing is shown until asynchronous call is finished. This can be customized by adding a placeholder() method to the widget class, and return any string to be displayed. See the following example:

Notes:

• Rinvex Widgets package auto register a new route with rinvex.widgets.async name, which could be accessed via http://yourproject.app/widget. That route accepts asynchronous widget calls, with required parameters, all encrypted and process it then return the response.
• If you need to modify the default route definition or behaviour, you may need to copy Rinvex\Widgets\Providers\WidgetsServiceProvider to your app, modify it according to your needs and register it in your Laravel application instead of the default one. In such case you may need to disable Laravel Auto Discovery for this package Rinvex Widgets.

Reloadable widgets

You can go even further and automatically reload widget every N seconds.

Just set the $reloadTimeout property of the widget class and you are done.

Both synchronous and asynchronous widgets can become reloadable. You should use this feature with care, because it can easily spam your app with asynchronous calls if timeouts are too low.

In case you need short response rate or realtime, you may have to consider using web sockets which is better in such case, but it's not implemented by default in this package.

Container

Asynchronous and Reloadable widgets both require some DOM interaction so they wrap all widget output in a html container. This container is defined by AbstractWidget::container() method and can be customized too.

To make it easy, flexible, cacheable, better in performance, and even overridable, we made that container accepts a view path, so you can use whatever syntax you want in that view including of course the lovely blade tags and directives.

Just set the $container property of the widget class and you are done.

Note: Nesting asynchronous and reloadable widgets is currently not supported.

Widget groups

In most cases Blade is a perfect tool for setting the position and order of widgets. However, sometimes you may find it useful to approach widgets from a columns perspective by grouping them together. Check the following example:

The Widget::addWidget() method accepts two parameters, the first parameter is the rendered widget, which is an instance of Illuminate\Support\HtmlString, and the second parameter is the position where you'd like to place that widget in that group. Position?! Yes, exactly. You can order widgets inside each group, and you can imagine widget groups as a CMS columns, that way you can structure your page the way you want.

To render a widget group and print the output you can do the following:

Or using blade syntax:

And if you want to get all your widget groups collection, you can do so as follows:

Notes:

• The Widget::group('sidebar') returns a collection of widgets, and Widget::groups() returns a collection of widget groups. Both collections can be utilized exactly the same way as Laravel Collections.

You can set a separator that will be display between widgets inside the same group as follows:

You can also wrap each widget in a group using wrap method like that.

The wrapCallback() method accept a callback, that accepts two variables. The first one is the index/key of that widget in the group, the second one is the rendered content of the widget as \Illuminate\Support\HtmlString object. Note that you've full access to the whole widget group collection, so you can query the total number of widgets for example $this->count() or any other information you may need to utilize.

Checking the state of a widget group:

And similarly you can check the state of all groups too:

Notes:

• The Widget class is a facade, that's auto registered into your Laravel application, so you may call it anywhere even inside your controllers, or views. You may call the aliased facade as Widget only, or call the fully qualified namespace as Rinvex\Widgets\Facades\Widget, no difference.
• The Widget facade has a fluent API, which means you can intuitively chain methods with ease.

Changelog

Refer to the Changelog for a full history of the project.

Support

The following support channels are available at your fingertips:

• Chat on Slack
• Help on Email
• Follow on Twitter

Contributing & Protocols

Thank you for considering contributing to this project! The contribution guide can be found in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests are very welcome.

• Versioning
• Pull Requests
• Coding Standards
• Feature Requests
• Git Flow

Security Vulnerabilities

If you discover a security vulnerability within this project, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. All security vulnerabilities will be promptly contacted.

About Rinvex

Rinvex is a software solutions startup, specialized in integrated enterprise solutions for SMEs established in Alexandria, Egypt since June 2016. We believe that our drive The Value, The Reach, and The Impact is what differentiates us and unleash the endless possibilities of our philosophy through the power of software. We like to call it Innovation At The Speed Of Life. That’s how we do our share of advancing humanity.

License

This software is released under The MIT License (MIT).

(c) 2016-2021 Rinvex LLC, Some rights reserved.