Updated Nov 30, 2008 by mingfai.ma
Labels:	ideas, 0.3

RenderingProcess

Requirement

Progressive Enhancement / Full rendering

Progressive Enhancement: base HTML is provided, and the field rendering is on top of the plain HTMl
Full Rendering: first render the base HTML, then render additional inputEx elements like label, description, class etc.

Render RadioField to RadioButton ? should it be supported? perhaps too complex

Progressive Enhancement

Field

enhance a <input>
enhance a <div><input/></div>

Form

enhance <form> ... any no. of fields </form>
enhance <div><form> ... </form></div>

Proposal

terminology:

'render' the top level method
'createField' - for creating DOM nodes

'validateDOM' - if 'el' is specified, the validate method checks if it is acceptable
'parseDOM'

'renderField' - after the DOM nodes are created, it load the default value, check if it's empty and show typeInvite etc.

upon rendering, detect if an HTML element of required type is existed, e.g. for a Radio Field, it will accept:

            <div id="buttongroup1" class="yui-buttongroup">
                <input id="radio1" type="radio" name="radiofield1" value="Radio 1" checked>
                <input id="radio2" type="radio" name="radiofield1" value="Radio 2">
                <input id="radio3" type="radio" name="radiofield1" value="Radio 3">

                <input id="radio4" type="radio" name="radiofield1" value="Radio 4">
            </div>
src: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/button/btn_example04_clean.html

renderDOM() - if HTML is not present, then render HTML; if HTML element is present, validate it. If valid, then parse it for valid; if not, remove it and re-create it.
validateDOM() -
parseDOM() - if HTML is present, then parse it to extract attributes such as class. The parse will perform basic validation to remove incompatible attributes
renderField() - apply inputEx element, it requires renderHTML()

ideas

should the render process store the original nodes? will there be any chance we need to restore it? e.g. restore a RadioField to the original HTML and render as RadioButton? for this case, it is quite unworth. would there be similar case that is useful?