Chat Message Builders Factory

This widget is extremely linked to ts.chat widget as it gives a way to generate builders for the chat widget. In this way, the chat widget could delegate the rendering to an external component and focus on its other concerns. Following a MVC pattern, the chat widget represents the main controller which knows how to handle differents views; However, it doesn't know hot to display a single view; This is the role of builders.

Detailed documentation can be found here : documentation

Builders

Builders are simple Alloy controllers that should export one unique method build; This method will be used to transform a Message object into a view. The real type of the messsage object depends on what kind of model is used to represent it; To one kind of model, there is one builder. Both are complementary.

Messenger-like

There is for the moment only one builder supplied with the factory; This is the messenger-like builder which look like this :

One supposed that the model is a Backbone model which gives access to at least an author, a content and a date.

Custom builders

One may add an additional builders by following the required pattern (see MessageBuilder interface in [documentation][ddoc]) and putting his file alongside the factory (widget.js). Then, the builder will be available from the outside.

The factory is in charge of creating the final container which is a TableViewRow and supplies it to all builders. A builder should only populate this container with formated data. In other words, builder are kind of templates for the inner-content of a TableViewRow.

How it works

From any app or widget which may used the ts.chat widget, just get an instance of a builder by using :

    var msgBuilder = Alloy
        .createWidget('ts.messageBuilderFactory')
        .getBuilder(/*<builder-name>*/, {
            /* <builder-conf> ,
            ... */
        });

    // or, depending of the context

    var msgBuilder = Widget
        .createWidget('ts.messageBuilderFactory')
        .getBuilder(/*<builder-name>*/, {
            /* <builder-conf>,
            ... */
        });

Then, just supply the builder to the ts.chat widget

Dependencies

messenger-like builder

This builder has a dependency to momentJS as commonJS module. The current version in use (2.10.2) has been included in the lib folder.

TODO

• Create some other builders
• Add a clean function to the factory and the existing builders
• Write some tests on the test branch