Appcelerator: RIA Made (pretty) Easy

We (that is, “we” developers) all have our favorite secret weapons when it comes to making the complicated (read: RIA) applications seem easy, stuff like JQuery, YUI, Flex, mootools (hahaha, funny right?) Flash, ZK, Openlazlo, etc. But allow me to introduce a new discovery, Appcelerator.

What is it? Well, its not just a collection of javascripts and CSS snippets, its more like a fully integrated development platform with its own (very ant-like) build system and (perl-like) updating system. Appcelerator, an open source (using the more friendly, flexible and down-to-earth license of Apache) system provides developers (not so much designers) with tools to make RIA applications less of a chore.

How it works is that Appcelerator’s SDK basically “compiles” a series of templates (HTML/CSS) and Java code and creates all the appropriate JavaScripts, and a WAR file. Using a message-oriented-architecture all communications between the front-end and back end occurs through discreet “messages” which are just serialized chunks of JSON. Appcelerator handles all of the marshaling/unmarshaling for you so your only concern is making the individual pieces of functionality.

Integration is what appears to be Appcelerator’s real strong point. With the ability to fit in nicely with a Java application, it’ll be more than happy to be in your Perl, PHP, Ruby, or Python application, as well as your Google Gears application as well. With a full suite of widgets and plugins most common pieces are probably already built for you… um, so you don’t have to!

The magic of Appcelerator happens by a dynamic HTML scripting-like language where the developer simply assigns IDs to HTML elements and an “on” attribute which defines (for Appcelerator) the action to perform:

<div id="my_comment" on="r:app.my.package.response then effect[fade]"></div>

What that basically says is when the id “my_comment” receives a response (r) of app.my.package.response then it will fade in the value.

Pretty cool huh? Yes, its way more sophisticated than just this ridiculously simple example, but the idea is that everything is done through a very human-readable scripting syntax and all of the heavy lifting and tedious code of calling the server, marshaling the objects and dealing with the output is done for you.