Wrapper libraries for ExtJS

Ext JavaScript library, used for building rich internet applications has emerged as a popular and very vast library. The Ext team has recently released 2.0.1 which is a maintenance release and fixes lots of issues it predecessor had. Over time, developers around have created wrapper libraries to make Ext more developer friendly and easier.

Ext makes the complete use of JavaScript to build the rich application. The code to build a page at times becomes quite large (especially if you have lot of components). Using Ext in its raw form can be difficult if you are new to JavaScript. This is mainly because it difficult to debug the js code and Ext still lacks good tutorials. But I have come across many open-source projects that are aimed to make developer’s life easy. All these projects seem to be quite good and moving in positive direction.

ExtTLD: Ext library extension for java developers! You have all Ext components represented in the form of tags. All you have to do is add the TLD library, add JSTL support and Apache commons library to your project. The project is still in beta stage and is available for download. But I am not sure of the license in which this library will be distributed and its Tag source code is not available for download.

To test, I downloaded the library and was programming the next minute. The steps are simple and easy. Have a look at sample code:

<ext:body>
<ext:window title="Testing" width="300" height="300" id="myWindow">
<ext:toolbar>
<ext:toolbar.button text="Button 1" />
</ext:toolbar>
<div style="padding:5px">This is a simple window in Ext </div>
</ext:window>
</ext:body>

MyGWT: This is a java library for Google Web Toolkit. The library helps developer to compile their java code to web applications and has been licensed under LGPL 3.0. The library seems to have stable release but I am not sure if the library supports Ext 1.x or 2.0. The site has enough examples and tutorials to start you up.

Let’s change the platform. The above mentioned wrappers are related to java developers. What about .Net, Rails and ColdFusion developers? Wrapper libraries for these platforms are also available. For Microsoft platform we have Ext Extender controls which is hosted on CodePlex. For Rails we have library provided by GL Networks Inside. ColdFusion developers have two libraries Ext.CFC and cfExt.

I am Java guy and have not tested libraries for .Net and others. May be you should test them and comment about it. So, web developers... What are you waiting for? Checkout the libraries!!!