complete MooseX::Types port

[catagits/Reaction.git] / old / Manual / FAQ.pod

=head1 NAME

Reaction::Manual::FAQ

=head2 INTRODUCTION

=head3 What is Reaction?

Reaction is an MVCish framework that is designed with two goals in mind:
"don't repeat yourself" and "components rule."

=head3 How is it different from other MVC frameworks?

Reaction is more flexible and abstract. Web development is only a specialized
set of what Reaction is designed to provide - the inner classes are general
enough to be used in many different environments and for solving non-web
problems.

It is planned to go a lot further than just the web - we want to develop GUIs
and CLIs as easily and painlessly as possible, using Reaction. How about
writing your web application and instantly getting a CLI to go with it? That's
only part of the flexibility we have in mind.

=head3 How is it different from Catalyst?

Catalyst is MVC-based whereas Reaction splits the Model into 2 parts: The
"Domain Model" and the "Interface Model." Web development is only a sample of
what Reaction can do - but it already comes bundled with the basic components
that you would have to program in Catalyst. At the moment, Reaction runs on
Catalyst for web development.

=head3 What's a Domain?

A domain is the field where an abstraction makes sense. For example, to build
a web site a programmer may come up with an abstraction of a User, Products,
User roles, etc. These concepts are just one particular implementation of all
the possible abstractions for that web site -- the set of all these possible
abstractions make up the Domain.

=head3 What's a Domain Model?

A Domain Model is an actual computational model of an abstraction. In most
cases these models are business-based, as in the set of objects that make up
the representation for a particular domain, such as Users, Products, User
Roles, etc.

=head3 What's an Interface Model?

A well defined model for the common operations involved in a particular mode
of interaction with the domain. In other words, it's a layer around the Domain
Model that provides interaction with it. One example would be an authorization
procedure for different views of the same data, based on user's credentials.

=head3 I'm lost! What does "Model" mean?

The term "model" can mean two things: "model as in Computer Model" and "Model
as in MVC". For this document, the former will be written as just "Model"
whereas the latter will be referred to as "Model as in MVC."

=head3 Haven't I seen these definitions elsewhere?
Yes, similar terms have been used in Java-land and Smalltalk-ville. Note that
for the sake of simplicity we are not giving rigorous (and more complex)
definitions.

=head3 What's a View?

=head3 What's a Viewport?

ListView and ActionForm are subclasses of ViewPort.

=head3 What's a Focus Stack?

=head3 What are Tangents?

=head3 Can I have a pony?

=head2 USING REACTION

=head3 Where do I put my HTML?

Packages involved
 ComponentUI
 ComponentUI::Controller::Bar
 ComponentUI::Controller::Baz
 ComponentUI::Controller::Foo
 ComponentUI::Controller::Root
 ComponentUI::Model::TestDB
 ComponentUI::Model::Action
 ComponentUI::View::XHTML

CRUD    

=head1 AUTHORS

See L<Reaction::Class> for authors.

=head1 LICENSE

See L<Reaction::Class> for the license.

=cut