YUI2's Datatable is a great widget I use in MyOwnDB and here's a small tip for when you use it to load a remote data source .

In that case, the datatable is getting the data to display from a YUI2 DataSource that has been configured with the URL to use when fetching the data requested by the datatable.

When instanciating the datatable, you can pass it a configuration object, with amongst other option, the initialRequest that should be sent by the associated datasource when the datatable is displayed for the first time. initialRequest is a string that is simply appended to the URL passed to the DataSource.

So if your datasource URL is "http://www.myurl.com?all=true", and your initialRequest is "sort=name", the request sent by the DataSource will be for the URL "http://www.myurl.com?all=truesort=name", which is clearly not good.

The solution here is to either be sure that the datasource URL ends with a ? or a &, or to always start the initialRequest with &.

The second option is the easiest in my case.

In MyOwnDB , there's an CrosstabObject inheriting from ActiveRecord, but that doesn't correspond to any table in the database (actually, it is configured to map to a table in the database as this is mandated by AR, but it's never used like that). It is only used to select data with find_by_sql.

Now, some columns of the data returned by the query can be data that has been serialized to YAML, but each query has its own set of serialized columns.

I first tried to call the serialize method provided by rails, but it didn't work. I suspect the ActiveRecord model needs the column to exist when it is initialized for the serialization to be activated, which is not the case here as the CrosstabObject is mapped to an object that doesn't have the columns returned by the sql query.

In this example, the query returns a result set which has the test_attach column serialized to YAML. test_attach is not a column of the table to which CrosstabObject was mapped. As you can see, the serialization is configured, but has no effect on the returned data:

If I redefine the test_attach accessor on list[6] 's singleton class, I get the expected result though:

As each query has its own set of serialized columns, what I want to do is just pass the list of columns that contain serialized data, so that the accessors get defined, which is easily done by adding a method to CrosstabObject:

which enables me to easily configure the columns returned by the sql query that are serialized:

As I'm working on the new interface of MyOwnDB based on YUI, I have discovered 2 subtle differences between IE and FF when creating nodes with YUI 3.

1. You can't change attribute values of INPUT nodes created from a template using the long closing node syntax

Update: IE is actually doing the right thing, as the input tag does not accept a closing tag as defined by the W3C .

By long syntax, I mean closing a tag with an explicit closing tag:

as opposed to the short syntax:

If you create an input node with YUI3 based on the long syntax with IE, you won't be able to set attribute values:

The solution is to use the short syntax to close your tag:

Note that this is only for input nodes. Divs are workling fine with the long syntax:

2. With IE, you can't set the type of an input node to "file"

This code will generate a file field with FF, but a text field with IE:

If you want to make it work with IE, you have to make your template include the type attribute:

I've put a demo page for those interesting in the code, with a YUI console.

J'ai le plaisir de donner une présentation ce soir au Café Numérique dédié à l'Open Source, comme annoncé également sur le site d'actualité Open Source de Profoss . Le sujet de la présentation est l'Open Source où ne l'attend pas, et montre combien le Libre et l'Open Source se sont propagé ces 10 dernières années. Pratiquement plus aucun domaine n'échappe à son influence. Parfois même sans qu'on s'en rende compte!

Voici mes slides au format PDF:
Logiciels Libres Inaperçus

Bonne découverte!