Dojo: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 1. Toolkit Overview

This chapter provides an overview of Dojo's architecture, takes you through installing Dojo, introduces some domain-specific jargon, runs through the bootstrapping process, and then provides some example code that should whet your appetite for the chapters that follow. Like any other introduction, much of this chapter paints in broad strokes and sets the tone for the rest of the book. Hopefully, you'll find it helpful as you begin your journey with the toolkit.

Overview of Dojo's Architecture

As you're about to see, describing Dojo as a toolkit is no mere coincidence. In addition to providing a JavaScript standard library of sorts, Dojo also packs a collection of feature-rich, turnkey widgets that require little to no JavaScript coding at all, build tools, a testing framework, and more. This section provides an overview of Dojo's architecture from a broad point of view, shown in Figure 1-1. As you'll see, the organization for the rest of this book is largely driven by the toolkit's architecture. Even though DojoX is displayed as an independent entity from Dijit, DojoX resources could also be built upon Dijit resources, just as your own custom widgets could leverage any combination of Dijit and DojoX resources.

Figure 1-1. One depiction of how the various Dojo components can be thought of as relating to one another

Base

The kernel of Dojo is Base, an ultra-compact, ...