Enyo: Up and Running

Chapter 2. Core Concepts

Introduction

In this chapter, we’ll cover the core concepts of Enyo that we only touched on in the last chapter. You will be able to write powerful apps after absorbing the information in just this chapter. We’ll go over the concepts one by one and illustrate each with code you can run in your browser.

One of the driving ideas behind Enyo is that you can combine simple pieces to create more complex ones. Enyo introduces four concepts to assist you: kinds, encapsulation, components, and layout. We’ll cover components and layout more thoroughly in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, respectively.

Kinds

Enyo is an object-oriented framework. It is true that every JavaScript application regardless of framework (or lack thereof) contains objects. However, Enyo’s core features provide a layer on top of JavaScript that makes it easier to express object-oriented concepts such as inheritance and encapsulation.

In Enyo, kinds are the building blocks that make up apps. The widgets that appear on screen are instances of kinds, as are the objects that perform Ajax requests. Kinds are not strictly for making visual components. Basically, kinds provide a template from which the actual objects that make up your app are generated.

Be Kind

One of the simplest possible declarations for a kind is:

enyo.kind({ name: 'MyKind' });

Names

Kinds don’t even need names. Enyo will automatically assign unique names, though you won’t know what they are. Anonymous kinds are often used in Enyo apps. You saw ...