I missed my update last week, so this post actually covers the past two weeks.

Rewrite with dijit._Widget

One of the first things Peter mentioned after my initial commits was that my code was not very Dojo-like, and (though he didn't say it) not very good. I had all the setup code in a single initialization function, which the client had to explicitly call. Instead of having a separate class for each component (Source, Canvas, Editor), each piece was declared as a dojo.dnd.Source and then specific actions were attached here, there, and anywhere. The code was not at all modular, with the implementation exposed in many places. Peter gently suggested making each component a subclass of dijit._Widget, which would give me a lot of built-in functionality (dijit.byId, constructors, etc.) for free.

Refactoring the code to subclass dijit._Widget has been very helpful. The components are completely decoupled, my code is much more modular, and the client code is quite simple. Creating a class for each component also makes customizing their behavior a cinch, since it's easy to monkeypatch any of the class methods.

PropEditor

I've finally created the PropEditor, which allows you to edit the properties of a field element. Right now it only supports changing the name, but eventually it will be able to edit the choices for a select, change the default value for a field, and more.

pub/sub

I'm trying to keep the components completely decoupled after the refactoring, so each piece is usable in isolation from the others. This means that, for example, the Canvas can't call a method of the PropEditor when a field is selected, since there may not even be a PropEditor instance on the page. Instead of direct method calls, I'm using dojo.publish + dojo.subscribe to pass messages and data around to anyone who wants to listen. This is my first time doing event-driven programming like this, and I think it's a neat way to maintain modularity between classes. The PropEditor could actually be used on any page that publishes the correct messages, not just in concordance with my Canvas class.

Loading existing elements

Since I'm building a form editor, and not just a form creator, the Canvas needs a way to load existing form elements from a page. Taking a page from dojo.dnd.Source, the Canvas will now add any existing soc.ed.Elements to its internal structure when the Canvas is created, similar to how dojoDndItems are gathered.

All the major pieces of the editor have been created, so now I'll be focused on making each one richer and better.