=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 the 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 for authors. =head1 LICENSE See L for the license. =cut