Opa Application Development

By Li Wenbo

It is a tutorial guide to learning how to use Opa with JavaScript, Nodejs, and MongoDB to develop web applications easily and effectively.If you are a web developer who wants to get started with the Opa framework and build web applications with it? Then this book is for you. Web development experience is assumed and would be helpful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Jun 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782163756

Book preview

Table of Contents

Opa Application Development

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with Opa

Installing Opa

Installing Node.js

Installing the required modules

Installing the Opa compiler

Testing the installation

Setting up editors

Sublime Text

Vim

Emacs

Your first Opa application

Summary

2. Basic Syntax

Basic datatypes

Integers

Floats

Strings

Sum

Functions

Last expression return

Modules

Data structures

Records

Tuples

Lists

Iterating through a list

Finding elements

Transforming lists

Sorting a list

Maps

Pattern matching

Text parsers

Summary

3. Developing Web Applications

Starting a web server

A simple example

The server module

Dispatching requests

The resource handler

The dispatch handler

The register handler

The customize handler

The handlers group

Preparing pages

XHTML

Creating a page

Adding styles

Handling events

Manipulating DOMs

DOM selection

Reading values

Updating content

Binding an event handler

Animations

Summary

4. Using Bootstrap

Importing Bootstrap

Using classes

Using icons

Bootstrap icons

Font Awesome icons

Using widgets

Summary

5. Communicating between Client and Server

Client and server slicing

A simple example

Slicing annotations

Module slicing

Expression slicing

Client and server communication

Session

Cell

Network

Summary

6. Binding with Other Languages

Binding JavaScript

The first example

Using external types

Binding Node.js

Binding external functions using the classic syntax

Summary

7. Working with Databases

A quick start to MongoDB

Database manipulation

Records

Lists

Sets and maps

Querying data

Summary

8. Internationalization

Internal approach

External approach

Summary

9. Building a Chat Application

Creating a project

Launching the web server

Designing user interface

Building application logic

Broadcasting and receiving messages

Summary

10. Building a Game – Pacman

The project structure

The HTML5 Canvas

Drawing a shape

Using the fill and stroke properties

Drawing a curve

Drawing an image

Drawing the text

Binding the external JavaScript library

Preloading the resources

Playing sounds

Summary

11. Developing a Social Mobile Application – LiveRoom

Project structure

Authorizing a user

Signing in and signing out

Signing in with Facebook

The application

Listing topics

Creating a topic

Posting messages and comments

Designing for mobile devices

Summary

Index

Opa Application Development

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Opa Application Development

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: June 2013

Production Reference: 1040613

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78216-374-9

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Parag Kadam (<[e-mail]>)

Credits

Author

Li Wenbo

Reviewers

Joseph Goldman

Alok Menghrajani

Acquisition Editor

Mary Jasmine Nadar

Commissioning Editor

Neha Nagwekar

Technical Editors

Sharvari H. Baet

Priyanka Kalekar

Project Coordinator

Sherin Padayatty

Proofreader

Paul Hindle

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Graphics

Abhinash Sahu

Production Coordinator

Aparna Bhagat

Cover Work

Aparna Bhagat

About the Author

Li Wenbo studied Computer Science and Technology at Wuhan University, graduating with a master's degree. He has two years experience working as a Software Engineer in a leading telecom company in China. He has been doing web development for about 8 years, ever since he was a student at Wuhan University. He is familiar with a lot of programming languages such as C/C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, and so on, and he has a passion for new things and technologies. Li tried the Opa framework last year and found it very interesting. He then participated in an Opa challenge and won the first prize.

Li Wenbo is now a freelance developer and owns a small studio in Wuhan, China.

About the Reviewers

Joseph Goldman is an experienced freelance programmer who cut his teeth on 8086 Assembler before joining the Homo Sapiens race by learning to walk upright and adopting more conversational and universal programming languages such as C, Objective C, Smalltalk, Pascal, and more. Over his illustrious 30 year career, he has programmed for VAX under VMS, Sun Microsystems work stations, MS DOS 8088 - Pentium CPUs, MS Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. A tireless early adopter of new programming paradigms and languages, he is very fond of the new generation of functional and object-oriented programming languages, such as Google's Dart, Opa, Scala, and more, as well as other innovative language designs, most notably REBOL. Today, he specializes in writing web apps and mobile apps for iOS and Android platforms, both smart phones as well as tablets. He is self-employed and can be reached at <[e-mail]>. In the late 1990s, Mr. Goldman co-authored REBOL - The Official Guide that was published in the year 2000 by Osborne McGraw-Hill.

Alok Menghrajani Computer Science at EPFL and CMU. He graduated in 2005. He then started working in the field of web security and is currently an engineer at Facebook.

Alok got the opportunity to learn Opa when it was open sourced. He realized the potential this framework offered to improve web development; Opa helps build web applications faster and in a safer way.

He has made various contributions to Opa: reporting bugs, providing feedback to the core team, and helping out with community events such as hackathons.

He is also the author of http://pixlpaste.com/, a web application to share screenshots and images written in Opa.

He has also worked on Opa: Up and Running and JavaScript for PHP Developers.

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