Using the Dojo Javascript library in Ruby Rails

Jan 20, 2007

I have been using the fine Dojo Javascript library in a web app written in Common Lisp and this morning added Dojo to the code base for a current Rails project. The easiest way to get started using Dojo and Rails is to simply install the developer's version (non-compacted) of dojo.js and the src directory directly in your Rail project's public/javascripts directory, so it looks like this:

public/
  javascripts/
    dojo.js
    src/

Again, the "src" directory contains the dojo source files (besides the dojo.js loader). Dojo will complain about rendered Rails web pages withot HTML and HEAD tags, so I added the following HTML with Dojo setup to the view for my main application controller:

<html>
 <head>
  <title>KBSportal KnowledgeManagement</title>
  <script type="text/javascript">
  djConfig = {isDebug: true}; 
 </script>
 <script src="/javascripts/dojo.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
 <script type="text/javascript">
  dojo.require("dojo.io.*");
  dojo.require("dojo.event.*");
  dojo.require("dojo.widget.TabContainer");
  dojo.require("dojo.widget.LinkPane");
  dojo.require("dojo.widget.ContentPane");
  dojo.require("dojo.widget.LayoutContainer");
  dojo.require("dojo.widget.Checkbox");
 </script>
 <style type="text/css">
  body {
   font-family : sans-serif;
  }
  .dojoTabPaneWrapper {
     padding : 10px 10px 10px 10px;
  }
 </style>
</head>

Dojo is definitely "heavier weight" than the prototype.js Javascript library that is provided with Rails so you may not want to use Dojo for very high traffic sites.

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Using the Dojo Javascript library in Ruby Rails