Up: Main page Next: Chapter

Exploring Lift

Lift 2.0 Edition

Written by

Derek Chen-Becker, Marius Danciu and Tyler Weir

Copyright © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 by Derek Chen-Becker, Marius Danciu, David Pollak, and Tyler Weir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

The home page for Exploring Lift is at http://exploring.liftweb.net. Here you can find up-to-date copies of the text, as well as links to the mailing list, issue tracking, and source code.

Table of Contents

Chapter: Dedication

Chapter: Acknowledgements

Part I: The Basics

Chapter 1: Welcome to Lift!

Section 1.1: Why Lift?

Section 1.2: What You Should Know before Starting

Section 1.3: Typographical Conventions

Section 1.4: For More Information about Lift

Section 1.5: Your First Lift Application

Chapter 2: PocketChange

Section 2.1: Defining the Model

Section 2.2: Our First Template

Section 2.3: Writing Snippets

Section 2.4: A Little AJAX Spice

Section 2.5: Conclusion

Chapter 3: Lift Fundamentals

Section 3.1: Entry into Lift

Section 3.2: Bootstrap

Subsection 3.2.1: Class Resolution

Section 3.3: A Note on Standard Imports

Section 3.4: Lift’s Main Objects

Subsection 3.4.1: S object

Subsection 3.4.2: SHtml

Subsection 3.4.3: LiftRules

Section 3.5: The Rendering Process

Section 3.6: Notices, Warnings, and Error Messages

Section 3.7: URL Rewriting

Section 3.8: Custom Dispatch Functions

Section 3.9: HTTP Redirects

Section 3.10: Cookies

Section 3.11: Session and Request State

Section 3.12: Conclusion

Chapter 4: Templates in Lift

Section 4.1: Template XML

Subsection 4.1.1: Locating Template XML

Subsection 4.1.2: Processing Template XML

Section 4.2: Designer-Friendly Templates

Subsection 4.2.1: Determining the Content Element

Subsection 4.2.2: Invoking Snippets Via the Class Attribute

Subsection 4.2.3: Binding via CSS transforms

Section 4.3: HTML5 Support

Section 4.4: Views

Section 4.5: Tags

Section 4.6: Head and Tail Merge

Section 4.7: Binding

Chapter 5: Snippets

Section 5.1: The Snippet Tag

Section 5.2: Snippet Dispatch

Subsection 5.2.1: Implicit Dispatch Via Reflection

Subsection 5.2.2: Explicit Dispatch

Subsection 5.2.3: Per-request Remapping

Section 5.3: Snippet Methods

Subsection 5.3.1: Binding Values in Snippets

Subsection 5.3.2: CSS Selector Transforms

Subsection 5.3.3: Stateless versus Stateful Snippets

Subsection 5.3.4: Eager Evaluation

Section 5.4: Handling XHTML Attributes in Snippets

Subsection 5.4.1: Direct Manipulation in Code

Subsection 5.4.2: XHTML Attribute Pass-through

Chapter 6: Forms in Lift

Section 6.1: Form Fundamentals

Section 6.2: Attributes for Form Elements

Section 6.3: An Overview of Form Elements

Subsection 6.3.1: checkbox

Subsection 6.3.2: hidden

Subsection 6.3.3: link

Subsection 6.3.4: text and password

Subsection 6.3.5: textarea

Subsection 6.3.6: submit

Subsection 6.3.7: multiselect

Subsection 6.3.8: radio

Subsection 6.3.9: select

Subsection 6.3.10: selectObj

Subsection 6.3.11: untrustedSelect

Section 6.4: File Uploads

Chapter 7: SiteMap

Section 7.1: Basic SiteMap Definition

Subsection 7.1.1: The Link Class

Subsection 7.1.2: ExtLink

Subsection 7.1.3: Creating Menu Entries

Subsection 7.1.4: Nested Menus

Subsection 7.1.5: Setting the Global SiteMap

Section 7.2: Customizing Display

Subsection 7.2.1: Hidden

Subsection 7.2.2: Controlling the Menu Text

Subsection 7.2.3: Using <lift:Menu>

Section 7.3: Access Control

Subsection 7.3.1: If

Subsection 7.3.2: Unless

Section 7.4: Page-Specific Rendering

Subsection 7.4.1: The Template Parameter

Subsection 7.4.2: The Snippet and LocSnippets Parameters

Subsection 7.4.3: Title

Section 7.5: Miscellaneous Menu Functionality

Subsection 7.5.1: Test

Subsection 7.5.2: LocGroup

Section 7.6: Writing Your Own Loc

Subsection 7.6.1: Corresponding Functions

Subsection 7.6.2: Type Safe Parameters

Subsection 7.6.3: Dynamically Adding Child Menus

Subsection 7.6.4: Binding Your Custom Loc

Section 7.7: Conclusion

Chapter 8: The Mapper and Record Frameworks

Section 8.1: Introduction to Mapper and MetaMapper

Subsection 8.1.1: Adding Mapper to Your Project

Subsection 8.1.2: Setting Up the Database Connection

Subsection 8.1.3: Constructing a Mapper-enabled Class

Subsection 8.1.4: Object Relationships

Subsection 8.1.5: Indexing

Subsection 8.1.6: Schema Mapping

Subsection 8.1.7: Persistence Operations on an Entity

Subsection 8.1.8: Querying for Entities

Subsection 8.1.9: Comparison QueryParams

Subsection 8.1.10: Control QueryParams

Subsection 8.1.11: Making Joins a Little Friendlier

Section 8.2: Utility Functionality

Subsection 8.2.1: Display Generation

Subsection 8.2.2: Form Generation

Subsection 8.2.3: Validation

Subsection 8.2.4: CRUD Support

Subsection 8.2.5: Lifecycle Callbacks

Subsection 8.2.6: Base Field Types

Subsection 8.2.7: Defining Custom Field Types in Mapper

Subsection 8.2.8: ProtoUser and MegaProtoUser

Section 8.3: Advanced Features

Subsection 8.3.1: Using Multiple Databases

Subsection 8.3.2: Database Sharding

Subsection 8.3.3: SQL-based Queries

Section 8.4: Logging

Section 8.5: Summary

Part II: Advanced Topics

Chapter 9: Advanced Lift Architecture

Section 9.1: Architectural Overview

Section 9.2: The Request/Response Lifecycle

Section 9.3: Lift Function Mapping

Section 9.4: LiftResponse in Detail

Subsection 9.4.1: InMemoryResponse

Subsection 9.4.2: StreamingResponse

Subsection 9.4.3: Hierarchy

Subsection 9.4.4: RedirectWithState

Subsection 9.4.5: XmlResponse

Section 9.5: Session Management

Subsection 9.5.1: Lift garbage collection

Section 9.6: Miscellaneous Lift Features

Subsection 9.6.1: Wrapping Lift’s processing logic

Subsection 9.6.2: Passing Template Parameters to Snippets

Subsection 9.6.3: Computing Attributes with Snippets

Subsection 9.6.4: Processing Element Attributes

Section 9.7: Advanced S Object Features

Subsection 9.7.1: Managing cookies

Subsection 9.7.2: Localization and Internationalization

Subsection 9.7.3: Managing the Timezone

Subsection 9.7.4: Per-session DispatchPF functions

Subsection 9.7.5: Session re-writers

Subsection 9.7.6: Access to HTTP headers

Subsection 9.7.7: Manage the document type

Subsection 9.7.8: Other functions

Section 9.8: ResourceServer

Section 9.9: HTTP Authentication

Subsection 9.9.1: Determining which Resources to Protect

Subsection 9.9.2: Providing the Authentication Hook

Subsection 9.9.3: Role Hierarchies

Chapter 10: Lift and JavaScript

Section 10.1: JavaScript high level abstractions

Subsection 10.1.1: JsCmd and JsExp overview

Subsection 10.1.2: JavaScript Abstraction Examples

Section 10.2: JQuery and other JavaScript frameworks

Section 10.3: XML and JavaScript

Section 10.4: JSON

Subsection 10.4.1: JSON forms

Section 10.5: JqSHtml object

Section 10.6: A recap

Chapter 11: AJAX and Comet in Lift

Section 11.1: What are AJAX and Comet, really?

Section 11.2: Using AJAX in Lift

Section 11.3: A more complex AJAX example

Section 11.4: AJAX Generators in Detail

Section 11.5: Comet and Lift

Subsection 11.5.1: Actors in Scala

Subsection 11.5.2: Building a Comet Application in Lift

Section 11.6: Coordinating Between Multiple Comet Clients

Section 11.7: Summary

Chapter 12: JPA Integration

Section 12.1: Introducing JPA

Subsection 12.1.1: Using Entity Classes in Scala

Subsection 12.1.2: Using the orm.xml descriptor

Subsection 12.1.3: Working with Attached and Detached Objects

Section 12.2: Obtaining a Per-Session EntityManager

Section 12.3: Handling Transactions

Section 12.4: ScalaEntityManager and ScalaQuery

Section 12.5: Operating on Entities

Subsection 12.5.1: Persisting, Merging and Removing Entities

Subsection 12.5.2: Loading an Entity

Subsection 12.5.3: Loading Many Entities

Subsection 12.5.4: Using Queries Wisely

Subsection 12.5.5: Converting Collection Properties

Subsection 12.5.6: The importance of flush() and Exceptions

Subsection 12.5.7: Validating Entities

Section 12.6: Supporting User Types

Section 12.7: Running the Application

Section 12.8: Summing Up

Chapter 13: Third Party Integrations

Section 13.1: OpenID Integration

Section 13.2: AMQP

Section 13.3: PayPal

Section 13.4: Facebook

Section 13.5: XMPP

Section 13.6: Lucene/Compass Integration

Chapter 14: Lift Widgets

Section 14.1: Current Lift Widgets

Subsection 14.1.1: TableSorter widget

Subsection 14.1.2: Calendar widgets

Subsection 14.1.3: RSS Feed widget

Subsection 14.1.4: Gravatar widget

Subsection 14.1.5: TreeView widget

Subsection 14.1.6: Sparklines widget

Section 14.2: How to build a widget

Chapter 15: RESTful Web Services

Section 15.1: Some Background on REST

Subsection 15.1.1: A Little Bit about HTTP

Subsection 15.1.2: Defining REST

Subsection 15.1.3: Comparing XML-RPC to REST Architectures

Section 15.2: A Simple API for PocketChange

Section 15.3: Adding REST Helper Methods to our Entities

Section 15.4: Multiple Approaches to REST Handling

Subsection 15.4.1: Using Custom Dispatch

Subsection 15.4.2: Using the RestHelper Trait

Section 15.5: Processing Expense PUTs

Section 15.6: The Request and Response Cycles for Our API

Section 15.7: Extending the API to Return Atom Feeds

Subsection 15.7.1: An Example Atom Request

Subsection 15.7.2: Add a feed tag for the account page

Section 15.8: Conclusion

Part III: Appendices

Appendix A: A Brief Tour of Maven

Section A.1: What is Maven?

Section A.2: Lifecycles, Phases and Goals

Section A.3: Repositories

Section A.4: Plugins

Section A.5: Dependencies

Subsection A.5.1: Adding a Dependency

Section A.6: Further Resources

Section A.7: Project Layout

Appendix B: Message Handling

Section B.1: Sending Messages

Section B.2: Displaying Messages

Appendix C: Lift Helpers

Section C.1: Introduction

Section C.2: Box (or Scala’s Option class on steroids)

Section C.3: ActorPing

Section C.4: ClassHelpers

Section C.5: CodeHelpers

Section C.6: ControlHelpers

Section C.7: CSSHelpers

Section C.8: BindHelpers

Section C.9: HttpHelpers

Section C.10: JSON

Section C.11: LD

Section C.12: ListHelpers

Section C.13: NamedPartialFunctions

Section C.14: SecurityHelpers

Section C.15: TimeHelpers

Appendix D: Internationalization

Section D.1: Localized Templates

Section D.2: Resource Bundles

Section D.3: An Important Note on Resource Bundle Resolution

Section D.4: Localized Strings in Scala Code

Section D.5: Formatting Localized Strings

Section D.6: Localized Strings in Templates

Section D.7: Calculating Locale

Appendix E: Logging in Lift

Section E.1: Logging Backend

Section E.2: Basic Logging

Subsection E.2.1: Logging Setup

Subsection E.2.2: Obtaining a Logger

Subsection E.2.3: Logging Methods

Section E.3: Log Level Guards

Section E.4: Logging Mapper Queries

Appendix F: Sending Email

Section F.1: Setup

Section F.2: Sending Emails

Appendix G: JPA Code Listings

Section G.1: JPA Library Demo

Subsection G.1.1: Author Entity

Subsection G.1.2: orm.xml Mapping

Subsection G.1.3: Enumv Trait

Subsection G.1.4: EnumerationType

Subsection G.1.5: JPA web.xml

List of Figures

Figure 2.1: The PocketChange App

Figure 9.1: Architecture

Figure 9.2: Lift Global Request Processing

Figure 9.3: Lift HTTP Request Processing

Figure 9.4: Roles hierarchy example

Figure 11.1: Application Model Comparisons

Figure 14.1: TableSorter widget

Figure 14.2: Calendar Month-View

Figure 14.3: Calendar Week-View

Figure 14.4: Calendar Day-View

Figure 14.5: RSSFeed widget

Figure 14.6: TreeView widget

Figure 14.7: Sparklines bar chart

Up: Main page Next: Chapter

(C) 2012 Lift 2.0 EditionWritten by Derek Chen-Becker, Marius Danciu and Tyler Weir