ASP.NET MVC HtmlHelper extensions for YUI controls (Yahoo User Interfaces)?

Question

Has anyone written any HTMLHelper classes for MVC that help with Yahoo\'s User Interface Library?

For instance I have written a helper method to convert

Answer 1

Simon,

I'm not sure this is helpful with respect to the MVC question, but there is a good open-source project that aims to simplify working with YUI within .NET:

http://www.yuiasp.net/

Menu is one of the controls that they include.

At the very least, this may be a project you can contribute back to if your work adds a new dimension to what's already there.

-Eric

Answer 2

Last night I did some thinking about this and am wondering if there's even more opportunity here to make general purpose HTMLHelpers using YUI or whatever other Javascript/HTML widgets you want.

For instance, if there was an interface for IMenu and one for ITextBox, ICheckBox, IRichTextEditor, ICarousel, etc. much like your class for a MenuItem, then you could have a YUI implementation of each of those interfaces, one for JQuery, one for MooTools or one for just straight HTML/CSS.

Part of what sparked this is the generalization that articles like this: http://designingwebinterfaces.com/essential_controls are taking to UI controls on the web for rich web apps.

Those interfaces would contain all of the basic stuff that is obvious at first glance: Id, Name, Value, List, Style, OnChange, OnClick, etc. as well as less obvious stuff like ValidationRegex, HelpText, etc.

That would let you have a layer that converts a model object or model property into an ITextBox and not worry about which one of the implementations of the interface will actually be handling it. You could also easily switch to a new implementation if one came along that was better/faster/cooler.

You'd have to deal with what should happen if you give something like ValidationRegex to a barebones HTML implementation and it has no way to deal with it, but I think it's a path worth thinking about. I also think it might make more sense to implement this as separate from the existing HTMLHelper namespace by inheriting it or just reimplementing it, but I am often wrong at this kind of early idea stage of coming up with a solution.

The YUIAsp.NET stuff is interesting, but is more oriented to WebForms and user controls than the direction that ASP.NET MVC and even moreso with Fubu MVC recently are going.

I tinkered with this idea a little bit and am really intrigued with the possibilities.