Readying SPServices v0.6.0: Who Wants to Test?
Greetings from snowy New England. I’m readying SPServices v0.6.0 for release, and I need some folks who are willing to do some testing on real world usage. As I’ve mentioned in other places, one of my goals for this release is to pass most JSLint tests. The reason for this is to ensure that my code is strong and “socially acceptable”. In other words, to increase its trustworthiness.
I say “most” JSLint tests for several reasons. JSLint, written by the JavaScript guru Dennis Crockford, is supposed to evaluate your JavaScript code against a set of coding best practices. It isn’t a compiler, per se, but it sort of acts like one in that it gives you errors and warnings about your code against a set of rules. Note that it is written for JavaScript, not specifically jQuery. For this reason, there are a few things it calls out which I feel are OK in SPServices.
It looks like Dennis has upgraded JSLint as of January 6, 2011. That throws a bit of a monkey wrench into my testing, as it now throws more warnings than that I was seeing before! That said, they all look manageable and I’d still like to get some real world testing going soon.
If you’d like to join the testing brigade for v0.6.0, please add a comment below and let me know a little bit about how you use SPServices and what your testing is likely to stress. I expect that the usual suspects will show up, which is great, but I’s also love to have some new eyes on things if possible. If you’re interested, don’t jump on it yet. As I mentioned, there are still some tweaks I’m making.
Thanks to everyone who uses SPServices and helps by contributing code and bug fixes!
Douglas Crockford?
Yep, Douglas Crockford. If you click through the link, you can read about him. His Web site is a little goofy, but he’s “Yahoo!’s JavaScript architect and a member of the committee designing future versions of the world’s most popular programming language.”
M.
Hi Marc. It would just so happen I’m back doing abit of jquery and sharepoint again. Would love to give this version a spin.
Nice to hear from you, David! Watch this space for info.
M.
Hi Marc –
Glad to help out! I’m going to be diving into your permissions services, and I’m trying to develop a couple of one-to-many forms with the first form accepting and displaying sub-items *before* it’s been inserted itself (replicating an existing form form that’s right now in ColdFusion). I plan to do this with the new Multiple List Item update, insert a placeholder value in my foreign key field, and then update them when the parent form is published. Should be interesting!
Rob:
That’s a really interesting idea, and I think you’ll be able to make it work. Probably the tricky part will be handling the exceptions, specifically what happens if several child items are created and left orphaned.
I’ll let you know when v0.6.0 is ready to test.
M.
sounds great! As far as orphaned items goes, I am thinking about just creating a workflow which will auto-delete any items which retain the placeholder parentID after say, 24 hours.
This will keep the list from becoming overwhelmingly large, and eliminate an abundance of those orphaned sub-items. I was also planning on co-opting your method of pre-creating folders with the parentID, however that becomes slightly more complex here. I may need to review the web services functions again and do a rename on the folder as well.
Hi Marc
I’ve only just starting using web services for updates and your product has made the job so much easier. I’m going to use this route in preference to the javascript client object model. Great work.
Des
Great to hear, Des. I’m working on a significant overhaul of the library, so stay tuned to my blog and the SPServices site!
M.