Good Tutorial for Beginners

[freightgateone]

Hi,
I am trying to learn Ext JS and how the whole structure of how this framework works but for two days now I am not able to find any useful information.
The Sencha Docs themselves are good if you struggle with specific components or a detailed implementation. But there is no good source which explains for example why I need these freaking confusingly named files like View, ViewModel, Controller and so on. Also it is not good elaborated how they connect with each other explicitly. It is always the same bullshit. The tutorials always skip these parts and say 'you write in this and there, you write that' and so on. But I want to know WHY THE HELL I NEED TO DO THAT. So if there is anybody out there who has a good source for ExtJS beginners like me, please help me out.

Thanks,
T

[Sebastian.GESS]

Hi,

next time you should be less heated if you expect to get an answer from the community or anyone else.

if you have trouble understanding the app architecture you can take a look here https://docs.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0/...hitecture.html.

Also MVC or MVVM are no patterns exclusive to ExtJs they are very common in computer science. It is not Senchas job to teach you the basic of software engineering.

[freightgateone]

Oh yeah you're probably right. I was just so frustrated with everything at the moment as the learning curve with ExtJS is quite steep tbh, sorry for that.
Thank you for answering anyways, I'll definitely take a look at the stuff you mentioned. Take care!

[dawesi]

Read the guides, DON'T skip throught them... start at https://docs.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0/...s/classes.html and work your way down the page.

[jdpeckham]

freightgateone has a good point. I've been struggling with this framework, despite reading and reading and reading and trying to do work in it.

There is just a real lack of consistency, coherency, and cohesiveness in the documentation/tutorials.

Yes, there's an abundance of detail level, but it's mostly useless because it is fragmented, out of date, or applies only to a specific configuration of your application.

First of all, let's pick on the 'getting started' tutorials.
i start here: https://docs.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0-...g_started.html
I choose the first 'fast track path' using npm because that sounds like the best way to just 'jump in'
Immediately, i'm encouraged to 'begin a trial' instead of given my option to do community edition. Of course, there's no explanation about that. Probably it's on purpose to encourage subscription.

Ok so I go through that process and 'eventually' get a log in to get into npm


Now i generate an app and take 'universal modern' because that's what's listed, but then later find out it dumps a bunch of extra stuff that complicates my world. So I nuke all that and come back to moderndesktopminimal

well that was the end of this tutorial and all i know how to do is generate an app "kinda" and start it.

now what?

So, I figure i'd go to 'examples' on the left nav of https://docs.sencha.com/extjs/7.0.0-..._with_npm.html . No, that's just a bunch of 'specific' use case widgets and apps already built with no insight into how to choose components. So I back out of that

Now i go into 'core concepts'...
ok class system. makes sense, it's objects. (a bit clunky because it depends on strings instead of pure code like react, but ok i'll deal with it as a nuance of the framework and move on). However, none of the examples can you run anywhere without understanding how to plug them into your 'app'. So you mess around with that a while and start to figure out you can hack it into app.js or Application.js or use sencha fiddle. NOTE: you realize you can't save a sencha fiddle without applying for a forum account, so you do that. Then, you're like 'wow a forum, maybe i can ask things here' but then realize that no one approves you for access for a week or so.

Ok, back to 'core concepts' you dig into layouts and containers. The examples work in the built in fiddle and the app. Awesome. getting somewhere it feels like because you can put panels and stuff on the screen.

You move on to components.
OK. some broken stuff here in the fiddle with xtypes. You maybe get it working locally or on sencha fiddle, and move down the line. no more built in fiddles or complete examples after this. In fact the rest of components is awkwardly specific detail without any cohesive explanation of how to utilize it.

So you move on to data package.
K, make a base store class.
make a store.
make some inline data
sort
group
ok another broken/incomplete example.... feeling dispair
never showed how to do REST. sad.

At this point the rest of core concepts is actually advanced topics that are very specific and not useful for a beginner.

So yea, this is where I am at. I tried to find a book but the only ones out there are for older versions and mention older tools.

This is 3-4 weeks in for me and I'm working at a job that uses this tool and had a chance to get some mentoring from some people that used to work at Sencha. They even comment about how the documentation is very fragmented and hard to get ramped up on.

Coming from react, I can say there is way easier ramp up on it and way higher availability of tutorials and courses. I've found a plethora of content on Udemy, for example. All-in-all the nature of mvvm and the 'strings to class' mappings make this framework very hard to get started on. React, that is 'pure code' is way easier to get going on, especially in modern IDE that can find your references and follow them to the logic.

Just my 2 cents about your 'beginner ramp up'