Big feature request

Using thunder, pick a modulebuilder built module...then it autogenerates the project files for a NON-module builder based version (strongly typed and all)

What do you think? :)

Like!

Hello Steve,

Can you please share a use case for that? I guess you want to add additional business logic to the module. We are thinking on providing hooks in the dynamic modules that will help you to do so, without the need to have all the module's files. 

Couple reasons yeah

1) Business logic
2) More control over the rendered result.  Like lets say I have a column
3) Stronlgy Typed, get a manager instead of the dynamic one then having to reference the code samples to get the .GetValue("") field names.  (I suggested another code sample to give us the copy\paste code to create such a type)
4) I'm potentially making this one up, but performance for large datasets?  I can't imagine a dynamic type (with conversions from strings to types and property names) is as efficient as aan actual Type for querying. 
5) Using a "Sample" like products requires a lot of configuration...what do I change, where do I change it, getting rid of all references to "Products", etc etc...where the backend SF UI helps with all that.  Here's my type, this is plural, singular, here's the properties I want, go work your magic :)

Right now for example you're still (not intentionally clearly) rendering out category GUIDs instead of the category text....could fix that quick.  Or perhaps I'm capturing the url of an image, I could attach a jquery script to wrap it in a proper <img> tag to display it.

Or perhaps I want to add another url to the sidebar menu...

Stuff like that :) 
Steve

Hi Steve,

This is a nice idea, I'm just afraid how useful it be at the end. Personally I'm afraid of such solutions. Provide the model and then a tool generates few thousand lines of code. Working with such a monster at least for me is a nightmare - touch one thing, another breaks, then the upgrades come... I also usually decide to change the model later, but I already have a lot of UI and other changes. The tool will most probably will override something... And last but not the least this is hardly going to solve the main question - "How do I extend ...".

About your points:

1) Business logic - there are events coming in Sitefinity. This will help everyone to extend the BL much easier.
2-4) Regarding performance - artificial types are performing exactly the way the statically compiled do. OpenAccess generates the classes in the runtime, so they behave exactly the same as the static ones. Get/SetValue is not that convenient as the statically compiled classes and here Thunder will try to help.
5) About the backend extensibility - we're now working exactly on such type of articles - "how to ..." add button, link, column, etc.

We'll be happy to hear other customers on this topic and their ideas too.

Kind regards,
Pavel Iliev
the Telerik team

@Pavel
  No, I do agree with the maintainability issue :)

Ultimatly if performance is the same, and the existing UI can be extended (somehow)...keep all the code hidden from me, I'm cool with that, but I would like to somehow work with an actual strongly typed class (and manager...even if it's a dummy wrapper).

Just a note on #5...I just hope it's not a crazy amount of complex code to get that to happen...

Hi,

About the backend extensibility - things like buttons, columns, commands in the actions menu can be done without coding in the advanced settings. Also with code, again nothing complex. Of course it always depend on the exact case.

Regards,
Pavel Iliev
the Telerik team

This is not at all a thunder thing..but since we're on it, and you have the ear of the rest of the guys there :)

Our "Resources" custom module has upwards of 1500 rows at the moment (and counting)...it's becoming too cumbersome to manage with only having "Search" available. 
1) Please fix the category rendering so the admins can at least see if it's the item they want
2) Provide a better way to filter\sort the data.  I don't think sorting exists on custom modules yet, does it?

...and that's all you'll hear from me on this, thanks for listening :)

I will third this. It is way easier to work with code in an IDE with intellisense than in a web-based editor without.

This would be great. I noticed I can create module with Thunder but it's basic at best. I assume there are further plans for this. A full UI to build strongly typed modules, as you currently build with Module Builder, would make life so much easier. Then we would have all the code to do with what we like. I sense Thunder will eventually do everything.