[ALOY-630] Use base xml files for views

Description

<Alloy>
  <Window id='win' class="container"  onClose='onClose'>
    <View id="menu" onClick="showhidemenu">
      <Require src="menu_top" id="menucnt"/>
    </View>
    <View id="main">
      <View id="iconBar" width="100%">
         <ImageView id="menubtn" onClick="showhidemenu"></ImageView>
         <Label class="title" id="title">Some title</Label>
      </View>
      <View id="grayLine"></View>			
      <View id="mainList">
         some custom content		
      </View>
    </View>
  </Window>
</Alloy>

<Extends src='base.xml'/>
<View id="menu" onClick="closeWindow">
      <Require src="menu_new" id="menucnt"/>
</View>
<View id="mainList">
  some new content
</View>

Comments

1. John C. Bland II 2013-04-19 +1 for the concept. Open to the implementation.
2. Tony Lukasavage 2013-04-22 Would the views added to the just be appended to its children?
3. John C. Bland II 2013-04-22 I think a layout system would be better. Extending a view seems it can get a bit confusing. Without layouts, you could easily do something like: Maybe even in the root of it allow you to set the layout: ...
4. Tony Lukasavage 2013-04-22 John, I'm not sure I'm following. Also, we couldn't use layout since that is already in use by the Titanium API.
5. John C. Bland II 2013-04-22 No worries on 'layout'. Consider all of that pseudo. One of the best templating engines I've seen is Rails and that's what that comment was loosely based on: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html. Basically a way to fill out a custom layout/template then fill it in with views that implement it. It is basically a preference from having dealt with this many days doing interactive and backend work. Extending can get hairy (hence the love of composition of inheritance now-a-days; another story though). :-D Here is another, fuller, example of implementing a template/layout. mytemplate.xml

      <Window>
           <View ...>
                <Require src="menu_new" id="menucnt />
                <Yield id="navigation" />
           </View>
      
           <View>
                <Yield id="body" />
           </View>
      </Window>
      

   someview.xml

      <View template="mytemplate">
           <ContentFor="navigation">
                <!-- extra nav view specific stuff here --->
           </ContentFor>
      
           <ContentFor="body">
                <!-- extra body view specific stuff here --->
           </ContentFor>
      </View>
      

6. Mitch Duitz 2013-04-23 Can the also include views, such that if the is not defined the yield would be the default view?
7. John C. Bland II 2013-04-23 Yep. would be anything not wrapped in a ContentFor. (thx for pointing that out)

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