Notes: Cannot use Javascript or iframes. In fact I can't trust the client browser to do just about anything but the ultra basics.
I'm rebuilding a legacy PHP4 app as a MVC application, with most of my research currently focused with the Pylon's framework.
One of the first weird issues I've run into and one I've solved in the past by using iframes or better yet javascript is displaying a dynamic collection of "widgets" that are like digest views of a typical controller's index view.
Best way to visualize my problem would be to look at Google's personalized homepage. They solve the problem with Javascript, but for my scenario javascript and pretty much anything above basic XHTML is not possible.
One idea I started working on was to have my Frontpage controller poll a database or other service for the currently activated widgets, then taking a list of tuples/dicts, dynamically instantiate each controller and build a list/dict of render sub-views and pass that to the frontpage view and let it figure things out.
So with peusudo code:
Get request goes to WSGI
WSGI calls pylons
Pylons routes to Frontpage.index()
Frontpage.index()
myViews = list()
for WidgetController in ActiveWidegets():
myViews.append(subRender(WidgetController, widgetView))
c.subviews = myViews
render(frontpage.mako)
Weird bits about subRender
Dynamically imports controllers via __import__ (currently hardcoded to project's namespace :( )
Has a potential to be very expensive (most widget calls can be cached, but one is a user panel)
I feel like there has to be a better way or perhaps a mechanism already implemented in WSGI or better yet Pylons to do this, but so far the closest I've found is this utility method: http://www.pylonshq.com/docs/en/0.9.7/modules/controllers_util/#pylons.controllers.util.forward but it seems a little crazy to build N instances of pylons on top of pylons just to get a collection views.
While in most cases I'd recommend what you originally stated, using Javascript to load each widget, since that isn't an option I think you'll need to do something a little different.
In addition to using the approach of trying to have a single front controller go through all the widgets needed and building them, an alternative you might want to consider is making more powerful use of the templating in Mako.
You can actually define small blocks as Mako def's, which of course have full Python power. To avoid polluting your Mako templates with domain logic, make sure to keep that all in your models, and just make calls to the model instances in the Mako def's as needed for that component of the page to build itself.
A huge advantage of this approach is that since Mako def's support cache args, you can actually have components of the page decide how to cache themselves. Maybe the sidebar should be cached for 5 mins, but the top bar changes every hit for example. Also, since the component is triggering the db hit, you'll save db hits when the component caches itself.
ToscaWidgets doesn't have the performance to make it a very feasible option on a larger scale, so I'd stay away from trying that out.
As for some tweaks to your existing idea, make sure not to actually use Pylons controllers for 'widgets', as they do much more as needed to support WSGI that you don't need for building a page up of widgets.
I'd consider having all Widget classes work like so:
class Widget(object):
def process(self):
# Determine if this widget should process a POST aimed at it
# ie, one of the POST args is a widget id indicating the widget
# to handle the POST
def prepare(self):
# Load data from the database if needed in prep for the render
def render(self):
# return the rendered content
def __call__(self):
self.process()
self.prepare()
return self.render()
Then just have your main Mako template iterate through the widget instances, and call them to render them out.
You could use ToscaWidgets to encapsulate your widgets, along with a stored list of the widgets enabled for each user (in database or other service, as you suggest). Pass a list of the enabled ToscaWidgets to the view and the widgets will render themselves (including dynamically adding CSS/JavaScript references to the page if widget requires those resources).
Related
I am wondering on how to implement pure controller functions in a Django's' "biased" MVC scheme. Let me explain it on an example.
Let's say I have a model of an Invoice, which has some attributes (say net, gross etc.). I can present it to the user using a view + template. And that's fine and easy.
But now, I want to send this invoice to a client. This is a more complicated thing, inluding more models (i.e. create an addressed Package model, get a number and let's say few other thing including creating and modifying not only Invoice model itself, but also creating and updating few other model types and instances.
I want this "action" to be available in multiple places of my web application, so going by the book I need to create a view with those actions implemented and bind it to some URL. Probably it should be implemented in POST action.
My questions are:
What kind of generic view should it be (just View? DetailView? other?).
Where should this View redirect after succesfull "send"? The simplest answer would be to redirect to the same referring page, but is this a correct way?
What if I want this "action" to be ran in background (say, send all unsend invoices at midnight) using celery or such? Of course I can make this a celery task and call it in a view. But is this clean django'ish solution? Where do you store such pure business methods in an app/project?
Before I ask my question I need to give some context:
I wrote a simple python script that read linux's syslog file and search for certain strings. I have other similar scripts like these (scripts that do file system stuff, scripts that interact with other servers and so on). Most of these scripts write simple write stuff to stdout.
I would like to port these scripts to a web-server so I could simple browser to https://server/syslog and get the same output that I would get by running the script on the command line interface.
According with my research Django seems to be a great choice. I followed some Django tutorials and I was capable of developing some basic django web apps.
My question is: Since django does not have a "controller" where should I place the scripts code? My best bet in the view, but according with djangos documentation it does not make sence.
Extracted from django doc: In our interpretation of MVC, the “view” describes the data that gets presented to the user. It’s not necessarily how the data looks, but which data is presented. The view describes which data you see, not how you see it. It’s a subtle distinction.
The description of MVC is not so important. The typical use of django is for database backed web applications. And this describes a design pattern or paradigm for that. It's completely possible to use django in other ways as well.
If you want to build a django app that is a web interface for your existing scripts, you might not even need the django ORM at all. In any case, you can put as much or as little logic in your view as you want. Your use case might just not fit neatly into the MVC or MVT paradigm. Django views are just python functions (or classes, but Django class based views are more tightly coupled with the ORM).
I would recommend:
leaving your scripts largely as they are, but wrap the parts you want to reuse as
functions. You can keep them functional as standalone scripts with an
if __name__=='__main__':
block to call the functions.
Import the functions to views.py - it doesn't matter where they are as long as your server will always be able to find them. I put mine right in the app directory.
Call the function(s) in your view(s), and return the text to a HttpResponse object which you return from the view. (I think this is more direct than creating a template and a context and calling render, but its not what I usually do so there may be some issues?)
Thats bit old code - but you will get enough idea to start - check https://github.com/alex2/django_logtail (Django_LogTail)
I've been working with django over past couple of months. It seems that if I need some new value in a template, the only way to accomplish that is to pass it through the view function directly or an object that can be somehow used to retrieve that information.
What if I want to "PULL" information from the template? Consider the following scenario. I have a template "template1" associated with Application1. Suppose in one column of this template, I want to import information from second application "Application2". Currently the only way I know is to use the Application1's view functions to pull that info from Application2. For every new application I need to change my Application1's view function. So in case I want to keep adding information from different applications(2,3,4 etc), I would need to keep on changing the view function of Application1. This could get cumbersome.
So what I want is something like Wordpress's widget function or Joomla's module type functionality. Simple plug and play, that can "pull" the information from different sources(apps). Does django have something of this sort built-in?
Ah, you have encountered one of the fundamental differences between Django (and most Python templating frameworks) and WordPress (and most PHP frameworks). PHP has a huge global name space that can be accessed from pretty much any place in the page creation process. Python, on the other hand, does not. Many of us consider this to be a Good Thing®.
However, there are times when you wish you had a few more globals for use in your templates. To accomplish this, what you want is a context processor. This is a routine that returns a dict that is automatically included whenever you use RequestContext() to build your call to your template.
You may also want to look at {% expr ... %}. It allows you to break out of the "chains" of the deliberately weak Django templating engine.
I am adding MetaWeblog API support to a Django CMS, and am not quite sure how to layer the application.
I am using django_xmlrpc, which allows me to map to parameterised functions for each request. It is just a case of what level do I hook in calls to the django application from the service functions (AddPage, EditPage etc)
For django-page-cms, and I suppose many django apps, the business logic and validation is contained within the forms. In this case there is PageForm(forms.ModelForm) and PageAdmin(ModelAdmin), which both contain a lot of logic and validation.
If I am to build an API to allow maintenance of pages and content, does this mean I should be programmatically creating and filling a PageAdmin instance? Then catching any exceptions, and converting to their api equivalent? Or would this be a bad idea - misusing what forms are intended for?
The other option is refactoring the code so that business and logic is kept outside of the form classes. Then I would have the form and api, both go through the separate business logic.
Any other alternatives?
What would be the best solution?
Web services API's are just more URL's.
These WS API URL's map to view functions.
The WS view functions handle GET and POST (and possibly PUT and DELETE).
The WS view functions use Forms as well as the Models to make things happen.
It is, in a way, like an admin interface. Except, there's no HTML.
The WS view functions respond with JSON messages or XML messages.
It seems python does not provide this out of the box. But there is something called abc module:
I quote from http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/abc/ "By defining an abstract base class, you can define a common API for a set of subclasses. This capability is especially useful in situations where a third-party is going to provide implementations..." => the goal of an API, defining a contract.
Pretty new to this scene and trying to find some documentation to adopt best practices. We're building a fairly large content site which will consist of various media catalogs and I'm trying to find some comparable data / architectural models so that we can get a better idea of the approach we should use using a framework we've never made use of before. Any insight / help would be greatly appreciated!
"data / architectural models so that we can get a better idea of the approach we should use using a framework we've never made use of before"
Django imposes best practices on you. You don't have a lot of choices and can't make a lot of mistakes.
MVC (while a noble aspiration) is implemented as follows:
Data is defined in "models.py" files using the Django ORM models.
urls.py file maps URL to view function. Pick your URL's wisely.
View function does all processing, making use of models and methods in models
Presentation (via HTML templates) invoked by View function. Essentially no processing can be done in presentation, just lightweight iteration and decision-making
The model is defined for you. Just stick to what Django does naturally and you'll be happy.
Architecturally, you usually have a stack like this.
Apache does two things.
serves static content directly and immediately
hands dynamic URL to Django (via mod_python, mod_wsgi or mod_fastcgi). Django apps map URL to view functions (which access to database (via ORM/model) and display via templates.
Database used by Django view functions.
The architecture is well-defined for you. Just stick to what Django does naturally and you'll be happy.
Feel free to read the Django documentation. It's excellent; perhaps the best there is.
first, forget all MVC mantra. it's important to have a good layered structure, but MVC (as defined originally) isn't one, it was a modular structure, where each GUI module is split in these tree submodules. nothing to use on the web here.
in web development, it really pays to have a layered structure, where the most important layer is the storage/modelling one, which came to be called model layer. on top of that, you need a few other layers but they're really not anything like views and controllers in the GUI world.
the Django layers are roughly:
storage/modelling: models.py, obviously. try to put most of the 'working' concepts there. all the relationships, all the operations should be implemented here.
dispatching: mostly in urls.py. here you turn your URL scheme into code paths. think of it like a big switch() statement. try hard to have readable URLs, which map into user intentions. it will help a lot to add new functionality, or new ways to do the same things (like an AJAX UI later).
gathering: mostly the view functions, both yours and the prebuilt generic views. here you simply gather all the from the models to satisfy a user request. in surprisingly many cases, it just have to pick a single model instance, and everything else can be retrieved from relationships. for these URLs, a generic view is enough.
presentation: the templates. if the view gives you the data you need, it's simple enough to turn it into a webpage. it's here where you'll thank that the model classes have good accessors to get any kind of relevant data from any given instance.
To understand django fundementals and the django take on MVC, consult the following:
http://www.djangobook.com/
As a starting point to getting your hands dirty with ...
"...trying to find some comparable data / architectural models"
Here is a quick and dirty way to reverse engineer a database to get a models.py file,
which you can then inspect to see how django would handle it.
1.) get an er diagram that closely matches your target. For example something like this
http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/product_catalogs/index.htm
2.) create an sql script from the er diagram and create the database,
I suggest Postgre, as some MySQL
table type will not have forgien key constraints, but in a pinch MySQL or SQLITE
will do
3.) create and configure a django app to use that database. Then run:
python manage.py inspectdb
This will at least give you a models.py file which you can read to see how django attempts
to model it.
Note that the inspect command is intended to be a shortcut for dealing with legacy
database when developing in django, and as such is not perfect. Be sure to read the
following before attempting this:
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/django-admin/#ref-django-admin