ANN: WHIFF += Mako & treeview & url rewrites

[Aaron Watters]

WHIFF 0.6 RELEASED

WHIFF += Mako & treeview & url rewrites

WHIFF is a collection of support services
for Python/WSGI Web applications which
allows applications to be composed by
"dropping" dynamic pages into container
directories.

This mode of development will be familiar
to developers who have created PHP
applications, vanilla CGI scripts,
Apache/modpy Publisher applications,
JSP pages, or static web content.

The new WHIFF 0.6 release now includes

** Treeview widgets

WHIFF now includes components for
implementing "tree views" for web navigation panes
or other purposes, either using AJAX or frame
reloads. Try the GenBank demo at

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/GenBankTree/index

Read more in the tree view tutorial:

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/docs/W1100_2200.TreeView

** Mako template support

New standard middleware provides built in support
for using the fast, powerful, elegant, and popular
Mako template engine in WHIFF applications. Read
more in the Mako tutorial:

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/docs/W1100_1075.MakoGrading

** Url rewrites

The URL rewrite tutorial explains how to
implement WHIFF applications using URLs that
are shorter and easier to understand. Read
it here:

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/docs/W1100_2050.UrlMapping

WHIFF HOME PAGE: http://whiff.sourceforge.net

I hope you like it! -- Aaron Watters

===
less is more.

 

[Paul Boddie]

WHIFF now includes components for
implementing "tree views" for web navigation panes
or other purposes, either using AJAX or frame
reloads.  Try the GenBank demo at

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/GenBankTree/index

This looks interesting, but when I have JavaScript switched off, I get
a big traceback page which indicates that the application doesn't
understand the normal link on each of the nodes of the tree. I imagine
that the ideas is to have the application functional with and without
JavaScript, which is a worthy objective forgotten by many Web
developers these days.

Paul

 

[Aaron Watters]

This looks interesting, but when I have JavaScript switched off, I get
a big traceback page which indicates that the application doesn't
understand the normal link on each of the nodes of the tree. I imagine
that the ideas is to have the application functional with and without
JavaScript, which is a worthy objective forgotten by many Web
developers these days.

Paul

That exact application

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/GenBankTree/index

cannot be implemented with javascript
turned off. You can implement something
kinda similar... hmmmm....

These days I would guess you are pretty
limited without javascript, no? For example
I don't think the instructional support web
sites at Rutgers will work properly without
js.

By the way tracebacks are on for debugging
purposes, they can be turned off, of course.

-- Aaron Watters
===

 

[Aaron Watters]

This looks interesting, but when I have JavaScript switched off, I get
a big traceback ...

I just tried it. How do you get a traceback? For me none of the
javascript links work: they just do nothing.
-- Aaron Watters

===
if you want a friend, get a dog. --Truman

 

[alex23]

I just tried it.  How do you get a traceback?  For me none of the
javascript links work: they just do nothing.

I'm getting the same as Paul in Firefox 3.5.3 with javascript
disabled:

<class 'whiff.resolver.ModuleRootResolutionException'> Python 2.5: /
usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd
Tue Oct 27 07:56:50 2009

A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of
function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-
packages/whiff/middleware/displayTraceback.py in __call__
(self=<whiff.middleware.displayTraceback.displayTraceback instance at
0x2435698>, env={'DOCUMENT_ROOT': '/usr/local/apache2/htdocs',
'GATEWAY_INTERFACE': 'CGI/1.1', 'HTTP_ACCEPT': 'text/html,application/
xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET':
'ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING':
'gzip,deflate', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE': 'en-us,en;q=0.5',
'HTTP_CONNECTION': 'keep-alive', 'HTTP_HOST':
'aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu', 'HTTP_KEEP_ALIVE': '300', 'HTTP_REFERER':
'http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/GenBankTree/index', ...},
start_response=<whiff.middleware.displayTraceback.callOnce instance at
0x2435918>)
44 #pr "displayTraceback called for", page
45 try:
46 pageContentSequence = page(env, start_response)
47 pageContentList = list(pageContentSequence)
48 return pageContentList
....

If you need a full traceback, let me know.

 

[Aaron Watters]

If you need a full traceback, let me know.

Well, yes, the bottom of the traceback would be more useful .

-- Aaron Watters

 

[Aaron Watters]

Well, yes, the bottom of the traceback would be more useful .

   -- Aaron Watters

Alex sent me the traceback (thanks!) and after consulting
the logs and the pages I figured out that the version of
Firefox in question was not ignoring my javascript links like
it should. Instead FF was interpreting them as HTTP links to
pages that didn't exist -- which is perfectly idiotic -- so
WHIFF was complaining that it couldn't find the page (which
is correct).

Anyway, you shouldn't see this buglet any more -- if you
don't have javascript you will get a nice polite message
saying that the page doesn't work unless javascript is
enabled.

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/GenBankTree/index

I hope you like it again. Thanks for the help!
-- Aaron Watters

===

nobody ever got fired for buying IBM^H^H^HMicrosoft.

 

[Paul Boddie]

Alex sent me the traceback (thanks!) and after consulting
the logs and the pages I figured out that the version of
Firefox in question was not ignoring my javascript links like
it should.  Instead FF was interpreting them as HTTP links to
pages that didn't exist -- which is perfectly idiotic -- so
WHIFF was complaining that it couldn't find the page (which
is correct).

Were you using "javascript:" URLs in the links before? Maybe using the
onclick attribute is more appropriate for JavaScript-specific actions:

http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/interact/scripts.html#adef-onclick

Anyway, you shouldn't see this buglet any more -- if you
don't have javascript you will get a nice polite message
saying that the page doesn't work unless javascript is
enabled.

http://aaron.oirt.rutgers.edu/myapp/GenBankTree/index

I still don't see why you couldn't have a non-JavaScript version.
Think of all the people wanting to use Python to screen-scrape the
content! ;-)

Paul

P.S. Although people not running JavaScript on every page by default
are often criticised as being modern-day Luddites, and I too used to
have JavaScript running for everything, a few annoying experiences led
me to installing NoScript just to stop stupid CPU-wasting
advertisements. Useful sites employing JavaScript probably suffer from
the effects of such antics, unfortunately, which is one reason I
advocate supporting non-JavaScript browsers.