Garth's test of PyDS 2003/4

Render at upstream site

This might seem a little controversial, but I'm thinking of making rendering as completely distinct from editing as possible.

I can run CGI scripts at my upstream site. Rather than render locally and FTP or XML-RPC upload every page, which can get quite bulky if posts are in multiple categories, I'd prefer to upload changed database entries and have the pages rendered upstream.

This plays well into the Funky Caching idea, where pages are rendered on the fly by a 404 handler. If you know a page is out of date, just delete it; if anyone wants it, it'll come back later.

Better yet, one could also run PyDS in some hypothetical CGI-based mode (my host doesn't permit persistent processes) to make posts from computers that can't contact the PyDS server over the network.

This ties in nicely with my database access refactoring idea, and with my (as yet undisclosed) idea for adding support for rendering via ZPT. It sounds pretty safe to create the schema database, add a tool to synchronize database entries based on those schema, add a way for tools to customise rendering based on that (which'd work either locally or remotely)... and all without disrupting the core too much. Cool.

More thinking on database access in PyDS

Top of the list was a module used to mediate all access to databases. That module would cache storage references so that multiple tool modules could access other tools' databases safely. [Opening a database twice just doesn't work -- a new record or property defined by one instance can't be accessed via the other, and I suspect data corruption wouldn't be far away if you made changes on both.]

The module would also maintain a schema database, of known and fixed layout, that stored information on all the defined properties of the other databases. That'd work around the "need at least one valid property name to find out the other properties" problem.

The final realisation of the night, just before I drifted off, was that a nice way to let tools define attributes on other tools' databases was to take a leaf out of XML namespaces.

Inside Metakit, the properties would be (say) .id, .title etc for the WeblogTool, and .radio__id for the Radio ID property defined by the RadioMigrationTool.

As accessed by the rest of PyDS, it'd be .id, .title, and .radio.id. So long as we kept tool names from clashing with property names, I think we'd be safe, and that's something the schema database could greatly help with.

Having safely given tools access to other tools' data, all we need is a few callbacks in various tools (particularly the WeblogTool, but also others) so that other tools can hook the edit form, RSS generation, HTML generation, and other bits. That's later, though. :)

Metakit Weirdness

>>> import metakit
>>> db = metakit.storage('weblog.data',0)
>>> vw = db.getas('posts')
>>> len(vw)
0
>>> vw.structure()
[]
>>> vw = db.getas('posts[id:S]')
>>> len(vw)
24
>>> vw.structure()
[Property('S', 'id'), 
 Property('S', 'title'), 
 Property('S', 'link'), 
 Property('S', 'source'),
 Property('S', 'sourceurl'), 
 Property('S', 'text'), 
 Property('S', 'rendered'), 
 Property('I', 'onhome'), 
 Property('I', 'structured'), 
 Property('S', 'pubdate'), 
 Property('F', 'pubtime'), 
 Property('V', 'categories')]
>>> 

I'm thinking PyDS might need some kind of lightweight schema manager to mediate between tools and their databases. My main driver for this is so that tools can safely access each others' data. Specifically, so that I can write a RadioMigrationTool. It'll want to add categories, add posts, and maintian its own preferences so you can do things like suck the data down again if necessary.

Another concern is adding properties. If I want to keep track of Radio's post ID, so I can keep the permalinks intact, how would I do that? There's a lot to ponder, here.

Packet scanning and manipulation via Python

a nice metaclass example

Go

... BBC offer baffling introduction to game of GO, a game apparently played with an infinite number of stones, on a chequered board, until both players are so bored they give up.

Spam-Free Send Mail Link

It's too late for me, of course. My addresses are already out there in such force I'm drowning in spam.

RESTLog

A shame to speak her name?

How can we Saudis talk about women negotiating cultural barriers when the biggest cultural barrier of all stands solid as a concrete wall, unchanged through the passage of time: Uttering a woman’s name in public?

I knew they were property. I knew they were locked up, and that being seen in public without their owner (father or husband) could result in their death. I had no idea it was so bad that anyone knowing their name was considered shameful. Far out.

Cicadas? After Easter?

JavaScript MD5 and authentication

Shortcuts and Substitutions

Anonymous hyperlink test

`bleegle`__

__ http://www.deadlybloodyserious.com/

gives you this:

It works fine in docutils/tools/quicktest.py.

Rendering Tricks

RSS

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