[TransWarp] More PWT Ideas (usage, not terminology!)

[Roché Compaan]

* Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> [2003-07-23 02:30]:
> These are probably only the barest beginning of what's possible with a 
> little imagination and the DOMlet framework.  I mention them here so that I 
> don't lose/forget the ideas, but also in the hopes of inspiring others to 
> take a closer look at the machinery and to dream big dreams of their own, 
> or maybe even get started on some of the ideas I've mentioned.  :)

They all sound good, actually mouth watering. Other things I can imagine
that can become DOMlets are form widgets. I don't know if you are
familiar with Formulator at all but the basic idea is that you build a
form in python from a set of field classes that each have a widget
associated with it. Formulator has widgets like TextWidget,
PasswordWidget, FileWidget, DateTimeWidget, LinesWidget etc. These might
be good contenders for DOMlets. I am not sure if this fits in with what
DOMlets are supposed to do - I must get my hands dirty with the code
first. Have you checked in any of code for DOMlets yet?

> I also mention them to try and think through a little bit what kind of 
> design patterns might need to be created to use DOMlets effectively, and to 
> see if the internal architecture is right to support these ideas well.  So 
> far, it's holding up pretty decently, although I'm considering trying to 
> simplify the 'renderTo()' method signature.  What I'm not sure is holding 
> up as well is the "location wrappers" system that lives above all this, but 
> I don't have any concrete concerns as yet, just vague concerns.
> 
> Probably, those concerns are derived from the fact that we don't currently 
> have any application-specific location adapters, so everything is generic 
> and the URL paths are based on underlying object attributes.  For example, 
> without application-specific location adapters, there's currently no way to 
> derive a *canonical* URL for an object.

Say more about location adapters. Would they not be very application
specific? I imagine that my PEAK web app will have rather shallow
hierarchies in the form: /<DataManager>/<object id>. But I can also
imagine wanting to make the URLs for some objects relative to other
objects, not their DataManagers eg.:

    /Customers/Customer_1/Contact_1.

Is this what location adapters must provide or am I missing the point?

-- 
Roché Compaan
Upfront Systems                 http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za