From thehead at patshead.com  Tue Dec 13 20:26:48 2005
From: thehead at patshead.com (Pat Regan)
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:26:48 -0500
Subject: [ABE.pm] CGI::Ajax
Message-ID: <439F9F08.1050705@patshead.com>

Have you guys seen this module?  I saw a reference to it on Perlmonks
the other day, so I gave it a quick look.  After a quick perusal of the
documentation, it seemed that the module does most of the work as far as
writing the Javascript you need to update the contents of named divs.

Anywho, the module made me angry tonight :).  It is actually no fault of
the module.  I wanted to give it a try, and I thought this would be a
good excuse to update a very old perl script I wrote to manage my image
galleries on my web page.

First, I just wanted to test the module...  So I wrote a wee bit of code
just to pass a filename back to the browser in order to update the
current image that is displayed.  It only took me about 15 minutes to
write the code, it would have taken 5 if I had actually read the
documentation and saw that I have to create a reference to a function in
the javascript instead of a function.

At this point, I was very happy.  So I decided to work out how I was
going to actually do this.  At this point, I should probably say that I
am not usually a fan of javascript and generally avoid it at all costs.
 I just thought it would be fun to seehow much work it would be to write
an AJAX page with this module, and how hard it would be to make the same
page friendly to non-javascript browsers.

So, I decided that the easiest way to work with a directory of images
was to generate a javascript array of all the images and stuff that into
my template.  And it works quite well, and is quite easy to do...
Unfortunately, and this is the part that makes me angry, it doesn't
require the use of AJAX in any way :).

I guess what I am saying is that this module looks very easy to use, and
is probably worth looking at...  If you actually REALLY have a use for
AJAX :).  Has anyone else looked at it, or any other modules related to
AJAX?

Pat
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From rjbs-perl-abe at lists.manxome.org  Wed Dec 14 06:09:02 2005
From: rjbs-perl-abe at lists.manxome.org (Ricardo SIGNES)
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:09:02 -0500
Subject: [ABE.pm] CGI::Ajax
In-Reply-To: <439F9F08.1050705@patshead.com>
References: <439F9F08.1050705@patshead.com>
Message-ID: <20051214140902.GZ23917@manxome.org>

* Pat Regan <thehead at patshead.com> [2005-12-13T23:26:48]
> Have you guys seen this module?  I saw a reference to it on Perlmonks
> the other day, so I gave it a quick look.  After a quick perusal of the
> documentation, it seemed that the module does most of the work as far as
> writing the Javascript you need to update the contents of named divs.

I've heard it mentioned, but I haven't used it.  The module I hear more
about is HTML::Prototype, which gives you a Perl interface to building
things with the Prototype JS library.

> So, I decided that the easiest way to work with a directory of images
> was to generate a javascript array of all the images and stuff that into
> my template.

On a side note, here, I recently started using Data::JavaScript::Anon,
and I quite like it.  It dumps simple Perl structures into equivalent
JavaScript structures.

> I guess what I am saying is that this module looks very easy to use, and
> is probably worth looking at...  If you actually REALLY have a use for
> AJAX :).  Has anyone else looked at it, or any other modules related to
> AJAX?

Not much.  I should, I know Rubric could benefit from some smarter
controls, but it's never been a top priority.  I probably will get to it
soon, for HTML::Widget::Factory.  I use that to provide Template Toolkit
templates with an easy way to do something like this:

  widget.input(name => "first_name")

...and that produces:

  <input name="first_name" />

...unless the widget factory was told it was OK to get the values from
some existing CGI.pm or similar obejct, in which case it might produce:

  <input name="first_name" value="Joe &amp; Jane" />

Widgets are plugins, and yesterday I wrote a plugin to produce a field
with a pop-up calendar using the totally awesome jscalendar.

  http://www.dynarch.com/projects/calendar/

To make a field that has a pop-up calendar, I just say:

  widget.calendar(id => "birthday")

and I get all the JavaScript, HTML, etc, put there for me.  I can pass
any of the options to jscalendar, too, and they're translated from Perl
to JS and fed to jscalendar.

Once I write more of these, I will probably start feeling like doing
more work wiht Ajax-y stuff.  It would be nice to say things like:

  widget.autocomplete(name => "favorite_flavor", options => url(...))

I wish HTTP's successor would show up soon, though.  All this stateless
work is annoying!

-- 
rjbs
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