Aida/Web or Seaside ?

Hi,

I'm making a blog engine using Seaside. Today I look at Aida because I
really don't like those uggly urls, but I don't know Aida at all. In
fact I think Seaside is not the best framework for a blog.

What are the advantages/disadvantages between Aida and Seaside ?

Thanks,

--
Nicolas Petton
http://nico.bioskop.fr
             ___
           ooooooo
          OOOOOOOOO
         |Smalltalk|
          OOOOOOOOO
           ooooooo
            \   /
             [|]
--------------------------------
Ma cl? GPG est disponible ici :
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE788C34D

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Ceci est une partie de message
        =?ISO-8859-1?Q?num=E9riquement?= =?ISO-8859-1?Q?_sign=E9e?=
Url : http://lists.aidaweb.si/pipermail/aida/attachments/20071015/35df6740/attachment.sig 

Salut Nicolas,

nicolas petton wrote:

> I'm making a blog engine using Seaside. Today I look at Aida because I
> really don't like those uggly urls, but I don't know Aida at all. In
> fact I think Seaside is not the best framework for a blog.
>
> What are the advantages/disadvantages between Aida and Seaside ?

Blog is actually a prime example of pure web application. By pure I mean
in a pure spirit of the web. Namely, the web spirit relies on an idea of
hypertext, that is a text connected with hyperlinks (Urls). And that is
also the main idea behind Aida from the start.

Another one is a mapping the "web" of references between objects in your
domain model to the web of pages as seamlessly as possible. And those
web pages are a representation, an UI for your domain objects, in pure
MVC fashion. That's a second main idea behind Aida.

Third is a composition of web pages from components, actually a
hierarchical tree of them, with components composed of other components.
Like the elements on a typical web page are actually composed from sub
elements like DIVs, down to basic elements like text, images, Url links
etc.

I think that with above I described main strengths of Aida, which
therefore are:

1. REST-like, nice, bookmarkable, fully automatic URL management,
2. MVC separation of domain from its presentation, which is enforced,
3. Composing web pages from hierarchy of components

There is more advantages, let me show some of them:

4. Low memory footprint, no need for timeouts, you can serve tens of
    thousands of users from a single image,
5. Integrated security management (users, groups, access rights)
6. Integrated real-time statistics of visits of your web site, together
    with referrers,
7. Hosting of many web sites at once (actually a Swazoo feature)
8. Fully integrated Ajax support, which is part of Aida and more and
    more components are now ajaxified seamlessly, you don't even see that
    anymore.
9. Back button supported simply by proper caching and redirection.

And disadvantages? Well, main one is that Aida is not as popular as
Seaside :) Another one? Hard to say. We can argue about control flow,
because Aida don't support call/answer kind of flow between pages, but
that is maybe even an advantage. Aida will probably go here introducing
Ajax call/answer, but definitively not with continuations.

Back to blog: interesting is that I'm just thinking also to start
developing my own blog (and also writing into, about Aida), so if you
are interested, we can develop it together! What do you think?

? bient?t
Janko

--
Janko Miv?ek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Le lundi 15 octobre 2007 ? 09:58 +0200, Janko Miv?ek a ?crit : What do you mean by automatic URL management ? :)
>  Another one? Hard to say. We can argue about control flow,
> because Aida don't support call/answer kind of flow between pages, but
> that is maybe even an advantage. Aida will probably go here introducing
> Ajax call/answer, but definitively not with continuations.
>
> Back to blog: interesting is that I'm just thinking also to start
> developing my own blog (and also writing into, about Aida), so if you
> are interested, we can develop it together! What do you think?

Good idea ! My blog (written in Seaside) is almost finished, but I want
to rewrite it (mostly because of those urls...). Aida/Web seems to be a
good framework for that purpose :)

Is Aida hard to learn ?
>
> ? bient?t
Do you speak french ?

> Janko
>
--
Nicolas Petton
http://nico.bioskop.fr
             ___
           ooooooo
          OOOOOOOOO
         |Smalltalk|
          OOOOOOOOO
           ooooooo
            \   /
             [|]
--------------------------------
Ma cl? GPG est disponible ici :
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE788C34D

-------------- section suivante --------------
Une pi?ce jointe non texte a ?t? nettoy?e...
Nom: non disponible
Type: application/pgp-signature
Taille: 189 octets
Desc: Ceci est une partie de message
        =?ISO-8859-1?Q?num=E9riquement?= =?ISO-8859-1?Q?_sign=E9e?=
Url: http://lists.aidaweb.si/pipermail/aida/attachments/20071015/3d80922f/attachment.sig 

Hi Nicolas,

nicolas petton wrote:

>> 1. REST-like, nice, bookmarkable, fully automatic URL management,
> What do you mean by automatic URL management ?

For example in a blog - you have aBlog with many instances of BlogEntry.
So in Aida you made a web page with links to entries simply by providing
references to those entries. Something like:

BlogApp>>viewMain

self observee entries do: [:entry |
   self addLinkTo: entry text: entry title.
   self addBreak].

Url's to entries will be done automatically, by default in a format like
/object/o2543232.html. But you can direct Url generation by signaling a
preferred Url by your domain object. In your case simply implement a
method #preferedUrl in BlogEntry, for example:

BlogEntry>>preferedUrl

    ^'/', self date printString, '/', self title, '.html'


>> Back to blog: interesting is that I'm just thinking also to start
>> developing my own blog (and also writing into, about Aida), so if you
>> are interested, we can develop it together! What do you think?
>
> Good idea ! My blog (written in Seaside) is almost finished, but I want
> to rewrite it (mostly because of those urls...). Aida/Web seems to be a
> good framework for that purpose :)

Definitively.

> Is Aida hard to learn ?

Well, simplicity is one of the main goals of Aida from the start and I
hope it is so. But you are invited to take few minutes to make a
tutorial http://www.aidaweb.si/tutorial.html and be convinced by yourself.

>> ? bient?t
> Do you speak french ?

Oui, je apprend fran?ais d?j? deux ans, mais c'est difficile :)

Janko

--
Janko Miv?ek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Le lundi 15 octobre 2007 ? 14:58 +0200, Janko Miv?ek a ?crit : Pas si difficile que ?a :)
>
> Janko
>
--
Nicolas Petton
http://nico.bioskop.fr
             ___
           ooooooo
          OOOOOOOOO
         |Smalltalk|
          OOOOOOOOO
           ooooooo
            \   /
             [|]
--------------------------------
Ma cl? GPG est disponible ici :
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE788C34D

-------------- section suivante --------------
Une pi?ce jointe non texte a ?t? nettoy?e...
Nom: non disponible
Type: application/pgp-signature
Taille: 189 octets
Desc: Ceci est une partie de message
        =?ISO-8859-1?Q?num=E9riquement?= =?ISO-8859-1?Q?_sign=E9e?=
Url: http://lists.aidaweb.si/pipermail/aida/attachments/20071015/c51433cc/attachment.sig