Getting my project started from the ground up.. (using Seaside, Glorp, Mewa?)

Hi all again.. I've gotten my feet wet a bit more with both SmallTalk
and a bit more with Seaside and would like to get started on a project
I've currently got written in PHP with MySQL (as some of you may
recall).  I've since installed PostgreSQL on my server so I'm set in
that regard and have VisualWorks running with Glorp.. I've started
modelling some of my tables but didn't want to get too far before I
started getting something going more on the Seaside end of things.  I'd
ideally like to start with a basic login mechanism and after searching
the archives (see lots of references to issues with the basic http auth
stuff), I'll probably stick with what I know best -- a form based login
scheme tied to a database table of active users where the users have a
stored MD5 hash for a password.  Now, I think the thing that has me
stumped is just how to get started on this adventure.  So far with my
Glorp stuff, I've got my "Users" table defined and am good there, but am
just not sure what sort of layout I need on the Seaside end of things.

Today I was reading up on Mewa which sounds really good as it sounds
like a nice extension to Seaside which would greatly reduce some of the
initial crud to be done for a traditional data driven site.  In my case,
my site needs to login a user after which they have a menu of things to
do such as update contact info, generate some html reports (from
database data), perhaps do online ordering (saving that one for last),
etc.  The problem I'm mostly having is that with my old PHP code base, I
had an MVC based system where all of the logic was separated out by
functionality (for the most part) -- some areas dealt with logins,
others reports, others contact updates, etc.  With this new Seaside
setup+Glorp+Mewa, I'm not sure exactly how to factor things out.  Do I
want a different class for each task to be done (update contact info,
order, reports, etc) or something else.  I'll have to admit that even
with the MVC approach I was using with my existing PHP site, I wasn't
really thinking in any OO sort of manner -- I still had a functional
sort of hat on my head.  This might be part of my problem.  Anyway, I
hope that some of this makes sense and someone can kind of steer me in
the right direction here.  I know that once I get going, I'll be fine,
but that first step is the big one and is harder if you've got minimal
Smalltalk experience under your (or my) belt.  Many TIA!  Also-- if you
want to reply directly I'm fine with sparing the bandwidth of others if
this isn't completely on-topic here.

-- Rick
(sorry for the long post)



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Rick Flower wrote:

Also-- if you want to reply directly I'm fine with sparing the bandwidth of others if this isn't completely on-topic here.

I, for one, would like to see the replies.

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Me too!

Discussions like this are always welcome!

Cheers,
Pablo.-


On 2/8/06, Brad Fuller <[hidden email]> wrote: _______________________________________________
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Rick Flower wrote:
>
> Hi all again.. I've gotten my feet wet a bit more with both SmallTalk
> and a bit more with Seaside and would like to get started on a project
> I've currently got written in PHP with MySQL (as some of you may
> recall).

I wish I could ship you my PetStore demo, but I've not yet
disentangled it from my application. FWIW, here's a few suggestions,
based on your newness to Smalltalk.

- Don't start with user login. I've stabbed at it about three times
and I'm still not satisfied with the result. Currently, I use the
Postgres username/password, not a separate table. So just hard code
a user for now.

- Skip Glorp and Mewa for now. Just write SQL directly, and walk
the result sets to either create object instances or pump out HTML.
In the case of simple reports (i.e. no post-query processing needed),
mapping the SQL result to HTML would be far easier to understand
than mapping the SQL result to objects (via Glorp), then adding
MEWA descriptors to use the MEWA table display.

- When you get to online ordering, you might start thinking about
Glorp and MEWA. But you might find that what you have works just fine.

- To handle update of contact info, just create a contact object
corresponding to the form you want to show. Generate an UPDATE SQL stmt
from that contact object (the form processing should stuff the values
for you). Again, you might consider adding MEWA (and maybe Glorp)
at this point as well.

You mentioned VW, are you using the NC (non-commercial) version?
It sounds like your app. is commercial use. What is your timeline,
do you have to have your app ported by a certain date? What is the
range of functionality, is there more than what you've described?

--
Yanni Chiu

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Yanni Chiu wrote:
> - Don't start with user login. I've stabbed at it about three times
> and I'm still not satisfied with the result. Currently, I use the
> Postgres username/password, not a separate table. So just hard code
> a user for now.
I think with what I've already got going with Glorp, I can do easy lookups
for users in the database, so I guess I'm not convinced of the merits of
backing out (or bypassing) that code yet, but I will keep that in mind if I
find myself spinning in circles
> - Skip Glorp and Mewa for now. Just write SQL directly, and walk
> the result sets to either create object instances or pump out HTML.
> In the case of simple reports (i.e. no post-query processing needed),
> mapping the SQL result to HTML would be far easier to understand
> than mapping the SQL result to objects (via Glorp), then adding
> MEWA descriptors to use the MEWA table display.
Ok.. Point taken -- I guess I can see where figuring out how to plug all
of this stuff together might be a bit overwhelming for a Smalltalk newbie
like myself.
> - When you get to online ordering, you might start thinking about
> Glorp and MEWA. But you might find that what you have works just fine.
Yeah, this is one of the harder areas to deal with which requires a bit more
careful thought than other areas of the application.. In my case, I
think I can
steer away from a shopping cart model that so many web-apps use.. I really
only need a single page with a big table of items that people can update
quantities for and hit a button at the bottom of the page.. However,
handling
Paypal transactions is another story and I'll likely need to write code from
scratch for that (and is a bit OT for this discussion)..
> - To handle update of contact info, just create a contact object
> corresponding to the form you want to show. Generate an UPDATE SQL stmt
> from that contact object (the form processing should stuff the values
> for you). Again, you might consider adding MEWA (and maybe Glorp)
> at this point as well.
Could this not be a method of a "User" object -- perhaps one method to
generate
the update HTML and another one to update the database object?  I guess
you've somewhat got my OO brain in gear now.. Any other options/opinions?
> You mentioned VW, are you using the NC (non-commercial) version?
> It sounds like your app. is commercial use. What is your timeline,
> do you have to have your app ported by a certain date? What is the
> range of functionality, is there more than what you've described?
Yes, I'm using the NC version for now which I gather is fine after I
spoke with
one of their license people -- it's really only as issue once my coding
is done and
ready to deploy which I'm no where near close to yet.  As for my
timeline, I'd love
to move all of my existing functionality over to Seaside/Smalltalk soon
which would
mean that I don't have to support my two other PHP sites anymore (an old
"v1"
prototype site and a v2 "user" site).  As for my range of functionality,
there are admin
features that the average user won't have access to (or see for that
matter) such as
adding users, locking out users, generating admin reports, entering
manual paper
orders, handling back-orders, etc.  All of this should be able to pass a
CSS validation
and be XHTML 1.0 Transitional as a minimum.. I spent quite a bit of time
generating
valid code and from what I've seen, Seaside does a nice job in this area
as well (some
frameworks that generate HTML on the fly don't generate valid XHTML).  
Anyway,
hopefully someone will chime in with some more comments on this thread..
:-)

-- Rick



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Hi

>
> Hi all again.. I've gotten my feet wet a bit more with both SmallTalk
> and a bit more with Seaside and would like to get started on a project
> I've currently got written in PHP with MySQL (as some of you may
> recall).  I've since installed PostgreSQL...I've started modelling
> some of my tables ...

Are you obliged to use SQL Tables (existing tables ? )?
because I find that to learn, it's better not to take care of the
persistance... especially in relationnal database...
1 - easiest way: you directly store your objects in the smalltalk image
2 - natural way: you use an object database
3 - twisted way: you map your objects in a relational DB  :) ...

I'm not actually a specialist  and I don't have a good understanding on
all "notions" but I don't really see why everybody keep on using RDB
(performance ?, well-known products ?, legacy system...). I've once read
that performance were better in OODB but the transactional
fonctionalities were limited (limited number of concurent access)... If
someone can help me to understand that (this may deserve a post?)...

>
> Today I was reading up on Mewa which sounds really good as it sounds
> like a nice extension to Seaside

Magritte has the same intend and is probably more interesting in your
case. To be quick, it consists in associating meta-descriptions to any
objects (seaside component association to edit and view it, persistance
mechanism and any other properties you want to associate...)  Moreover
someone (Damien) extended them to directly access a MySQL DB...
The problem is that I think it's only developped for squeak for now (?)...
I think the better will be to do a seaside tutorial to get used to
seaside and programming in smalltalk...
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/seaside/tutorial/  I found this one good
because it helps thinking OO and, of course, using seaside (the last
exercise is a small application to manage a theater)...


Cédrick
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On 2/8/06, Cédrick Béler <[hidden email]> wrote:
Not to mention that I send a question to the Magritte list last week
and I haven't received any reply yet... seems to be frozen. Moreover,
the lack of documentation in the source code doesn't help either.

Any kind of support is very important when you want to start using
some product...
So I switched to Mewa wich I found easier to use (at least for my needs).

Cheers,
Pablo.-
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Rick Flower wrote:
Create "User" as a POSTO (Plain-old-Smalltalk-object - my head
is still full of acronyms because I was at a Java/SpringFramework
presentation last night; the presenter talked on and on until the
security guard had the organizer usher us out).

Add getters and setters to the User class. Then you can use
#textInputOn:of: and similar methods to generate the HTML.
That's part of what Seaside gets you. For the price of learning
MEWA and writing its descriptors, you won't have to manually
code all the #textInputOn:of: stuff - that's part of what
MEWA would get you. Finally, for the price of learning GLORP
and writing its descriptors, you won't have to manually code
any CREATE/SELECT/UPDATE/DELETE sql - that's part of what
GLORP would get you.

If you want, you can use an abstract superclass for all your
model objects such as User. Here you could do the meta operations
such as generating the HTML and SQL. At a certain point, you
might decide that this is unnecessary because it was much more
straitforward to put specific code in each of the few domain
classes. Or you might decide that its pointless to reinvent a
MEWA and/or GLORP framework, and decide to invest energy into
using one or both. Or you might decide to continue to invest in
your own frameworks.

--
Yanni Chiu

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> Not to mention that I send a question to the Magritte list last week
> and I haven't received any reply yet... seems to be frozen. Moreover,
> the lack of documentation in the source code doesn't help either.

Sorry, but no mail from you arrived in the mailing-list. Unfortunately
I cannot reply on mails I do not receive.

I know that there is a lack of documentation, I am currently working
on it (mostly at night). In the meantime I suggest the following:

* The most important documentation is still the source-code itself,
most important method and classes are well documented.

* There is a yet unpublished paper on Pier that includes a section
about the basics of Magritte, please drop me a mail if you would like
to read it.

* There are slides of a complete Magritte tutorial available at
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/seaside/annecy/Magritte.pdf (5.1 MB)
including some exercises
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/seaside/annecy/exercises.pdf. Damien
Cassou even provided the solutions to the exercises, just drop me a
mail if you would like to receive them.

Cheers,
Lukas

--
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
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Lukas Renggli wrote: Great.. I was looking for info on Magritte last night and didn't find
much other than some references to
it from Avi on this list some time ago (circa ~2003?) and a single PDF
that talked about it a little but didn't
give me any warm fuzzies on what it was capable of doing, etc.. I'll put
those links in my rapidly growing
collection of Smalltalk weblinks I'm keeping at home on my personal
wiki.. Thanks again all of you for your
insight..

-- Rick


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>Not to mention that I send a question to the Magritte list last week
>and I haven't received any reply yet... seems to be frozen. Moreover,
>the lack of documentation in the source code doesn't help either.
>  
>
I think the list is down too.. reported to Stephane two days ago....
I ve seen your post on the web site http://impara.de/pipermail/smallwiki/
but I dont recceive any message since the 13th of january... and I think
it's the same for everybody
hope it will be fixed soon ;)

Magritte was in development for the last months but I think it's
stabilized now... and so, ready to use :) and Lukas is doing a kind of
documentation I think...


/*Cédrick

ps: a tutorial for Magritte, exellent I ll have    a look ;)
*/

*//**//*


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>
>* There are slides of a complete Magritte tutorial available at
>http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/seaside/annecy/Magritte.pdf (5.1 MB)
>including some exercises
>  
>
just exellent
now there is a doc for Magritte ;)  Thanks Lukas

Cédrick


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> I think the list is down too.. reported to Stephane two days ago....
> I ve seen your post on the web site http://impara.de/pipermail/smallwiki/
> but I dont recceive any message since the 13th of january... and I think
> it's the same for everybody hope it will be fixed soon ;)

This is strange. I am sorry, I cannot do much about it, since I am not
the owner of the list. Stef is certainly busy, so I contacted the
system-administrator of the university, maybe he can help.

> Magritte was in development for the last months but I think it's
> stabilized now... and so, ready to use :) and Lukas is doing a kind of
> documentation I think...

Yes, there are currently not many changes but bug-fixes to be
expected. Later on this year I will go for a next version, Magritte
1.1, that takes advantage of the new Pragmas in Squeak (that are
compatible with VisualWorks) and will allow to separate view and model
even further.

> just exellent
> now there is a doc for Magritte ;)  Thanks Lukas

Thanks ;-)

Lukas

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Hi Lukas!

I'm sending the mail to the list again.

Thanks for the docs you sent us. I'll check them as soon as I can.


Cheers!
Pablo.-


On 2/8/06, Lukas Renggli <[hidden email]> wrote: _______________________________________________
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Should I remind you that there is still a website with tutorials and a
Design Overview Documentation ?

http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/smallwiki/pier

All this documents are Pier oriented, but have lots of information to
help you start with magritte too.

--
Damien Cassou

CSS3 :  "On passe au  HSL, plus intuitif  et moins orienté CRT  que le
RGB. Il y a du HSLA". Et en plus, ça veut dire quelque chose (au moins
pour l'auteur) !
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> Magritte was in development for the last months but I think it's
> stabilized now... and so, ready to use :) and Lukas is doing a kind of
> documentation I think...

Yes, I am writing my master thesis ;-)

Lukas

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