[BackupPC-devel] Re: Web interface

[<cba...@us...>]

Leon,

Thanks for the editing code.  I've tried it out and it works fine for me.
It's nice.

However, I would like to propose some more features:

  - it would be helpful to have the config parameters arranged in a
    hierarchy rather than all in a single large page.

  - the per-PC config editing should only present parameters that
    really can be changed on a per-PC basis (ie: the server parameters
    don't have any effect on a per-PC basis).

  - the editor should relieve the user of worrying about perl syntax.
    Currently you still have to get the semicolon and quotes correct.
    More complex structures are difficult: it's a lot of work to
    have the CGI script allow you to build arrays or hashes.  Or
    you can just let the user plug in text and check that it is
    correct.

Perhaps we need to turn config.pl into a file with meta-data (either
via structured comments or something like xml) that includes the data
type and config hierarchy.  This data could be extracted as needed
for the editor.

This is also tied into the BackupPC::Config object that Toby started
to work on.  This is meant to encapsulate Config objects independent
of the underlying storage method (ascii, sql etc).

This is certainly a good start for an editor, but we need to get
a well-designed BackupPC::Config in place and build the editor on
top of that.  Let me think about this some more.

Craig