dynapi-dev

[Dynapi-Dev] Redrawing widget with new data

[Richard E. <emb...@co...>]

We have a reasonably complex webapp written in Flash by contractors (no
documentation).
We let everyone go (no more $$) and I am now re-writing it with html and
js.
I happened upon Dynapi yesterday (my first day of looking around the web
for dhtml info)
and it looks like a good starting point (and close to a stable release).

Now what I want is not  to have to load a new page from the server each
time the user
changes options  (makes selections, etc), rather I want the widget(s)
that display the
data simply to be  updated and re-drawn.  The user would make some new
selection,
the js would communicate with the server requesting new data, the js
would receive the
new data and update the appropriate widgets. Is there any tutorial code,
examples, or
existing sites using Dynapi that have this characteristic? and can I see
the code.

Next, if I have a multi-page webapp, do I have to reload from the server
the Dynapi code
for each page? Is there lazy-loading in the widgets so that if your new
page requires only
one new Dynapi javascipt file, then only it is requested from the
server?

If I create two meta-widgets (widgets made up of more than one base
widget) how do such
meta-widgets specify which base widgets the depend so that if there is a
shared base widget,
it only get requested from the server once? (An examle meta-widget might
be a viewport and
two scrollbars (x and y)).

Thanks

Richard Emberson
Director of Engineering (and only programmer)
Contact Networks
emb...@co...

Re: [Dynapi-Dev] Redrawing widget with new data

[Richard B. <ma...@ri...>]

Hi,

>Is there any tutorial code,
> examples, or
> existing sites
Practically all the resources are mentioned in the FAQ:
http://www.dynamic-core.net/core/files/faq.dynapi2.html

You can work with loadpanels, to load content, passing values, without
refreshing the page.

> for each page? Is there lazy-loading in the widgets so that if your new
> page requires only
> one new Dynapi javascipt file, then only it is requested from the
> server?
AFAIK all .js files are saved in the browser cache, so if you load a page
with the same files as a previous page they won't download twice.

>how do such
> meta-widgets specify which base widgets the depend so that if there is a
> shared base widget,
> it only get requested from the server once?
See above.

It's not so much download time to worry about, as ram memory usage, and
rendering time (and the stability issues involved)

Cheers,
Richard Bennett

ma...@ri...
www.richardinfo.com
(Everything running on, and ported to the 19/12/2000 snapshot of DynAPI2)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Emberson" <emb...@co...>
To: <dyn...@li...>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 12:41 AM
Subject: [Dynapi-Dev] Redrawing widget with new data


>
> We have a reasonably complex webapp written in Flash by contractors (no
> documentation).
> We let everyone go (no more $$) and I am now re-writing it with html and
> js.
> I happened upon Dynapi yesterday (my first day of looking around the web
> for dhtml info)
> and it looks like a good starting point (and close to a stable release).
>
> Now what I want is not  to have to load a new page from the server each
> time the user
> changes options  (makes selections, etc), rather I want the widget(s)
> that display the
> data simply to be  updated and re-drawn.  The user would make some new
> selection,
> the js would communicate with the server requesting new data, the js
> would receive the
> new data and update the appropriate widgets. Is there any tutorial code,
> examples, or
> existing sites using Dynapi that have this characteristic? and can I see
> the code.
>
> Next, if I have a multi-page webapp, do I have to reload from the server
> the Dynapi code
> for each page? Is there lazy-loading in the widgets so that if your new
> page requires only
> one new Dynapi javascipt file, then only it is requested from the
> server?
>
> If I create two meta-widgets (widgets made up of more than one base
> widget) how do such
> meta-widgets specify which base widgets the depend so that if there is a
> shared base widget,
> it only get requested from the server once? (An examle meta-widget might
> be a viewport and
> two scrollbars (x and y)).
>
> Thanks
>
> Richard Emberson
> Director of Engineering (and only programmer)
> Contact Networks
> emb...@co...
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dynapi-Dev mailing list
> Dyn...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dynapi-dev
> ____________________________________________________________
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> Namezero.com. New!  Namezero Plus domains now available.
> Find out more at: http://www.namezero.com
>

Re: [Dynapi-Dev] Redrawing widget with new data

[Richard E. <emb...@co...>]

Richard Bennett wrote:

> Hi,
>
> >Is there any tutorial code,
> > examples, or
> > existing sites
> Practically all the resources are mentioned in the FAQ:
> http://www.dynamic-core.net/core/files/faq.dynapi2.html
>
> You can work with loadpanels, to load content, passing values, without
> refreshing the page.

I looked at the code and tried the loadpanel example. It works fine with the
supplied
(simple) HTML pages but the loadpanel example has some rules as to what can
be loaded; for instance, having it load one of the other example pages - some
can be
loaded while others can not. I do not know if a good test for the loadpanel
is for it to
be able to load other dynapi example pages.

Anyway, I am just beginning and I was unclear in my request. As an example,
your
server has a database with your friends names as the key and the associated
data is
your friend's one or more email addresses, telephone numbers, etc. My dynapi
webpage
has a entry field for entering the friend's name and a list widget with will
contain the
associated data. Upon entering the friend's name (and clicking the submit
button),
a do-put request is sent to the server and the server returns a string that
contains a
the list of data ("home email:fr...@fo...|work email:Mr...@ba...|home
phone:
132-2343") which is parsed by the javascript and the list widget is updated
with the new
data. (I would return the data in XML if all browsers had a builtin XML
parser and the
javascript had access to it).

So is this possible (the requesting and receiving of data - not an html page)
and
does anyone have any example javascipt? thanks.

> >how do such
> > meta-widgets specify which base widgets the depend so that if there is a
> > shared base widget,
> > it only get requested from the server once?
> See above.

During the evolution of tcl tk, the tcl widget collection, it started with
base/leaf-node
widgets. Then multiple efforts started to create
meta-widgets/container-widgets.
These included layout objects or builting layout rules. Manipulating a
meta-widget
transparently manipulated its component widgets (moving, resize, attribute
setting, etc).
After a couple of the tcltk meta-widget frameworks were under creation, the
lessons
learned allowed for the creation of a single tcltk metawidget collection (it
might have
been that one collection just got more users and displaced all others). In
addition,
changes were made to the base widget set, the node widgets, allowing for
their use
in the metawigets (such as a method getParentWidget()).

Is such a container widget collection and layout engines being planned for
the dynapi widgets?

thanks

>
> Richard Bennett
>
> ma...@ri...
> www.richardinfo.com
> (Everything running on, and ported to the 19/12/2000 snapshot of DynAPI2)
>

Re: [Dynapi-Dev] Redrawing widget with new data

[Richard B. <ma...@ri...>]

I know loadpanel has it's faults, and a few bugs, but it should work fine
for your purposes.
Basically you should regard a "loaded" loadpanel as a Dynlayer, which has
content written to it with setHTML.
If you write the content of a whole examples.html file to a Dynlayer with
setHTML, you will indeed generate errors, if however you write something
which could be expected to be found in the body of your document to the
layer, that should work fine - EXCEPT, that script tags would seem to be
stripped.
It is possible to get the value of a variable loaded from an external file,
or you could use getHTML to load a comma delimitated string, which you could
parse to your form.

Check out Cameron_Hart_Examples, and Christopher_Go_Examples on my site
(although there seem to be some NS issues with these files, these should be
solved in the latest release (I hope))

Cheers,
Richard Bennett

ma...@ri...
www.richardinfo.com
(Everything running on, and ported to the 19/12/2000 snapshot of DynAPI2)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Emberson" <emb...@co...>
To: <dyn...@li...>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Dynapi-Dev] Redrawing widget with new data


> Richard Bennett wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > >Is there any tutorial code,
> > > examples, or
> > > existing sites
> > Practically all the resources are mentioned in the FAQ:
> > http://www.dynamic-core.net/core/files/faq.dynapi2.html
> >
> > You can work with loadpanels, to load content, passing values, without
> > refreshing the page.
>
> I looked at the code and tried the loadpanel example. It works fine with
the
> supplied
> (simple) HTML pages but the loadpanel example has some rules as to what
can
> be loaded; for instance, having it load one of the other example pages -
some
> can be
> loaded while others can not. I do not know if a good test for the
loadpanel
> is for it to
> be able to load other dynapi example pages.
>
> Anyway, I am just beginning and I was unclear in my request. As an
example,
> your
> server has a database with your friends names as the key and the
associated
> data is
> your friend's one or more email addresses, telephone numbers, etc. My
dynapi
> webpage
> has a entry field for entering the friend's name and a list widget with
will
> contain the
> associated data. Upon entering the friend's name (and clicking the submit
> button),
> a do-put request is sent to the server and the server returns a string
that
> contains a
> the list of data ("home email:fr...@fo...|work email:Mr...@ba...|home
> phone:
> 132-2343") which is parsed by the javascript and the list widget is
updated
> with the new
> data. (I would return the data in XML if all browsers had a builtin XML
> parser and the
> javascript had access to it).
>
> So is this possible (the requesting and receiving of data - not an html
page)
> and
> does anyone have any example javascipt? thanks.
>
> > >how do such
> > > meta-widgets specify which base widgets the depend so that if there is
a
> > > shared base widget,
> > > it only get requested from the server once?
> > See above.
>
> During the evolution of tcl tk, the tcl widget collection, it started with
> base/leaf-node
> widgets. Then multiple efforts started to create
> meta-widgets/container-widgets.
> These included layout objects or builting layout rules. Manipulating a
> meta-widget
> transparently manipulated its component widgets (moving, resize, attribute
> setting, etc).
> After a couple of the tcltk meta-widget frameworks were under creation,
the
> lessons
> learned allowed for the creation of a single tcltk metawidget collection
(it
> might have
> been that one collection just got more users and displaced all others). In
> addition,
> changes were made to the base widget set, the node widgets, allowing for
> their use
> in the metawigets (such as a method getParentWidget()).
>
> Is such a container widget collection and layout engines being planned for
> the dynapi widgets?
>
> thanks
>
> >
> > Richard Bennett
> >
> > ma...@ri...
> > www.richardinfo.com
> > (Everything running on, and ported to the 19/12/2000 snapshot of
DynAPI2)
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dynapi-Dev mailing list
> Dyn...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dynapi-dev
> ____________________________________________________________
> Get your free domain name and domain-based e-mail from
> Namezero.com. New!  Namezero Plus domains now available.
> Find out more at: http://www.namezero.com
>