[Masonmail-developers] some updates

[Tom A. <tal...@ta...>]

Vitor has done a very nice job laying out some basic framework on the
file structure for development and we've been tossing back and forth
ideas on some of the fundamentals.  I'm not a wizard at Mason so I'm
taking advice humbly...

Apparently he's done these types of applications in the past, so I'm
willing to take what he's volunteering as a baseline and we'll run from
there.  Because of this, things will change a lot as we sort it out.

One of the results of this is that I have a lot of rewriting to do on
the docs, but that's why they are out there.  To be changed.  I'm also
trying to learn a lot of Mason specifics while keeping my day job and a
(reasonably) happy wife.

I'm thrilled that there have been as many people signing up as
developers at this point.  This means a lot of developement can happen
without too much pain.  And hopefully we'll all learn a lot in the
process.  Personally, my brain is turning to mush and it feels great!

I've added everyone I can find to the project.  If I missed someone
you'll have to hit me and wake me up.

I think theres a few core pieces we can start working on, or at least
talking about on the list to get an idea of how things might procede.

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Conventions: I started out with some bad conventions on file suffixes.
referencing
http://www.masonhq.com/docs/manual/Admin.html#controlling_access_via_filename_
is there any reason not to follow that document for the convention of
.html/.mhtml .foo/.mfoo ?

Also, the mason configuration should include something to the affect of:
     PerlModule HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler

     <LocationMatch "(\.html|\.txt|\.pl)$">
       SetHandler perl-script
       PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
     </LocationMatch>

     <LocationMatch "(\.m(html|txt|pl)|dhandler|autohandler)$">
       SetHandler perl-script
       PerlInitHandler Apache::Constants::NOT_FOUND
     </LocationMatch>

to prevent us from hurting ourselves.

I guess I need to add a Task item to actually DO the configuration scripts.
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Authentication/syshandler.
so far the basic idea here is to run authentication checks (cookie test)
and the redirect if no cookie all in a syshandler.  Authentication is to
be based on Mail::IMAPClient and cookies through
MasonX::Request::WithApacheSession.  Initially Sessions will be based on
Apache::Sessions::File which can be tested out for other
Apache::Session::* engines when we have something more to test.

Result of successful Authentication would be a global variable for the
IMAP object, after all, this is an email application.

NOTE: There is a syshandler object in the CVS that is a non-functional 
attempt at doing just this.  I got distracted and uploaded the file 
prematurely.  If someone wants to tackle it I'll add it as a Task to the 
project page.

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Which should immediately bring up the point that we will need a perl
module for pulling a lot of this together.  I'm half tempted to put this
on the second page because we might need to identify some of the methods
a little better before we put together a module for it.

Any suggestions on how to manage this?

Personally, I can see myself putting a lot of code into the .m* files
and as we figure out the functional structure, we'll see where blocks
can be stripped out and put into Modules.

 From the code that I've done, there doesn't seem too much gained by not
using Mail::IMAPClient directly in the mason components since you need
the direct output for building pages.  You just need an IMAP object.

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autohandler: minimal for now with an external link to a CSS file for
site wide appearance.

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dhandler:
Create the following structure:

/public/folders
/public/messages
/public/compose

and inside this folders, only an dhandler.

So, the result would be :

masonmail.com/folders/list             : will list the folders
masonmail.com/folders/edit?folder=xxxx : will open an edit folder form for
form xxxx
masonmail.com/folders/do.edit          : will be the target of folder form,
it will handle the folder save operation.

the components will be on /comps :

/comps/folders/edit_form.mc
/comps/folders/list_folders.mc

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I'm putting a lot of this out early so that the information is available
for everyone to digest and start getting an idea in their mind how
things might fit together.

The project is about writing code, but if we don't know anything about
the foundation it's going to get ugly fast.

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That's about it for now.