[Openaaq-discuss] Re: New code from Michael

[Alex P. <ale...@zw...>]

Thanks, Michael. I'll check it out and, I think, post it to the
Sourceforge site as add-on code.

The shared.pl code is problematic mainly because it should be a cleanly
coded module. Right now nothing has a defined variable scope. I still
think the model has allot of possibilities because at some point there
could be a module to control client, question and administration
fields.

I'm almost 100 pages into Damian Conway's Object Oriented Perl. It's a
good book, and making a module looks very functional for shared.pl.

The idea of using server side includes actually comes as a clean way to
combine AAQ with existing user login systems. Sites that have a user
profile system usually design it for other needs, like e-commerce, and
don't think about AAQ.

Again, thanks.

Alex









ope...@li... wrote:
> 
> Alex Polkovsky wrote:
> 
> >Michael, I have a bunch of questions for you.
> >  
> >
> Hi Alex,
> 
> Attached is a tar archive containing the new programs I wrote for
> posting AAQ questions.  Below are my answers to your previous questions. 
> 
> Here are some notes about my new code:
> 
> There are three programs:  post_public, post_postsecondary, and
> choose_institution:
>   post_public posts questions for public libraries
>   post_postsecondary posts questions for post secondary libraries but
> requires that a parameter be passed specifying which institution (as the
> values of the form depend on the institution).
>   choose_institution generates a form for picking an institution and
> submits to post_postsecondary (not used for post_public at all).
> 
> There are a number of html and text files that are all templates used by
> the programs.  All pages that the programs display come from a
> template.  So the appearance can be changed completely just by editing a
> few templates. 
> 
> I use Text::FastTemplate for templating.  I believe it is the
> appropriate templating system for these quick and dirty scripts.   The
> template toolkit might be more appropriate for a better designed and
> larger system.
> 
> The new programs do a fair bit of error checking.  Almost anything  (but
> not everything) that could go wrong will be caught.  I don't really do
> anything special if an error condition occurs yet.  I plan to add some
> logging abilities later.
> 
> I don't do any checks on input which is very bad.  The old OpenAAQ is
> vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks and this code is too.
> 
> To use the programs you will need to at least edit the database username
> and password constants.
> 
> My new programs create a new customer account for every question.  At
> first that might look like an error or a bug, but it is the desired
> behavior.  We were facing a problem of customers who had multiple
> affiliations, or who had changed affiliation, or who had changed email
> addresses.  Since there is no account managment option for the customers
> we decided that a quick and dirty hack would work.  The customer has no
> "account" as far as they are concerned and they must provide their
> affiliation and contact info with every question.  We still create new
> customer accounts... one per question.  At some later date I will write
> a program to reap old accounts.  I don't think this is the correct
> solution... but it was as good as I could get for next to zero effort. ;-)
> 
> I am working on another change to AAQ right now as well.  I was asked to
> allow for two-way-conversation between customer and librarian.  Again, I
> need to apply as little effort as possible.  So I am going to use
> "variable envelope return paths" to assign a unique email address to
> every question.  A customer can reply to the notification email they
> get, and their replies will be appended to the original question (in the
> database it will be added as addition text in some way).   I have not
> completed this portion yet, but I will share it when it is ready.  It
> will depend on having a mail server such as qmail or postfix where you
> can have email address like "aaq...@yo..." where
> "anything" could be some ID number and all email to addresses starting
> with "aaq-" will be sent to a program that parses them.  The program
> parses out the ID after the "aaq-" part to identify what question the
> email should be appended too.
> 
> >What version of MySQL are you running?
> >  
> >
> The latest in the 4.0.X series.  I will be upgrading to 4.1 very soon.
> 
> >Are you using a standard perl module for te HTML templates?
> >  
> >
> Text::FastTemplate
> 
> It is about as light weight as you can get.  It outperforms
> HTML::Template and has a simple syntax.  Not powerful like the template
> toolkit though.  For a short CGI that is not part of a much larger
> infrastructure, Text::FastTemplate is my favorite.
> 
> >You wrote two scripts, but OAAQ has the database driven functions for
> >creating modified pages for just such an implementation. Did the
> >shared.pl code (gross as it is) get in your way?
> >  
> >
> Sadly, I did have problems getting the existing code to work.  I
> inititally made modifications to the existing post.pl program.  But
> things were not displaying the way I expect.  I am familiar with the
> code and felt I had covered my bases, but after about 4 hours of
> debugging I decided to take a more daring path and wrote a new post
> script and ended up liking it.
> 
> >I like your Net::SMTP implementation. That would take one more
> >uncertainty out of installation. I may grab that idea.
> >  
> >
> It is more or less easy to use and you can get some debugging info in
> the event that mail cannot be delivered.
> 
> >I'm pushing myself to redo post.pl under the followig design:
> >
> >1. same one page model; any preceeding pages can be used to profile a
> >user by imagemap, preceeding form or a user login mechanism belonging
> >to the site.
> >
> >  
> >
> I was also thinking that an AJAX (danger... buzzword) client might be
> interesting.  Right now I use two programs for the postsecondary part,
> but with AJAX that could be one "form" with several web services behind it.
> 
> >2. Complete HTML page or Apache server side include. a server side
> >include is called in the page with
> ><!--#exec cmd="/location/post.pl '$QUERY_STRING'" -->
> >and this permits OAAQ to function in complicated HTML sites. Also, you
> >will one day be able to use c/post.pl to add a post form to the same
> >page that c/search.pl adds a search form to.
> >  
> >
> That is a really neat idea.  You could convert my program do that by
> simply changing the templates I think.
> 
> >4. Email verification will split email on the @ and attempt to resolve
> >the IP address of the mail server. I'm guessing Net::SMTP could request
> >verification of an account from a mail server, but I think too many
> >servers will not reply out of some setting meant to filter spam.
> >  
> >
> I did put in a small bit of code to check the sanity of the email
> address.  If the email address looks wrong it tells the user but allows
> them to use the "bad" email address if they check a checkbox.  This
> helps in situations where someone might have a valid email address but
> that is weird enough that we might think it is wrong. (emails with
> punctuation for example).
> 
> >5. support for sites reuiring no email in favor of phone. Later, I will
> >look at staff modules to allow phone as the responce method and a "do
> >not send responce" swich.
> >  
> >
> That's a good idea.
> 
> >6. create a new client record for every post. that may seem like bad
> >database design, completely ignoring normalization, but without a
> >verifiably unique key I'm stuck.
> >  
> >
> Haha... that is exactly what I did.  Great idea!  In the long run it
> would be nice to be able to install OpenAAQ and as an admin choose
> weather there should be accounts or no accounts.  If there are accounts
> it would be nice to have an account managment applications that users
> could access to update their contact info, select affiliations etc.  Of
> course if they could do that it just begs more questions about how the
> system would work.
> 
> 
> >Alex
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >ope...@li... wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>Hello Everyone,
> >>
> >>I also have something to contribute. Recently I re-wrote the AAQ client
> >>(post.pl essentially). I wrote two new version (one for the public
> >>library users at my consortium and one for the post-secondary users). I
> >>made some significant changes.
> >>
> >>1) The HTML the program displays and the email it sends out are based on
> >>templates
> >>2) I use Net::SMTP to send email
> >>3) There is more error checking in the database code
> >>4) I use transactions in the database code (so if one pieces fails the
> >>whole thing stops and rollsback what it was doing).
> >>5) User registration is not required (the system stores all the user
> >>info but does not track the user's identity with a cookie)
> >>6) One screen is used to collect all information from the user
> >>
> >>I will make the new code available as soon as possible.
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >
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> >  
> >
> 
>