1Maypole::Manual::BuySpyU(s3e)r Contributed Perl DocumentaMtaiyopnole::Manual::BuySpy(3)
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6 Maypole::Manual::BugSpy - The Maypole iBuySpy Portal
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9 I think it's good fun to compare Maypole against other frameworks, so
10 here's how to build the ASP.NET tutorial site in Maypole.
11 We begin with a lengthy process of planning and investigating the
13 sources. Of prime interest is the database schema and the initial data,
14 which we convert to a MySQL database. Converting MS SQL to MySQL is not
15 fun. I shall spare you the gore. Especially the bit where the default
16 insert IDs didn't match up between the tables.
17 The "ibsportal" database has a number of tables which describe how the
19 portal should look, and some tables which describe the data that should
20 appear on it. The portal is defined in terms of a set of modules; each
21 module takes some data from somewhere, and specifies a template to be
22 used to format the data. This is quite different from how Maypole
23 normally operates, so we have a choice as to whether we're going to
24 completely copy this design, or use a more "natural" implementation in
25 terms of having the portal display defined as a template itself, with
26 all the modules specified right there in Template Toolkit code rather
27 than picked up from the database. This would be much faster, since you
28 get one shot of rendering instead of having to process each module's
29 template independently. The thing is, I feel like showing off precisely
30 how flexible Maypole is, so we'll do it the hard way.
31 The first thing we need to do is get the database into some sort of
33 useful shape, and work out the relationships between the tables. This
34 of course requires half a day of playing with GraphViz, Omnigraffle and
35 mysql, but ended up with something like this:
36 This leads naturally to the following driver code:
38 package Portal;
40 use Maypole::Application;
41 Portal->setup("dbi:mysql:ibsportal");
42 use Class::DBI::Loader::Relationship;
43 Portal->config->loader->relationship($_) for (
44 "A module has a definition", "A module has settings",
45 "A tab has modules", "A portal has tabs",
46 "A role has a portal", "A definition has a portal",
47 "A module has announcements", "A module has contacts",
48 "A module has discussions", "A module has events",
49 "A module has htmltexts", "A module has links",
50 "A module has documents",
51 "A user has roles via userrole"
52 );
53 1;
54 As you can see, a portal is made up of a number of different tabs; the
56 tabs contain modules, but they're separated into different panes, so a
57 module knows whether it belongs on the left pane, the right pane or the
58 center. A module also knows where it appears in the pane.
59 We'll begin by mocking up the portal view in plain text, like so:
61 use Portal;
63 my $portal = Portal::Portal->retrieve(2);
64 for my $tab ($portal->tabs) {
65 print $tab,"\n";
66 for my $pane (qw(LeftPane ContentPane RightPane)) {
67 print "\t$pane:\n";
68 for (sort { $a->module_order <=> $b->module_order }
69 $tab->modules(pane => $pane)) {
70 print "\t\t$_:\t", $_->definition,"\n";
71 }
72 }
73 print "\n";
74 }
75 This dumps out the tabs of our portal, along with the modules in each
77 tab and their types; this lets us check that we've got the database set
78 up properly. If we have, it should produce something like this:
79 Home
81 LeftPane:
82 Quick link: Quicklink
83 ContentPane:
84 Welcome to the IBuySpy Portal: Html Document
85 News and Features: announcement
86 Upcoming event: event
87 RightPane:
88 This Week's Special: Html Document
89 Top Movers: XML/XSL
90 ...
92 Now we want to get the front page up; for the moment, we'll just have
94 it display the module names and their definitions like our text mock-
95 up, and we'll flesh out the actual modules later.
96 But before we do that, we'll write a front-end URL handler method, to
98 allow us to ape the ASP file names. Why do we want to make a Maypole
99 site look like it's running ".aspx" files? Because we can! - and
100 because I want to show we don't necessarily have to follow the Maypole
101 tradition of having our URLs look like "/table/action/id/arguments".
102 our %pages = (
104 "DesktopDefault.aspx" => { action => "view", table => "tab" },
105 "MobileDefault.aspx" => { action => "view_mobile", table => "tab" },
106 );
107 sub parse_path {
109 my $self = shift;
110 $self->path("DesktopDefault.aspx") unless $self->path;
111 return $self->SUPER::parse_path if not exists $pages{$self->path};
112 my $page = $pages{$self->path} ;
113 $self->action($page->{action});
114 $self->table($page->{table});
115 my %query = $self->ar->args;
116 $self->args( [ $query{tabid} || $query{ItemID} || 1] );
117 }
118 1;
120 Here we're overriding the "parse_path" method which takes the "path"
122 slot from the request and populates the "table", "action" and "args"
123 slots. If the user has asked for a page we don't know about, we ask the
124 usual Maypole path handling method to give it a try; this will become
125 important later on. We turn the default page, "DesktopDefault.aspx",
126 into the equivalent of "/tab/view/1" unless another "tabid" or "ItemID"
127 is given in the query parameters; this allows us to use the
128 ASP.NET-style "DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=3" to select a tab.
129 Now we have to create our "tab/view" template; the majority of this is
131 copied from the DesktopDefault.aspx source, but our panes look like
132 this:
133 <td id="LeftPane" Width="170">
135 [% pane("LeftPane") %]
136 </td>
137 <td width="1">
138 </td>
139 <td id="ContentPane" Width="*">
140 [% pane("ContentPane") %]
141 </td>
142 <td id="RightPane" Width="230">
143 [% pane("RightPane") %]
144 </td>
145 <td width="10">
146
147 </td>
148 The "pane" macro has to be the Template Toolkit analogue of the Perl
150 code we used for our mock-up:
151 [% MACRO pane(panename) BLOCK;
153 FOR module = tab.modules("pane", panename);
154 "<P>"; module; " - "; module.definition; "</P>";
155 END;
156 END;
157 Now, the way that the iBuySpy portal works is that each module has a
159 definition, and each definition contains a path to a template:
160 "$module->definition->DesktopSrc" returns a path name for an "ascx"
161 component file. All we need to do is convert those files from ASP to
162 the Template Toolkit, and have Maypole process each component for each
163 module, right?
164 Components and templates
166 Dead right, but it was here that I got too clever. I guess it was the
167 word "component" that set me off. I thought that since the page was
168 made up of a large number of different modules, all requiring their own
169 set of objects, I should use a separate Maypole sub-request for each
170 one, as shown in the "Component-based pages" recipe in the Request
171 Cookbook.
172 So this is what I did. I created a method in "Portal::Module" that
174 would set the template to the appropriate "ascx" file:
175 sub view_desktop :Exported {
177 my ($self, $r) = @_;
178 $r->template($r->objects->[0]->definition->DesktopSrc);
179 }
180 and changed the "pane" macro to fire off a sub-request for each module:
182 [% MACRO pane(panename) BLOCK;
184 FOR module = tab.modules("pane", panename);
185 SET path = "/module/view_desktop/" _ module.id;
186 request.component(path);
187 END;
188 END; %]
189 This did the right thing, and a call to "/module/view_desktop/12" would
191 look up the "Html Document" module definition, find the "DesktopSrc" to
192 be DesktopModules/HtmlModule.ascx, and process module 12 with that
193 template. Once I had converted HtmlModule.ascx to be a Template Toolkit
194 file (and we'll look at the conversion of the templates in a second) it
195 would display nicely on my portal.
196 Except it was all very slow; we were firing off a large number of
198 Maypole requests in series, so that each template could get at the
199 objects it needed. Requests were taking 5 seconds.
200 That's when it dawned on me that these templates don't actually need
202 different objects at all. The only object of interest that
203 "/module/view_desktop" is passing in is a "module" object, and each
204 template figures everything out by accessor calls on that. But we
205 already have a "module" object, in our "FOR" loop - we're using it to
206 make the component call, after all! Why not just "PROCESS" each
207 template inside the loop directly?
208 [% MACRO pane(panename) BLOCK;
210 FOR module = tab.modules("pane", panename);
211 SET src = module.definition.DesktopSrc;
212 TRY;
213 PROCESS $src;
214 CATCH DEFAULT;
215 "Bah, template $src broke on me!";
216 END;
217 END;
218 END; %]
219 This worked somewhat better, and took request times from 5 seconds down
221 to acceptable sub-second levels again. I could take the "view_desktop"
222 method out again; fewer lines of code to maintain is always good. Now
223 all that remained to do for the view side of the portal was to convert
224 our ASP templates over to something sensible.
225 ASP to Template Toolkit
227 They're all much of a muchness, these templating languages. Some of
228 them, though, are just a wee bit more verbose than others. For
229 instance, the banner template which appears in the header consists of
230 104 lines of ASP code; most of those are to create the navigation bar
231 of tabs that we can view. Now I admit that we're slightly cheating at
232 the moment since we don't have the concept of a logged-in user and so
233 we don't distinguish between the tabs that anyone can see and those
234 than only an admin can see, but we'll come back to it later. Still, 104
235 lines, eh?
236 The actual tab list is presented here: (reformated slightly for sanity)
238 <tr>
240 <td>
241 <asp:datalist id="tabs" cssclass="OtherTabsBg"
242 repeatdirection="horizontal" ItemStyle-Height="25"
243 SelectedItemStyle-CssClass="TabBg" ItemStyle-BorderWidth="1"
244 EnableViewState="false" runat="server">
245 <ItemTemplate>
246 <a href='<%= Request.ApplicationPath %>/
247 DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=<%# Container.ItemIndex %>&tabid=
248 <%# ((TabStripDetails) Container.DataItem).TabId %>' class="OtherTabs">
249 <%# ((TabStripDetails) Container.DataItem).TabName %></a>
250 </ItemTemplate>
251 <SelectedItemTemplate>
252 <span class="SelectedTab">
253 <%# ((TabStripDetails) Container.DataItem).TabName %></span>
254 </SelectedItemTemplate>
255 </asp:datalist>
256 </td>
257 </tr>
258 But it has to be built up in some 22 lines of C# code which creates and
260 populates an array and then binds it to a template parameter. See those
261 "<%#" and "<%=" tags? They're the equivalent of our Template Toolkit
262 "[% %]" tags. "Request.ApplicationPath"? That's our "base" template
263 argument.
264 In our version we ask the portal what tabs it has, and display the list
266 directly, displaying the currently selected tab differently:
267 <table id="Banner_tabs" class="OtherTabsBg" cellspacing="0" border="0">
269 <tr>
270 [% FOR a_tab = portal.tabs %]
271 [% IF a_tab.id == tab.id %]
272 <td class="TabBg" height="25">
273 <span class="SelectedTab">[%tab.name%]</span>
274 [% ELSE %]
275 <td height="25">
276 <a href='[%base%]DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=[%a_tab.id%]'
277 class="OtherTabs">[%a_tab.name%]</a>
278 [% END %]
279 </td>
280 [% END %]
281 </tr>
282 </table>
283 This is the way the world should be. But wait, where have we pulled
285 this "portal" variable from? We need to tell the "Portal" class to put
286 the default portal into the template arguments:
287 sub additional_data {
289 shift->{template_args}{portal} = Portal::Portal->retrieve(2);
290 }
291 Translating all the other ASP.NET components is a similar exercise in
293 drudgery; on the whole, there was precisely nothing interesting about
294 them at all - we merely converted a particularly verbose templating
295 language (and if I never see "asp:BoundColumn" again, it'll be no loss)
296 into a rather more sophisticated one.
297 The simplest component, HtmlModule.ascx, asks a module for its
299 associated "htmltexts", and then displays the "DesktopHtml" for each of
300 them in a table. This was 40 lines of ASP.NET, including more odious
301 C# to make the SQL calls and retrieve the "htmltexts". But we can do
302 all that retrieval by magic, so our HtmlModule.ascx looks like this:
303 [% PROCESS module_title %]
305 <portal:title EditText="Edit" EditUrl="~/DesktopModules/EditHtml.aspx" />
306 <table id="t1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
307 <tr valign="top">
308 <td id="HtmlHolder">
309 [% FOR html = module.htmltexts; html.DesktopHtml; END %]
310 </td>
311 </tr>
312 </table>
313 Now I admit that we've cheated here and kept that "portal:title" tag
315 until we know what to do with it - it's obvious that we should turn it
316 into a link to edit the HTML of this module if we're allowed to.
317 The next simplest one actually did provide a slight challenge;
319 ImageModule.ascx took the height, width and image source properties of
320 an image from the module's "settings" table, and displayed an "IMG" tag
321 with the appropriate values. This is only slightly difficult because we
322 have to arrange the array of "module.settings" into a hash of
323 "key_name" => "setting" pairs. Frankly, I can't be bothered to do this
324 in the template, so we'll add it into the "template_args" again. This
325 time "additional_data" looks like:
326 sub additional_data {
328 my $r = shift;
329 shift->template_args->{portal} = Portal::Portal->retrieve(2);
330 if ($r->objects->[0]->isa("Portal::Module")) {
331 $r->template_args->{module_settings} =
332 { map { $_->key_name, $_->setting }
333 $r->objects->[0]->settings };
334 }
335 }
336 And the ImageModule.ascx drops from the 30-odd lines of ASP into:
338 [% PROCESS module_title; %]
340 <img id="Image1" border="0" src="[% module_settings.src %]"
341 width="[% module_settings.width %]"
342 height="[% module_settings.height %]" />
343 <br>
344 Our portal is taking shape; after a few more templates have been
346 translated, we now have a complete replica of the front page of the
347 portal and all its tabs. It's fast, it's been developed rapidly, and
348 it's less than 50 lines of Perl code so far. But it's not finished yet.
349 Adding users
351 ...
352 Links
354 Contents, Next That's all folks! Time to start coding ..., Previous
355 Flox
356perl v5.32.1 2021-01-27 Maypole::Manual::BuySpy(3)