User:Which Linden/Office Hours/2007 Sep 20

Transcript of Which Linden's office hours:

[11:12]	Which Linden:	Incidentally, I plan to post this transcript if it's cool with you all
[11:12]	Tao Takashi:	sure :)
[11:12]	Timeless Prototype:	fine with me
[11:12]	Which Linden:	OK, that'll be the rule for future office hours
[11:12]	Tao Takashi:	so I will hopefully find out more about this egg thing ;-)
[11:13]	Laetizia Coronet is not sure what it is about anyway ;)
[11:13]	Which Linden:	The egg thing is totally on my task list
[11:13]	Tao Takashi:	but I think developing and having it installed on the same machine should be no problem
[11:13]	Tao Takashi:	PYTHONPATH should still be evaluated
[11:13]	Which Linden:	Laetizia: python eggs are basically a convenient way to install Python code
[11:13]	Tao Takashi:	and as said for developing buildout might be of great use
[11:14]	Which Linden:	Kind of like Perl's CPAN and Ruby Gems
[11:14]	Tao Takashi:	just give somebody a buildout script and it automatically installs all components needed for running the project
[11:14]	Which Linden:	Hm.... that is nice
[11:14]	Laetizia Coronet:	ok... then this is no office hour for me - I was witing for Daniel...
[11:14]	Tao Takashi:	be it from svn, rpm, tgz, http, ftp whatever
[11:14]	Which Linden:	Laetizia: oh, no Daniel office hours
[11:14]	Which Linden:	We'd need to have eggs for Eventlet and Mulib, too
[11:15]	Laetizia Coronet:	no idea what Python is beyond Monty :) have a good evening
[11:15]	Which Linden:	You too
[11:15]	Tao Takashi:	you too, Laetizia :)
[11:15]	Kitto Flora:	Did I find the supposed Daniel Meeting?
[11:15]	Tao Takashi:	Python is the best thing on earth though
[11:15]	Which Linden:	Hah, wow, no, no Daniel here
[11:15]	Laetizia Coronet:	No Daniel on his spot
[11:15]	Laetizia Coronet:	Levenhall, the cornfield. Noone there
[11:15]	Tao Takashi:	Daniel should be somewhere else but I also waited once for him without him coming
[11:15]	Tao Takashi:	like with Glenn earlier
[11:15]	Kitto Flora:	Where Daniel meets is a secret?
[11:16]	Tao Takashi:	and for choosing the storage, zope3 interfaces might be nice
[11:16]	Laetizia Coronet:	no no it is in Levenhall but e has a bad record for not showing up
[11:16]	Laetizia Coronet:	bye
[11:16]	Which Linden:	see ya!
[11:17]	Tao Takashi:	so you basically declare an interface like IPersistenceManager and then you implement your persister class with implements(IPersistenceManager)
[11:17]	Tao Takashi:	and then you can register it as a utility and retrieve it again with getUtility(IPersistenceManager)
[11:17]	Which Linden:	What this reminded me of was that we still are working towards 1.0 with Eventlet and Mulib
[11:17]	Tao Takashi:	which returns the actual configured implementation of IPersistenceManager
[11:17]	Tao Takashi:	this has a set of defined methods then
[11:17]	Which Linden:	Interesting, I'll give it a look
[11:18]	Tao Takashi:	we really should do Python user Group meetings in here
[11:18]	Tao Takashi:	I should join that group again and maybe announce something on the mailinglist
[11:18]	Tao Takashi:	another task I probably won't have time for thouggh ;-)
[11:18]	Tao Takashi:	in Zope3 we also have the nice concept of adapters
[11:19]	Tao Takashi:	like if you have a class which does not implement a specific interface, like a getSize() method of an ISize interface
[11:19]	Which Linden:	So check this page out: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Eventlet_1.0
[11:19]	Tao Takashi:	thn you can write an adapter which adapts the instance of this class to this interface
[11:19]	Tao Takashi:	simply by writing adapater=ISize(instance)
[11:19]	Tao Takashi:	and then adapter.getSize()
[11:20]	Tao Takashi:	which is quite handy and better than subclassing
[11:20]	Tao Takashi:	because you can configure the correct adapter and you don't need to change the original code of the class
[11:20]	Which Linden:	Also: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mulib_1.0
[11:20]	Tao Takashi:	*checking* :)
[11:21]	Which Linden:	They're just a bunch of links to JIRA tasks, but basically what we're asking for is additions
[11:21]	Which Linden:	I know people haven't really gotten off the ground with these libraries
[11:21]	Tao Takashi:	I think they are quite specific for a certain task
[11:21]	Which Linden:	(except for Baba who's tackling the hardest problem head-on)
[11:22]	Which Linden:	Hmmmm.... I tend to think of them as quite general, but maybe that's because I have lots of use cases. :-)
[11:22]	Which Linden:	What's the task you see them as limited to?
[11:22]	Tao Takashi:	I must admit that I only skimmed them by now ;-) maybe they also simply need more PR
[11:22]	Tao Takashi:	I need more time ;-)
[11:22]	Which Linden:	Definitely need that
[11:22]	Which Linden:	I need more sleep, while we're wishing. :-)
[11:23]	Timeless Prototype needs more brains, hands and computers
[11:23]	Which Linden:	So what should we do for a start? Expand the examples more?
[11:23]	Tao Takashi:	looking at the examples now :)
[11:23]	Which Linden:	hah
[11:23]	Tao Takashi:	do you do doctests?
[11:23]	Which Linden:	Or maybe include the examples on the front wiki page
[11:24]	Timeless Prototype:	the examples are bringing clarity to the intent, more examples would be cool
[11:24]	Tao Takashi:	yes, usually code says more ;-)
[11:24]	Tao Takashi:	that's also why I like doctests more because these are basically documented examples
[11:24]	Which Linden:	Timeless: Gotta be careful, though: too many computers is like too many cats: always one getting out of the bag
[11:24]	Which Linden:	What are doctests?
[11:24]	Timeless Prototype:	:)
[11:24]	Which Linden:	*googles*
[11:25]	Which Linden:	oh, rad!
[11:25]	Which Linden:	I see, it looks through your source for interactive examples then tries to run them
[11:25]	Which Linden:	Yeah, we should totally do that
[11:25]	Tao Takashi:	you can even use them in docstrings
[11:26]	Tao Takashi:	Plone is mainly doctests these days, explaining interfaces and APIs
[11:26]	Which Linden:	One problem is that these are networking libraries, so not everything makes sense as an interactive operation
[11:26]	Which Linden:	I.e. our examples on the wiki use curl
[11:27]	Which Linden:	I guess you can shell out
[11:27]	Which Linden:	os.system
[11:27]	Tao Takashi:	ok, right, there might be limits
[11:27]	Timeless Prototype:	btw, loved the curl examples, very concise
[11:27]	Tao Takashi:	and it seems always the biggest problem to work around these limits in tests ;-)
[11:28]	Which Linden:	Donovan came up with the examples
[11:28]	Which Linden:	That dude's tagline should be "it's *incredibly* simple"
[11:28]	Timeless Prototype:	:)
[11:28]	Which Linden:	We do have unit tests that start up httpd servers for each test
[11:29]	Which Linden makes a task to convert to/add doctests.
[11:30]	Which Linden:	So for chttp, there's this dude who's been helping us with it
[11:30]	Tao Takashi sees the name Bob Ippolito in the source :)
[11:31]	Which Linden:	He should send an intro email to sldev soon.
[11:31]	Which Linden:	But just so you know, and aren't confused about why seeping.blister is committing to chttp :-)
[11:31]	Which Linden:	(oh, it's not Bob)
[11:31]	Which Linden:	Bob is cool, I *wish* he was working on stuff with us
[11:32]	Tao Takashi:	well, just checking the source ;-)
[11:32]	Which Linden:	Yeah
[11:32]	Tao Takashi:	Bob should definitely be cool, heard lots of cool stuff about Mochikit
[11:33]	Which Linden:	Yeah, mochikit is really nice
[11:33]	Tao Takashi:	and I know we had a lengthy discussion about which of these libs to ship with Plone
[11:33]	Which Linden:	And apparently he has something that makes Erlang easier to use, too
[11:33]	Tao Takashi never had the need to use Erlang
[11:34]	Which Linden:	You don't need to use Erlang, Erlang needs to use *you*!
[11:34]	Which Linden:	(in Soviet Russia)
[11:34]	Tao Takashi:	ah, ic :-)
[11:34]	Which Linden:	Timeless, you've been pretty quiet, anything on your mind?
[11:35]	Timeless Prototype:	IMs!
[11:35]	Timeless Prototype:	lol
[11:35]	Which Linden:	Hah
[11:35]	Tao Takashi:	btw, for the pages you might wan to explain maybe in how these libraries are different from the existing ones
[11:35]	Which Linden:	Yeah, well, what are the 'competitors'?
[11:35]	Which Linden:	Twisted
[11:36]	Which Linden:	httplib
[11:36]	Tao Takashi:	asyncore?
[11:36]	Which Linden:	right
[11:36]	Which Linden:	and mulib sort of gets into django and web frameworks territory
[11:37]	Tao Takashi:	yes
[11:37]	Tao Takashi:	at least in a basic sense
[11:37]	Which Linden:	The major thing about eventlet and mulib is that they make it very easy to do lots of data-passing via http
[11:38]	Which Linden:	Using it is rather a lot like very easy rpc
[11:39]	Which Linden:	We should totally put up an example of a client-server application
[11:39]	Timeless Prototype:	yeah
[11:39]	Tao Takashi:	maybe a use case, too :-)
[11:39]	Timeless Prototype:	the things it can hook into - have they been specced yet or are you just thrashing out the mechanism first?
[11:40]	Which Linden:	Also, as Donovan alluded to, we have libraries that make it possible to speak LLSD with some process, which could potentially mean an all-Python client
[11:40]	Which Linden:	s/client/viewer/
[11:40]	Tao Takashi:	Xan was telling me that during the architecture meeting
[11:40]	Which Linden:	What do you mean "the things it could hook into"?
[11:40]	Tao Takashi:	that there are LLSD libs around
[11:40]	Tao Takashi:	I geuss the use case is backbone
[11:40]	Tao Takashi:	but the page is empty yet ;-)
[11:40]	Which Linden:	we just have to figure out the licensing for the llsd libs
[11:41]	Timeless Prototype:	I've been away, not followed all this stuff about mulib etc
[11:41]	Which Linden:	Oh, hah, yeah, the backbone page is so sad
[11:41]	Tao Takashi:	booking gigs for the spotlight I guess :)
[11:41]	Which Linden:	I don't know if backbone is really a good example, it's really just a registration service for mulib web applications
[11:42]	Which Linden:	so we have all these independent applications and the backbone coordinates the url space
[11:42]	Tao Takashi:	I wonder if I can put my PDF generator on eventlet or so
[11:42]	Tao Takashi:	as it really just needs a very basic web server which takes arguments and calls the PDF generation method
[11:42]	Tao Takashi:	right now I use TurboGears for it
[11:43]	Which Linden:	Sounds like a great use case
[11:43]	Tao Takashi:	but I don't need any mysql, templating etc.
[11:43]	Which Linden:	Yeah, you just want it to serve up some HTTP
[11:43]	Tao Takashi:	does mulib expose methods, too?
[11:43]	Which Linden:	Hey Armand
[11:44]	Tao Takashi:	or just a handle_get?
[11:44]	Tao Takashi:	Hi armand
[11:44]	Which Linden:	Oh, yeah, handle_put, handle_head
[11:44]	Armand Callisto:	Greetings all
[11:44]	Which Linden:	you name it
[11:44]	Timeless Prototype:	hi Armand :)
[11:44]	Tao Takashi:	ok, but it's not exposing methods then
[11:44]	Which Linden:	What do you mean "exposing" them?
[11:44]	Tao Takashi:	like http://localhost:8080/whatever calls whatever() in my class
[11:44]	Which Linden:	Oh, yeah, it does that
[11:44]	Tao Takashi:	ok :)
[11:44]	Armand Callisto:	you mean like posting the proof of concept on the jira?
[11:45]	Which Linden:	Armand: we're talking about using mulib for web applications, and how best to use it
[11:45]	Armand Callisto:	oh sweet
[11:45]	Tao Takashi:	Hey Donova :)
[11:45]	Tao Takashi:	n
[11:45]	Tao Takashi:	sorry :)
[11:45]	Timeless Prototype:	hi Donovan!
[11:45]	Donovan Linden:	howdy
[11:45]	Which Linden:	Yo dude
[11:46]	Tao Takashi:	so now that I know your lastname, it rings a bell :-)
[11:46]	Timeless Prototype laughs
[11:46]	Which Linden:	Tao was just asking about how to get http://localhost:8080/whatever calls whatever() in my class
[11:46]	Which Linden:	ok, I clearly just copied and pasted that line, badly
[11:46]	Which Linden is like eliza
[11:47]	Tao Takashi:	well, I could actually simply do it myself in handle_get() via getattr()
[11:47]	Which Linden:	So, I think you're right, you don't expose methods that way, you expose resources
[11:47]	Which Linden:	Because the url is a noun
[11:48]	Which Linden:	So you'll want to do different things whether you GET localhost/whatever or PUT
[11:48]	Which Linden:	or whatever the verb is
[11:48]	Which Linden:	That is The REST Way (tm)
[11:48]	Tao Takashi:	the method is a noun
[11:48]	Donovan Linden:	yeah -- I never liked zope putting the method name in the url
[11:48]	Tao Takashi:	err verb :)
[11:49]	Armand Callisto:	ok
[11:49]	Which Linden:	Yeah, the method is a verb, so each object has 6 verbs
[11:49]	Which Linden:	(barring http extensions like webdav)
[11:49]	Tao Takashi will never come back if there are Zope haters around here ;-)
[11:50]	Tao Takashi:	but actually somebody implemented REST for Zope3 at the last Snow Sprint
[11:50]	Which Linden:	No hate here. :-0
[11:50]	Tao Takashi:	jk
[11:51]	Which Linden:	Even Rails has started to implement noun-centric REST apis
[11:51]	Tao Takashi:	the only thing is that I am not sure how to do it the REST way with my setup ;-)
[11:51]	Tao Takashi:	as this server really just get's the parameters needed for generating the PDF from the browser
[11:51]	Which Linden:	Yeah, it's tricky to convert existing applications
[11:51]	Tao Takashi:	or I construct a filename out of them but that might be long
[11:52]	Which Linden:	Well, you could have the client POST to get a uuid-based document url
[11:52]	Tao Takashi:	you mean 2 requests then?
[11:52]	Which Linden:	then it PUTs to that url the document, and then GETs the url with varying accept headers to choose PDF or original
[11:52]	Which Linden:	yea, two requests
[11:53]	Donovan Linden:	I can imagine a PUT of an xml or json content type, and a GET of a pdf content type doing the conversion
[11:53]	Tao Takashi:	well, it's really the last step in a wizard here, one server does all the wizard work in asking questions about how it should look and gets back with a big dictionary which I put in a hidden field in a form
[11:53]	Donovan Linden:	yeah, what which said. hehe
[11:54]	Tao Takashi:	and the last click will then go to another server with this information
[11:54]	Tao Takashi:	so with the two request I'd need some way of storing data I guess
[11:54]	Donovan Linden:	the first server can do the PUT to the second server, then tell the browser to GET it
[11:54]	Tao Takashi:	true, but wouldn't I need some temporary storage?
[11:55]	Which Linden:	Our development paradigm has been to build a REST backend and then build a front-end that uses HTML
[11:55]	Which Linden:	So, yeah, in that case the front-end has to have some state
[11:55]	Which Linden:	Or it could pass it around on every request
[11:55]	Donovan Linden:	the pdf server would be a persistent store of those xml documents, unless someone deleted them
[11:55]	Which Linden:	Or, well, only one request, I guess
[11:56]	Tao Takashi:	well, if I would generate the PDF on PUT it would work by simply refering to it
[11:56]	Donovan Linden:	yeah exactly
[11:56]	Tao Takashi:	but actually I wanted to get rid of waiting for the PDF on the original server and a PUT would do that again
[11:57]	Which Linden:	I guess the PDF itself could be the body of the response to the PUT
[11:57]	Tao Takashi:	so I guess for now I will simply stay with parameters :)
[11:57]	Tao Takashi:	it's not a publci API anyway here
[11:57]	Tao Takashi:	and also mainly just a little test
[11:58]	Tao Takashi:	so your use case for mulib is mainly to serve an URL dict then?
[11:58]	Which Linden:	Hoo, no, not really
[11:58]	Which Linden:	Though that ability is very useful
[11:58]	Tao Takashi:	see, you should write use cases :)
[11:58]	Which Linden:	Yeah, we should
[11:59]	Timeless Prototype nods
[11:59]	Donovan Linden:	"REST" is the use case :)
[11:59]	Which Linden:	Yeah, but that's not enough
[11:59]	Tao Takashi:	and REST wasn't possible with other frameworks?
[11:59]	Which Linden:	Aren't you the one who said that Zope *just* got support for REST?
[11:59]	Donovan Linden:	it is possible, but most frameworks don't have it as the central design principle
[11:59]	Which Linden:	You have to convince people that REST is a good way to architect things
[11:59]	Which Linden:	:-)
[12:00]	Tao Takashi:	I like the concept of resting actually ;-)
[12:00]	Tao Takashi:	I should do that more :-)
[12:00]	Armand Callisto laughs
[12:00]	Donovan Linden:	I think a major part of REST that people don't understand the power of is content type negotiation
[12:00]	Tao Takashi:	maybe I am one of them ;-)
[12:01]	Tao Takashi:	maybe I am too much Zope ;-)
[12:01]	Donovan Linden:	for example PUT as json and GET as PDF or HTML
[12:01]	Which Linden:	It's cause everyone is using their browser, which they can't control the Accept header for
[12:01]	Donovan Linden:	very powerful when you start thinking in that way
[12:01]	Tao Takashi:	sounds a bit like different views in Zope3
[12:02]	Donovan Linden:	yup
[12:02]	Tao Takashi:	depending on what interface is used for the incoming request (can also be ftp or whatever) content is delivered differently
[12:02]	Which Linden:	I think mulib really scores on negotiation. I don't even think about it
[12:02]	Which Linden:	(except when it's broken)
[12:02]	Armand Callisto:	....nothing is broken...
[12:02]	Tao Takashi:	don't break it then ;-)
[12:03]	Donovan Linden:	Leonard Richardson gave me a good idea about content negotiation in the browser... let the file extension override
[12:03]	Which Linden:	Yeah, that was a good idea
[12:03]	Donovan Linden:	for example, PUT to foo.json, then get from foo.pdf
[12:03]	Donovan Linden:	the actual entity url is foo
[12:03]	Which Linden:	sucks that you then have to have a mapping from extension to mime-type
[12:04]	Donovan Linden:	python already has that
[12:04]	Which Linden:	Oh, well, then
[12:04]	Tao Takashi:	I think we need to get more Python folks here :)
[12:04]	Donovan Linden:	example in mulib.resources.File
[12:04]	Which Linden:	OK then, that's the goal: moar python
[12:05]	Armand Callisto:	you have a few thousand hard core python folks...just put out an invitation
[12:05]	Tao Takashi:	and when will you hen start with the pyhton only viewer? :)
[12:05]	Donovan Linden:	content_type, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(path)
[12:05]	Tao Takashi:	or when is it finished is the better question
[12:05]	Which Linden:	I don't think we have the cycles for a python-only viewer yet
[12:05]	Tao Takashi:	then I would finally join the viewer development :)
[12:06]	Tao Takashi:	I'd have some ideas ;-)
[12:06]	Which Linden:	We'd just make the capability available
[12:06]	Donovan Linden:	viewer is probably going to stay c++ forever :)
[12:06]	Tao Takashi:	well, your viewer
[12:06]	Donovan Linden:	a python viewer would probably be a fork
[12:06]	Donovan Linden:	zactly
[12:06]	Tao Takashi:	but a library would be nice for a start
[12:06]	Which Linden:	True
[12:06]	Which Linden:	Hey, but our hour is up, so let's pick this up again next week.
[12:06]	Tao Takashi:	I am not really keen on doing things in C# actually ;-)
[12:06]	Armand Callisto:	k
[12:07]	Tao Takashi:	yep, I also need to go home :)
[12:07]	Tao Takashi:	thanks for hosting :)
[12:07]	Donovan Linden:	bye :)
[12:07]	Timeless Prototype:	k tc guys, ty
[12:07]	Armand Callisto:	Safe journies
[12:07]	Which Linden:	Thanks all, you were a gret crowd
[12:07]	Tao Takashi:	thanks :)
[12:07]	Which Linden:	great
[12:07]	Which Linden:	Blah, see you later
[12:07]	Tao Takashi:	:)
[12:07]	Tao Takashi:	cya