A demo of an Ajax style application
The following code demonstrates how to write a simple Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) application. It uses the Jsolait library to do the hard work of dealing with the XMLHttp object, and Quixote's xmlrpc support to expose methods from the server. (This code uses jsolait 1.0)
All of the code is in a single module - this isn't an example of good style, although it does demonstrate how a full Quixote application can be built as a single module...
1 from quixote.directory import Directory
2 from quixote.util import StaticDirectory, xmlrpc
3 from quixote import get_request
4
5 import xmlrpclib
6
7 from quixote.publish import Publisher
8
9 def create_publisher():
10 return Publisher(MyRoot())
11
12 class RPC(object):
13 def __call__(self, meth, args):
14 meth = getattr(self, meth, None)
15 if meth:
16 return meth(*args)
17
18 def echo(self, *args):
19 return args
20
21 def get_time(self):
22 import time
23 now = time.gmtime(time.time())
24 return xmlrpclib.DateTime(now)
25
26 RPC = RPC()
27
28 JS = """\
29 var xmlrpc = importModule("xmlrpc");
30 var svc = new xmlrpc.ServiceProxy("http://localhost:8080/rpc", ["get_time"]);
31
32 function update() {
33 var time = svc.get_time();
34 var txt = document.createTextNode(time);
35 var sp = document.getElementById("time");
36 sp.replaceChild(txt, sp.firstChild);
37 }
38 """
39
40 TEMPLATE = """\
41 <html>
42 <head>
43 <script type="text/javascript" src="./jsolait/init.js"></script>
44 <script type="text/javascript" src="./jsolait/lib/xmlrpc.js"></script>
45 <script type="text/javascript" src="./test.js"></script>
46 </head>
47 <body>
48 Current Time is: <span id="time">0000</span>
49 <br />
50 <input type="submit" onclick="return update();">Update</input>
51 </body>
52 </html>
53 """
54
55 class MyRoot(Directory):
56 _q_exports = ['', 'rpc', 'jsolait', ('test.js', 'test')]
57
58 def _q_index(self):
59 return TEMPLATE
60
61 def rpc(self):
62 return xmlrpc(get_request(), RPC)
63
64 def test(self):
65 return JS
66
67 jsolait = StaticDirectory('/path/to/jsolait')
68
The code is in sections, as follows:
- Lines 7-10 - expose a publisher creation factory, for the server script
- Lines 12-26 - a class which handles the available XML-RPC methods
- Lines 28-53 - some inline chunks of HTML and Javascript (yes, I know this is a hack, but I wanted to keep the demo simple and self-contained)
Lines 55-67 - the meat of the site. The jsolait code is exposed as a static directory, and the RPC service at the URL /rpc. Finally, the HTML and some supporting JavaScript is exposed.
And that's it! Run the server, point to http://localhost:8080/ and hit the "Update" button. You'll see the time updated each time you press the button, without a reload.
It's not very exciting, but all of the pieces are there...