Web functions idea

[bruno at modulix]

Mark Carter wrote:
> I was musing recently about how one could, for example, set up a really
> simple mailing subscription list. It occurred to me that a really simple
> way to implement it would be to use xmlrpc.
> So there could be a function
> subscribe(emailAddress),
> which would send an email for confirmation, and another function
> confirm(emailAddress, password)
> which would confirm the address ... and so on.
> 
> Now, the problem is that, if you use xmlrpc, it requires some kind of
> fiddly software that the client would have to install. What you would
> really want is some kind of web interface instead of xmlrpc - a kind of
> "web driven xmlrpc" (that would eliminate the need of an actual xmlrpc
> server).

Congratulations, you've just rediscovered REST !-)

> The point of it being this: a developer would just write the functions
> that he needed, a la xmlrpc, which would be "exposed" to this new module
> (let's call it webrpc) - and webrpc would examine the function, work out
> how many arguments it had, and display a form for the user to fill out.
> From an application writer's point-of-view, it abstracts away the whole
> web process, 

I'm afraid doing web developpement without a minimal knowledge of "the
whole web process" is somewhat unrealistic.

> leaving him free to just concentrate on the underlying
> function implementation.

Turbogears is probably what you're looking for (if not quite what you
describe).

-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in 'onurb at xiludom.gro'.split('@')])"