building a web interface

[Martin Gregorie]

On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 14:40:16 -0800, Shel wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am pretty new to all this. I have some coding experience, and am
> currently most comfortable with Python.  I also have database design
> experience with MS Access, and have just created my first mySQL db.
> 
> So right now I have a mySQL db structure and some Python code. My end
> goal is to create a browser-based interactive fiction/game thing. My
> code is currently just using dummy data rather than pulling in data from
> the db, but I think/hope it won't be too big of a deal to interact with
> the db through Python (famous last words...).
>
Wrong approach. If you're going to use a database, start with writing a 
program that puts your data into it alongside the program that reads and 
uses the data. Do it incrementally: if you are writing an adventure game 
a good place to start would be the 'place' table and the part of the game 
builder that adds/amends/removes a place from the database as well as 
enough of the game program to show the place description and use the 
doors to move from place to place. This way you'll have that working 
before you start adding weapons, monsters, etc. or try to implement 
fights. You'll also learn that writing place descriptions isn't as easy 
as it sounds: if there are several doors into a room the description must 
make sense no matter which way you come into it. Its quite hard at first 
to avoid descriptions like "Further into the forest. Its getting darker" 
which may be OK coming from a road but is pretty stupid if you're on your 
way out of the forest toward the road. 

http://www.kitebird.com/articles/pydbapi.html which tells you what you 
need to know about accessing SQL databases.

> My main problem right now is how to do the web interface. I don't know
> much about web architecture, unfortunately. I think I need a CGI script?
>
You're biting off quite a lot at once. It may be easier to first write a 
command line Python program and get it working in that form. Once you 
have the game/application logic working you can adapt it to run as a CGI 
script. Development and debugging will be easier that way.

If you're not familiar with this style of adventure game, look here:
http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/ You'll find various downloadable 
examples on the downloads page as DOS executables and in C or Fortran 
source code. Have a play with it to see what even this very basic user 
interaction can do - you'll have fun and learn useful stuff.

> What I would really like is to find a GUI tool to design the interface
> that would have customizable templates or drag-and-drop elements or
> something, so I wouldn't have to code much by hand. Something easy, if
> such a tool exists.
>
If you're doing a textual adventure of something like it a tool won't 
gain you much, since you only need a few skeleton web pages than your 
program can select and drop text or images into.
  
> Also would prefer something that I would be able to install/use without
> having much access to the server where the site will be hosted (on a
> university server that I don't have control over). I don't fully
> understand how a lot of the tools I have been looking at work, but it
> seems like they're often things where you'd have to get an administrator
> to do stuff on the server (is that right?), which I would prefer to
> avoid.
>
CGI and Python should be OK providing the server has Python available and 
the admins will let you use CGI, but that's not a good development 
platform.

You really need a web server you can start, stop and fiddle with once you 
get to the point of putting your code in a server. Running a simple local 
web server on your computer would be a better place to start: once its 
running you simply point your browser at localhost:80 and send it the URL 
of the initial page of your application. 

Search on "Python web server" for details of building or downloading a 
simple one. You'll also find stuff about interfacing Python programs to a 
web server.


-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |