[Mailman-Developers] Javascript Client for Mailman

[Ana Badescu]

Hello,

While writing my proposal I came across 2 important issues related to the
Javascript Client for the Mailman project that have yet to be raised:

1. What I initially had in mind, was to build a Mailman client in
Javascript that provides the same API and functionality that the current
one in Python does. The Python client API can be fully mimicked using a
number of design patterns even though Javascript doesn't offer properties
capability for example. However, node.js modules tend to take advantage of
Javascript's asynchronous nature and have adopted sort of a standard
practice to achieve it: it's called error-first callbacks, and most if not
all APIs enforce it. You can read about it here
http://thenodeway.io/posts/understanding-error-first-callbacks/
and here
https://docs.nodejitsu.com/articles/errors/what-are-the-error-conventions

This boils down if we want to provide a client API that adopts the node.js
conventions and works the same way most modules do or do we want to offer
something almost similar to the current Python client API. There's a lot
more to be said on this matter (for eg: callbacks being the reason why
"callback-hell" exists) but I'd like to get your input first.

2. I'd also like to make part of the project, a node.js application that
uses the Mailman Javascript client and offers all the functionality
Postorious does. Is that a good idea? This doesn't make the scope of the
project too large or unattainable.


Thank you,
Ana