[Tutor] study advice on javascript to python hand-off

[Jeff Johnson]

This is a three tier framework where you can use any back end you want. 
  They currently support the major ones: MySQL, SQLite, PostGreSQL, 
MSSql to name the ones I can think of.

http://dabodev.com/wiki/FrontPage

-- 
Jeff

Jeff Johnson
jeff at dcsoftware.com
Phoenix Python User Group - sunpiggies at googlegroups.com

Serdar Tumgoren wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I've been trying to tackle a certain data-entry and processing problem 
> for quite some time, and I was wondering if someone could offer advice 
> on the path I should take. Whatever the answer, I know I have a great 
> deal of study ahead of me, but I was hoping to at least narrow the field.
> 
> My specific use-case involves an attempt to create a web-based phone 
> contacts system that allows users to associate a single contact with one 
> or more business entities (or phone numbers or relatives, etc.). On the 
> backend database, I know this requires the use of a linking table and a 
> many-to-many relationship between tables for "individuals" and "businesses."
> 
> The front end is where I'm running aground.
> 
> Ideally, I'd like to have a data entry/edit form that lets the 
> client-side user associate multiple entities with a contact before 
> submitting the form to the server.
> 
> So if the user enters "John Smith" as a contact, they can initially 
> associate him with "ABC Company".
> If John Smith also serves on the board of directors for XYZ Foundation, 
> I'd like to let the user click an Add button to also associate John 
> Smith with the foundation. All of this should take place before the form 
> is submitted back to the server.
> 
> A simple javascript implementation of the add/remove functionality I'm 
> speaking of can be found at 
> http://www.dustindiaz.com/add-remove-elements-reprise.
> 
> The part I'm getting lost on is how to take those dynamic user-generated 
> values and get at them on the server side using python, with the 
> end-goal of parsing and adding the values to the appropriate database 
> tables (I expect I'll also have to do plenty of validation and checking 
> for possible duplicates, but I'm waving my hand at those issues for the 
> moment).
> 
> So I was hoping someone could explain how to accomplish this seeming 
> hand-off from client-side javascript to server-side python.
> 
> Should I be accessing the DOM? And if so, should I be parsing URLs or 
> using xml (e.g. python's xml.dom API or Frederick Lundh's ElementTree 
> module)?
> 
> I suspect that I may be misusing/confusing the terminology here, so 
> please feel free to point out any mistakes. Or perhaps I'm 
> over-complicating the issue and there's a simpler solution to what I'm 
> trying to accomplish.
> 
> If someone could suggest a conceptual approach to the problem, and even 
> point to some good readings that tie these elements together for the 
> stated purpose, I'd be greatly indebted.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Serdar T.
>