[Twisted-Python] a little pattern prototype ?

Tim Stebbing tim.stebbing at nunatak.com.au
Thu Sep 25 18:05:17 MDT 2003


Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
> Timothy Stebbing wrote:
> 
>> Facets are combined into single html pages (prisms), which will manage
>> placing facet content in divs. A single facet can appear on mny prisms.
> 
> 
> Tim,
> 
> When I suggested "prism" as a metaphor, it was seriously the first word 
> that came into my mind, and I intended it as a joke.  However, the 
> pattern you've described sounds both elegant and accurately described by 
> this metaphor.  I was laughing the whole time I read it :).
> 
> I don't entirely understand what you've done, but I have two quick 
> thoughts:
> 
>     - Have you considered using Woven?  Event-broadcasting and updating 
> facets in real time could be achieved with LivePage.  Also, since your 
> output is HTML, woven could help with encapsulating the divs separately 
> while guaranteeing that generation errors on one area of the page will 
> not affect another.
>

The initial prototype I posted only took a few hours because I used 
resources rather than woven (which is great but is more time-consuming 
when I just wanted to get html on the screen to test an idea)

If people are interested in this pattern I would definitely write it 
either on top of, or extending woven.

>     - What are your use cases?  e.g. what kind of a site benefits from 
> using Crystals, and what doesn't?

It had no use-cases when I started, I just wanted to test an idea.

However, I could see the 'crystals' pattern being of major benefit in a 
site that is highly modular, such as a groupware application/portal 
where individual modules are often written totally separately and turned 
on/off with user prefs.

The site could have an API of broadcasters/observers, its own internal 
event system or whatever (a broadcasting reactor?). A module developer 
would only need to write a few facets and perhaps a prism to access the 
sites events and to get their info on the screen, in whatever way the 
site wants modules to be displayed.

-tjs






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