On Apr 19, 2004, at 9:54 PM, Graham Fawcett wrote:

> I'm pretty sure that in the demo, "ui" and its contents represent the
> user interface. The main "qxdemo" directory contains "qxdemo/ui" but
> it also contains the other stuff, such as the CGI script, etc. What
> I'm saying is, I wouldn't advise trying to publish "qxdemo" but rather
> "qxdemo.ui". Keep all of your PTL modules in the qxdemo/ui tree, and
> publish that; use the root directory only for configuration files, CGI
> scripts, etc. That way, you'll have a nicely organized codebase.

Thanks. This is the kind of guidance I need to keep my development
efforts aligned with quixote best practices (to the extent that they
exist...)

> So, I'd use
>
>     Publisher('qxdemo.ui')
>
> in your CGI script,

Yes. Now it makes sense why.

> and in qxdemo/ui/__init__.py, I'd include
>
>    import books, keywords
>    _q_exports = ['links', 'books', 'keywords']

Actually, I have:
'''
_q_exports = ['links', 'book', 'keywords']
from qxdemo.ui import links
from qxdemo.ui.links import book, keywords
'''
because 'book' and 'keywords' are inside the links.ptl file. I also
have a _q_index method in here as a springboard for the various demo
features. One issue I had was the trailing slash in the URLs:
href="links/" *required* the trailing slash to work (until I set
FIX_TRAILING_SLASH = 1 in the .conf file). The other two URLs,
href="book" and href="keywords" would *only* work *without* the
trailing slash. Anyway, I prefer no trailing slash, so setting
FIX_TRAILING_SLASH = 1 makes all the URLs consistent.

> So: all of the UI stuff (PTL files and so on) go in the "ui" tree. In
> the root folder, you have CGI scripts, configuration files, and what
> have you. Your application might also grow a "qxdemo/app" tree where
> you could have modules that pertain to your application, but are
> related to logic and not to presentation (e.g., database connection
> stuff, class definitions for "back-end" objects, utility functions,
> etc.). It's not strictly necessary; but for maintainability, testing
> and readability, it's nice to keep as much of your logic out of the
> PTL modules as possible.

Thanks to Graham's patience, I now have a working version of the links
demo using a .cgi driver and can proceed to experiment/tinker to begin
climbing the quixote slope.

However, I'm still baffled by the mechanics of importing and exporting
files and methods *across directories*. Say, for example, I had a
subdirectory inside the /qxdemo/ui directory - let's call it 'foo' and
it has a 'bar.ptl' page with a method called 'run()'. How and where do
I expose the 'run()' method? From /qxdemo/ui/__init__.py? From
/qxdemo/ui/foo/__init__.py? From both? All the failed experiments I
tried with qxdemo have left me wondering how to think 'quixotically'
with respect to exposing methods and pages to the web across
directories.

>> (Also, I was wondering if it might be possible to use __init__.ptl
>> files instead of __init__.py ones?)
>
> Not out of the box. But there's a patch for Quixote 0.6 that might
> still work:
>
> http://mail.mems-exchange.org/pipermail/quixote-users/2003-May/
> 001519.html

Thanks; I'll look into it later.

John Miller