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Joo, JavaScript on OCaml

1 Comment | Tags : , , ,
February 7th, 2008

My readers might have noticed that I really like JavaScript and OCaml. Thus, it's natural to write a webserver in OCaml which serves scripts written in JavaScript. Crazy ? Maybe a little, but as the guys from mod_js said: others do worse.

I started by modifying Thumper which I slightly modified (in order to deal with post queries). Then I added OCaml CGI to encode and decode queries, SpiderCaml which includes SpiderMonkey in OCaml and OCaml Mysql to use MySQL. Actually this was more like doing Lego than coding…

What can it do ?
URIs are parsed as : /module/action/arg1/arg2/arg3. This will execute Module.action(arg1, arg2, arg3), where Module is defined in the file modules/module.js. The default module being home and the default action, index.

This being said, their is a Joo object in the global namespace which contains useful stuff:

// headers
for (e in Joo.Headers) print(e+" "+Joo.Headers[e]+"<br/>");

//  GET
for (e in Joo.Get) print(e+" "+Joo.Headers[e]+"<br/>");

// POST
for (e in Joo.Post) print(e+" "+Joo.Headers[e]+"<br/>");

// a mysql wrapper
Joo.mysql.connect({
    host:"localhost",
    user:"user",
    name:"database"
  });
Joo.mysql.query('select * from foo');
while(r = Joo.mysql.fetch()) print(r.id + "<br/>");

// an include function
Joo.include('foo/bar.js');

Note : the print function just adds text to the output buffer, their is no control on the flushing, sorry. Everything is sent at the end.
Moreover, I have added the MIME types only for html and jpeg files, you may want to add other MIME types in main.ml

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Jim, the JavaScript modal framework

1 Comment | Tags : , , , ,
December 16th, 2007

Nowadays, there are a lot of Ajax and Web 2.0 JavaScript frameworks. This actually is a good thing, but I believe that a good ol' geek aspect is missing. That's why I developed Jim.

Jim is not :

  • An ajax framework
  • An animation framework

What Jim does:

  • Jim adds a command line interface to a webpage, inspired by vi
  • Jim allows easy developement of keyboard based applications

I know what you think, it sound like WTF?. Here is a simple example to help you understand. The commands are straightforward:

  • : opens the CLI
  • ESC closes the CLI
  • TAB autocompletion
  • Return to execute

If you've ever used a terminal emulator, it won't be difficult…
I've implemented 4 commands in the example:

  • echo : echo pli prints "pli"
  • eval : evaluates a javascript statement : eval "echo(1+1)"
  • set field value : sets the field field to value
  • submit : submit the pseudo form

You might ask how this is a framework, and I'd reply that it was made in such manner that it is possible to define custom commands the way you want. Here is the configuration file used in the example:

_('echo', echo);
_('eval', eval);

_('set', function(what, value) {
  $$('#'+what+' .value')[0].update(value);
},{
  suggestions: function (n, a) {
    switch (n) {
      case 1:
        return $$('.settable').pluck('id');
      case 2:
        switch (a.last())
        {
          case 'name':
            var names;
            new Ajax.Request('names.htm', {
              method: 'get',
              onSuccess: function (e) {
                names = eval(e.responseText);
              },
              asynchronous: false
            });
            return names;
          default:
            return Array();
        }
      default:
        return Array();
    }
  },
  callback: function (id, a) {
    $$('.settable').each(function(e) {
      e.down('.field').removeClassName('highlight');
    });
    if (id)
      if (a.length == 0)
       {
        $$('#'+id+'.settable')[0].down('.field').addClassName('highlight');
       }
  }
});

_('submit', function () {
  var params = {};
  var submit = true;
  $$('.settable').each(function (e) {
    var val = e.down('.value').innerHTML;
    if (val.blank())
     {
      err('Please fill in <b>all</b> fields');
      submit = false;
     }
    params[e.id] = val;
  });
  if (submit)
    new Ajax.Request('names.php', {
      parameters: params,
      onSuccess: function (e) {
        echo(e.responseText);
      }
    });
});

This is highly modular and allows almost all possible commands. I have had a few hesitations about polluting the namespace, but I add only three function echo err _, which can be renamed.

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