Mon, 23 Oct 2006

An example of xhtml web templates using python and meld3

In the past I have used spambaye's pymeldlite but recently have been trying out meld3 which has a slightly different approach, and hopefully better performance. Here is a quick chunk of example code showing it in action, the type of thing I wish could have disected when I was starting to figure out how it all fits together. I have converted a simple html example form to work as an xhtml template with a python cgi backend:

.. and of course the source code to the cgi

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# simple example of using meld3 and python cgi module to process a html form using an
# xhtml template.
#

from meld3 import parse_xmlstring
from meld3 import parse_htmlstring
from StringIO import StringIO

import sys, cgi, os

colours = ["chartreuse",
   "azure",
   "puce",
   "cornflower",
   "olive draub",
   "gunmetal",
   "indigo2",
   "blanched almond",
   "flesh",
   "ochre",
   "opal",
   "amber"]


debugenabled = False

template = "template.xhtml"

# log to a file so we can see whats going on without interfering with cgi output, if debugenabled turned on
def debug(debugoutput):
   if debugenabled:
      f = open(DEBUGDIR+"/debug.out",'a')
      f.write(debugoutput)
      f.close()

def process_form(root, form):

   # do a pile of stuff, to the encoded template, according to values from the form.

   # set the action to submit this cgi script
   root.findmeld('form1').attributes(action=os.environ.get('SCRIPT_NAME'))

   if form.has_key('name'):
      root.findmeld('name').content("name entered was "+form.getvalue('name'))
      root.findmeld('nameprompt').attributes(value=form.getvalue('name'))

   if form.has_key('quest'):
      root.findmeld('quest').content("name entered was "+form.getvalue('quest'))
      root.findmeld('questprompt').attributes(value=form.getvalue('quest'))

   if form.has_key('text'):
      root.findmeld('comment').content("name entered was "+form.getvalue('text'))
      root.findmeld('commentbox').content(form.getvalue('text'))

   if form.has_key('swallow'):
      root.findmeld('swallowtype').content("The swallow chosen was "+form.getvalue('swallow'))
      if form.getvalue('swallow') == 'african':
         root.findmeld('africanswallow').attributes(checked="")
      if form.getvalue('swallow') == 'continental':
         root.findmeld('continentalswallow').attributes(checked="")

   if form.has_key('color'):
      colourselected = form.getvalue('color')
      root.findmeld('colour').content(colourselected+" was the colour chosen")
   else:
      colourselected = ''

   iterator = root.findmeld('colouroption').repeat(colours)
   for element, item in iterator:
      element.attributes(value=item)
      element.content(item)
      if item == colourselected:
         element.attributes(selected="")

   return root

try:
   xml = open(template).read()

except:
   sys.stdout.write("Content-Type: text/html\n\n")
   sys.stdout.write("<html><b>Error reading temple file "+template+"</b></html>\n")
   sys.exit(0)

try:
   root = parse_xmlstring(xml)
except:
   t, v, tb = sys.exc_info()
   sys.stdout.write("Content-Type: text/html\n\n")
   sys.stdout.write("<html><b>XML Parse Error in template "+template+" :"+str(v)+" </b></html>")
   sys.exit(0)

form = cgi.FieldStorage()

root = process_form(root, form)

sys.stdout.write("Content-Type: text/html\n\n")
root.write_xhtml(sys.stdout)

# print cgi.print_environ()
# print cgi.print_form(form)

Posted at: 22:17 | category: /nerdy | # | 1 comments