[drupal-devel] question re maps in drupal (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:57:41 -0700 (MST) From: Anselm Hook <anselm@hook.org> To: civicspace-dev@civicspacelabs.org Subject: question re maps in drupal I have some questions about approach... Here is some work we are doing on supporting maps in drupal / civicspace: http://ghost.thingster.org/cs//?q=node/24 It is based on this piece of work that we published a couple of days ago: http://maps.civicactions.net The approach I am taking is to minimize the weight of the mapping layer inside of drupal itself and to rely entirely on a rich client-side engine written in javascript. The engine talks to any conventional WMS server and is optimized for tile based access for performance. This relies heavily on the idea of drupal publishing RSS feeds where nodes are decorated with location information in the form of geo:long and geo:lat. The location module is also something I am relying on to do this. Not everything in drupal is published as XML however. You could not right now easily build a Javascript version of a drupal site for example ( I think ). Is there an AJAX plan in the works and any time frame for that? In particular I'd like to build a small 'filter users by location' XML exporter - but there are other things beyond that one example. Should I hack this myself, wait, do something comprehensive etc? Basically there is a tipping point between 'do this one little hack' and 'build out an AJAX API'... I'm not on top of what the drupal / civicspace plan is however and any input is welcome. - a
Looks very promising. I had a few issues though: 1. When link gave a 500 internal server error. 2. The other worked for a few clicks, but when I tried to do recenter, it caused FireFox to eat up CPU time, and the only way I could recover is to kill it. On 6/17/05, Anselm Hook <anselm@hook.org> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:57:41 -0700 (MST) From: Anselm Hook <anselm@hook.org> To: civicspace-dev@civicspacelabs.org Subject: question re maps in drupal
I have some questions about approach...
Here is some work we are doing on supporting maps in drupal / civicspace:
http://ghost.thingster.org/cs//?q=node/24
It is based on this piece of work that we published a couple of days ago:
The approach I am taking is to minimize the weight of the mapping layer inside of drupal itself and to rely entirely on a rich client-side engine written in javascript. The engine talks to any conventional WMS server and is optimized for tile based access for performance.
This relies heavily on the idea of drupal publishing RSS feeds where nodes are decorated with location information in the form of geo:long and geo:lat. The location module is also something I am relying on to do this.
Not everything in drupal is published as XML however. You could not right now easily build a Javascript version of a drupal site for example ( I think ).
Is there an AJAX plan in the works and any time frame for that? In particular I'd like to build a small 'filter users by location' XML exporter - but there are other things beyond that one example.
Should I hack this myself, wait, do something comprehensive etc?
Basically there is a tipping point between 'do this one little hack' and 'build out an AJAX API'... I'm not on top of what the drupal / civicspace plan is however and any input is welcome.
- a
1. When link gave a 500 internal server error.
Ah! Yes some of those thumbtacks are bad. That is not serious.
2. The other worked for a few clicks, but when I tried to do recenter, it caused FireFox to eat up CPU time, and the only way I could recover is to kill it.
Ok. I think I know what is going on here. Thanks. I think I will write my own small ajax wrapper to fulfill the xml queries that I want to do also. - a
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005, Anselm Hook wrote:
Is there an AJAX plan in the works and any time frame for that? In particular I'd like to build a small 'filter users by location' XML exporter - but there are other things beyond that one example.
Should I hack this myself, wait, do something comprehensive etc?
Basically there is a tipping point between 'do this one little hack' and 'build out an AJAX API'... I'm not on top of what the drupal / civicspace plan is however and any input is welcome.
You may not know it, but there is now Ajax-autocompletion in core. So you should try to re-use as much as possible of this code. Cheers, Gerhard
Basically there is a tipping point between 'do this one little hack' and 'build out an AJAX API'... I'm not on top of what the drupal / civicspace plan is however and any input is welcome.
You may not know it, but there is now Ajax-autocompletion in core. So you should try to re-use as much as possible of this code.
Yeah I guess when I mean AJAX I just mean exposing many of the database queries via XML to the client browser... like 'get an rss feed of all users' or 'get an rss feed of all events'... I'll check it out to see if it helps but it does not sound like what I am looking for offhand. - a
On Sat, 18 Jun 2005, Anselm Hook wrote:
Basically there is a tipping point between 'do this one little hack' and 'build out an AJAX API'... I'm not on top of what the drupal / civicspace plan is however and any input is welcome.
You may not know it, but there is now Ajax-autocompletion in core. So you should try to re-use as much as possible of this code.
Yeah I guess when I mean AJAX I just mean exposing many of the database queries via XML to the client browser... like 'get an rss feed of all users' or 'get an rss feed of all events'... I'll check it out to see if it helps but it does not sound like what I am looking for offhand.
You'd need to make a callback function for the specific function or db query that you'd like to execute. Look at user.module for the definition of the user_autocomplete callback and how to call it in node.module node_form. The JS-calling functions are oin common.inc (I think they should be in bootstrap.inc, though). Cheers, Gerhard
Hi, Op zaterdag 18 juni 2005 09:11, schreef Anselm Hook:
Yeah I guess when I mean AJAX I just mean exposing many of the database queries via XML to the client browser... like 'get an rss feed of all users' or 'get an rss feed of all events'... I'll check it out to see if it helps but it does not sound like what I am looking for offhand.
There is no such thing. In fact Drupal is quite limeted in what it sends as XML. There is no central/standard methot that created XML, so its up to teh indvidual parts to genreate their own. Off course there are APIs, but the generation nd selection of what to show is non-centralised. I think the best way to fix this is make an XML theme. I realize not all pages can be XML-ified (think node/XX/edit), but a huge majority can. And isnt XML not just another way of viewing your content? Themes are meant for "other ways of viewing content". Regards, Bèr -- [ Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com ]
On 18-Jun-05, at 12:11 AM, Anselm Hook wrote:
Basically there is a tipping point between 'do this one little hack' and 'build out an AJAX API'... I'm not on top of what the drupal / civicspace plan is however and any input is welcome.
You may not know it, but there is now Ajax-autocompletion in core. So you should try to re-use as much as possible of this code.
Yeah I guess when I mean AJAX I just mean exposing many of the database queries via XML to the client browser... like 'get an rss feed of all users' or 'get an rss feed of all events'... I'll check it out to see if it helps but it does not sound like what I am looking for offhand.
RSS generation needs an overhaul so that it can be a little more centralized and extensible, but we've got to ship product around 4.6 today. We are specifically going to be doing a) some mapping stuff with location module and b) feeds of users, so let's see if we can do some of this together. event/feed should IMHO produce a feed of all events -- file a feature request, please. -- Boris Mann http://www.bmannconsulting.com
participants (5)
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Anselm Hook -
Boris Mann -
Bèr Kessels -
Gerhard Killesreiter -
K B