[Seaside] [FIX] SeasideServiceSyncToSeaside2.3

[Stephen Pair]

Markus Fritsche wrote:

>>No plans at the moment, but it's definitely something I'm interested 
>>in...in fact, it would be interesting to use some of the Seaside 
>>framework for handling XML-RPC interections (Seaside's component model 
>>could be leveraged to provide stateful session based RPC interactions 
>>and as I've found, it's pretty straightforward to use Seaside to 
>>implement capability based security).  It would be nice to use the same 
>>framework to provide both end user and system interfaces to an application.
>>    
>>
>Then you'll have to add your own extensions, since xml-rpc is stateless.
>More can be found on 
>http://www.xmlrpc.com/spec/
>
Actually, HTTP is "stateless" as well, but Seaside has no problem 
working with it.  What I'm thinking is that you provide a well-known 
entrypoint (or entrypoints) into your XML-RPC server (like bookmarkable 
URLs in Seaside)...that kicks off a seaside session.  The replies to the 
XML-RPC calls could contain other XML-RPC entrypoints that are generated 
dynamically by the Seaside stuff (like html anchors are).  In this way, 
I think you could create quite a powerful interface to your app server 
based on this simple XML-RPC protocol.  A client would connect to the 
server and be presented with some entry point XML response...it might 
contain a link to login, or links to other components that don't require 
login.  As links are navigated, the component tree maintained on the 
server grows, exposing more and more information for the session.  As 
components are no longer needed by the client, it would close those 
components and they would no longer be part of the servers' component 
tree, and no longer be rendered on the XML response stream.

This could provide a nice middle ground between ultra thin clients like 
web browsers or VNC and fat clients, or ORB clients.  Basically, you're 
getting at the data you need and rendering it however you like in the 
client.

- Stephen