[Seaside] Seaside, AJAX, and Iliad

[Esteban Lorenzano]

> Here's what I found:
> 
> 1. Documentation for Iliad is lacking (but so is documentation for Reef.)

yep, that's true... I'm slooooowly working on that :)

> 
> 2. 62 lines of code were required for the Reef implementation and 59
> for Iliad (counted in the file-outs attached.)

I don't think this is relevant at all, in fact... the example implementation is verbose on purpose, to show some details (and to construct a base for future tutorials)

> 
> 3. Iliad's onKeyPress method does not return the last key pressed so I
> used onKeyUp instead. This may be a bug in Iliad.
> 
> 4. Here are Firebug statistics for a search returning 2 class names
> (when the "u" in "Fu" is entered):
> 
>  Reef:    4 requests returning a total of 684 bytes completed in 99 ms
>  Iliad:   1 request returning 117 bytes completed in 17 ms
> 
> In Reef, the first request causes the server to return Javascript
> which is executed by the client and results in a second request to the
> server fetching the HTML to be displayed. This actually happens twice,
> with the first request returning an empty response. I don't know why
> this is -- this may be a bug in Reef.

Yes... that's a bug, I'm working on that now, thanks for pointing.
But event correcting this, now you will need at least 2 requests (due to the architecture)... I'm working on optimizations, but as time is very sparced, it will take awhile until a fix this. 

> 
> Here are the first, third and fourth responses returned by the Reef
> implementation (the second response was empty):
> 
> <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/$.ajax({"url":"/ReefSimpleTutorial","data":["_s=PLLSmZdjxS49iq-7","_k=yrYmIWJloPEuTsPR","11",$("#idRETextField1025769472").serialize()].join("&"),"success":function(){$("#dispatcherArea").load("/ReefSimpleTutorial",["_s=PLLSmZdjxS49iq-7","_k=yrYmIWJloPEuTsPR","12"].join("&"))}})/*]]>*/</script>
> 
> <script type="text/javascript">/*<![CDATA[*/$("#idREPanel139984896").load("/ReefSimpleTutorial",["_s=PLLSmZdjxS49iq-7","_k=yrYmIWJloPEuTsPR","13"].join("&"))/*]]>*/</script>
> 
> <div id="idREPanel127926272"><span
> id="idREText268435456">FullscreenMorph</span></div><div
> id="idREPanel677642240"><span
> id="idREText774373376">FuzzyLabelMorph</span></div>

Yep, but that's all up to the example... If I change this: 

		resultsPanel 
			addAll: (Smalltalk classNames 
				select: [ :each | each beginsWith: text ]
				thenCollect: [ :each | 
					REPanel new 
						add: each;
						yourself ]);
			refresh ]

for this: 

		resultsPanel 
			addAll: (Smalltalk classNames select: [ :each | each beginsWith: text ]);
			refresh ]

(which, btw, reduces the "amount of lines needed" by 4), I have: 

<span id="idREText769654784">FullscreenMorph</span><span id="idREText770179072">FuzzyLabelMorph</span>

as the answer of the request, which is a lot less. 

> 
> 
> In Iliad, the single request to the server returns a JSON object
> containing the HTML to be displayed. here's what it looks like:
> 
> {"head": [], "widgets": {"55535": "<div
> class=\"55535\"><div>FullscreenMorph</div><div>FuzzyLabelMorph</div></div>"}}
> 
> The Iliad response is certainly simpler and easier to comprehend.
> 
> Quadrupling (or at best doubling) the number of server requests for a
> given user input can result in a dramatic percieved performance
> difference. In my experience, the number of requests is a more
> important determiner of the time required to complete an action than
> is the number of bytes transferred unless a quite large amount of data
> is being returned from the server.

Yes, that's true... I'm working on a way to reduce the amount of request sent. But, in any case, what reef is is a "general purpose" updater for html, and that approach has it's drawbacks... anyway , I'm working on some ideas to avoid this. 


Cheers,
Esteban