[Helma-dev] chopper, the helmulator

[tobias.schaefer at orf.at]

hi there

sorry for cross-posting but i could not decide where this really belongs.

just wanted to announce that chopper*, the helmulator, went public today for your delight of experimentation.

http://machine.p3k.org/helmulator/chopper/console

chopper is a helma app written in javascript and currently provides methods and features to emulate the most important (core) and even some more sophisticated helma capabilities on the client-side, ie. in a browser window.

as many of you probably might know, just recently google has taken an approach of combining server-side web application technologies with client-side scripting features to achieve a more flexible client-server interaction model.

i think this model is very valuable and moreover, i already made tiny steps some time ago implementing certain features on the client-side which formerly were processed by the application server. fortunately, due to providing rhino/ecmascript as the current scripting language of choice, helma is much closer to the client and its javascript implementation than most of the other application servers.

in effect, the idea of making helma methods available in the browser was just as close (well, in first place i simply wanted to avoid switching between "document.write" and "res.write" depending on where the script should run, but that's just a funny anecdote.)

thus, i started off with helma's object model, implementing HopObject functionality, followed by skin and macro rendering and even touching helma's java connectivity by adding some javascripted java classes. (which i would like to turn into a side-project, btw.)

the current goal is to provide a stable emulation of helma (it's pretty hackish at the moment) and, just as important, a comfortable client-server interaction via xml-rpc which will use the http request capabilities of recent browser generations (aka xmlhttp activex, or built-in mozilla, resp.)

it's still a lot of theory but as the link to the little chopper console hopefully proves, the concept works.

i would be glad if some of you play around with the console and let me know what you think.

personally, i have the vision of helma and chopper as a winning team, being the first complete solution of this very promising approach of developing web applications.

ciao,
tobi

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* some of you might know chopper already under the name of kurt.
  http://blog.p3k.org/stories/3143/