Using HTML FORMS on a client machine only from Ruby

ruby-talk
1

"noone" <noone@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:vMgqg.13064$Uc3.2125@tornado.texas.rr.com...

First, I apologize about the email address - it's obviously bogus.

I use Ruby quite a bit with SketchUp to automate different tasks and
processes. I've been using Ruby for only a couple years now, and I am

self

taught via the books on the market as well as from other prograamers

working

with the SketchUp Ruby API.

The user interface available with SketchUp is sparse, at best. I would
love to be able to harness the power of a browser via HTML and FORMS (et

al)

from Ruby within SketchUp.

Can someone point me to a resource to use for this? Whatever I come up
needs to be cross platform (Windows and Mac only).

Thank a lot.

Todd Burch
toddb at smustard period com.

Perhaps I can reword/simplify the question a little bit for a response.

First, some background on me:

programming with Ruby, javascript - been there, done that.
writing CSS, HTML, etc., been there, done that.
Windows programming - never done it
C/C++/Java - I've read the books, done the examples, still a newbie, no
confidence.
Macs - don't know a thing about them.
Server setup or programming - never done it
CGI scripts - never written one

So, with the persepctive, here is what I want to do:

I want to be able to write a Ruby script that (possibly creates, but
ultimately) displays (synchronously) an HTML page with FORM widgets in it.
I want to fill in the form data manually, press SUBMIT, and have the form
information passed back, or available to, my Ruby script. I want this
script work on a Mac and PC with little or no platform dependant coding.

Is this an out of the ordinary objective? Am I too naive and this simple of
a scenario was never considered? It's seems to me to be easier to converse
with a web page 1/2 way around the planet than on my own PC with IE or
Navigator.

Todd

2

I want to be able to write a Ruby script that (possibly creates, but
ultimately) displays (synchronously) an HTML page with FORM widgets in it.
I want to fill in the form data manually, press SUBMIT, and have the form
information passed back, or available to, my Ruby script. I want this
script work on a Mac and PC with little or no platform dependant coding.

Is this an out of the ordinary objective? Am I too naive and this simple of
a scenario was never considered? It's seems to me to be easier to converse
with a web page 1/2 way around the planet than on my own PC with IE or
Navigator.

There's nothing esoteric about that. Use Webrick or Mongrel. Use CGI, with or without a templating library, or use one of the Ruby web devel frameworks (Camping, Wee, Nitro, Rails, IOWA). I sometimes package entire websites, with all the dynamic bits or applications, onto a CD or DVD or in an archive file that clients can just pop into their computers, run a startup script on, and then use.

Kirk Haines

3

noone wrote:

It sounds like what you need is Ruby on Rails. See rubyonrails.org for
more information

Michael, thanks for taking the time to respond. I'm not sure if Rails is
what I want. I'll go look though...

OK, I looked. I don't think Rails is what I am looking for: "Rails is a
full-stack framework for developing database-backed web applications.."
I'm not doing this, and I'm not writing a web application. I'm writing a
client application - a ruby script, that calls a browser (to handle the
widgets/interface stuff), allows the user to fill out FORM data, and after
SUBMIT is presses, the data gets passed back to the Ruby scripts that called
the browser. And, it needs to work on Windows and a MAC.

In a picture:

1) Ruby script gets kicked off.
2) Ruby script calls browser (IE, Nav, Opera, Firefox, whatever - I don't
care), passing the name of an .html file with embedded javascript and form
tags.
3) User interfaces with page, and clicks SUBMIT
4) Form data is then passed back to the Ruby script that called the browser.
5) Ruby parses data, processes data, etc... maybe even repeats to #2 above

#4 seems to be the issue here. (well, MY issue!) Perhaps #4 should read:

4) Form data is then "put somewhere" where the Ruby script can go get it.

I suggested Rails as it simplifies the programming for the browser interface. You could store the data entered in step 2 in MySQL when the user presses the submit button in step 3 for later processing in step 5. This can be done synchronously in the controller where it displays a page, gets data, processes the data and returns to step 3. In step 3 you could have a button on the page to end the session.

ยทยทยท

I'm OK with synchronous processing here too. It actually makes my coding
easier to be synchronous. I don't need the sophistication of an
asynchronous interface.

That's it! That's all I want. (Picture Steve Martin, AKA Navin Johnson,
from "The Jerk", in his bathrobe, holding his little umbrella...)

Todd.