Content-Type: RST

My blog sucks. It is a hacked-together piece of junk. To even just
operate it, you need knowledge of web development. The security for it
is shaky, and it's got Python, HTML, Javascript, and SQL all
intermingled in one huge file. It is also hard to install, insecure,
and hard to expand on if you're not me. Even *I* can't exactly
remember what some parts of it do.

.. figure :: http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/fsm

   My code threw a fit when I revealed to it that FSMism is a joke.

So, to avoid any Flying Python-Spaghetti Monsters, I'm rewriting my
blog engine from square one, the Pythonic way. Read: no SQL or plain
procedural programming. 

The Database
------------

I believe I've commented on this database software before: `Durus <http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/durus/>`_. Durus
is a Python persistent object database. Meaning? I just give it an
object and it's automatically stored in the database. I can fetch it
up later at my convenience. Meaning? This:

.. sourcecode :: python
   from durus.file_storage import FileStorage
   from durus.connection import Connection
   connection = Connection(FileStorage("mydatabase.durus"))
   rootobj = connection.get_root()

   rootobj['foo'] = 'bar'

   connection.commit()
   connection.close()

Then, later, I can do this:

.. sourcecode :: python
   from durus.file_storage import FileStorage
   from durus.connection import Connection
   connection = Connection(FileStorage("mydatabase.durus"))
   rootobj = connection.get_root()

   if rootobj['foo'] == 'bar':
       print 'Yay! I win!'
   else:
       print 'Aww... :('

   connection.close()

Actually I'm probably going to have a Durus server running and
accepting connections from the localhost just so that the database
doesn't get locked and prevent two users from loading pages at the
same time on my site. Plus, I can store collections of stuff using the
PersistentList and PersistentDict special classes, which sense when
they've been changed and report it to the server to update them. And,
I can make my own custom classes that subclass the general Persistent
class, and they will know when their attributes have been changed,
too! Speaking of classes:

Object-Oriented Programming
---------------------------

It doesn't just mean refusing to use antique, abstracted SQL to store
data. It means my data actually *is* objects. Like this:

.. sourcecode :: python

   class Entry(Persistent):
       def __init__(self, title, data, author, date, datatype='RST'):
           self.title = cgi.escape(title)
           self.data = data
           self.author = author
           if type(self.author) is str:
              self.author = cgi.escape(self.author)
           self.date = date
           self.datatype = datatype
           self.comments = PersistentList([])

       @property
       def htmldata(self):
           if datatype == 'RST':
               return RSTtoHTML(self.data)
           elif datatype == 'HTML':
               from warnings import warn
               warn('HTML is deprecated and unsafe. Don\'t use it.')
               return self.data
           raise NotImplementedError('Only RST is implemented for now!')

   class Comment(Persistent):
       def __init__(self, data, author, date, datatype='RST'):
           self.data = data
           self.author = author
           if type(self.author) is str:
              self.author = cgi.escape(self.author)
           self.date = date
           self.datatype = datatype

       @property
       def htmldata(self):
           if datatype == 'RST':
               return RSTtoHTML(self.data)
           elif datatype == 'HTML':
               from warnings import warn
               warn('HTML is deprecated and unsafe. Don\'t use it.')
               return self.data
           raise NotImplementedError('Only RST is implemented for now!')

An instance of the Entry object can now just be thrown into Durus,
instead of a weird dict of data or something similar. I can also have
variable types of data; the author, for example, can be either a
simple string, or an instance of the future User object. All this
doesn't mean much for a class that's merely a storage container, but
as you can see, the Entry and Comment classes can dynamically serve
their respective data in multiple...

Formats!
--------

It has been brought to my attention that my way of doing comments is
ugly. Yes, it is. I don't allow much formatting, and even for that,
the behind-the-scenes code to keep the comments secure is pure
disgusting. So, in the future, I'm going to offer ReST (aka RST) and BBCode. Both of these
have separate, well-established Python modules for their processing,
so I don't need to write any weird interpreter/parser/validator for
them. More on that later.

Images
------


.. figure :: http://blog.opensourcenerd.com/upload/bored-cat

Yeah, I know. I'm a boring guy. But if you haven't quit reading yet, I
might yet have something worthy to say. Or maybe you just want to know
that yes, I will have a way for you to upload images into
comments. Not like my images are managed now (manual FTP upload into
my /resources/ directory), but rather inside the database. 

It will probably be only for thosee who log on, though, and logon
will be solely given with my permission for account creation. If
someone finds it funny to make my site a mirror for goatse, they will
pay, and I would like to know who they are so I can make them pay in
person. 

One last thing before I stop boring you:

Code Readability
----------------

For those of you that are interested in reading, using, or modifying
my code, my current codebase is insane even for my eyes... much less
others'. I promise, I'll try to avoid doing that this time
around. Open source software is no fun if it's closed source by
obscurity (or FSM).

With that said, thank you for sticking with me through my insane
rant that somewhat organized what I want to do by vomiting text onto
this page.

---------------------------

In other news, my `Emacs <http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/>`_
editor decided to suddenly turn into an
e-mail client while I was writing this blog post. I don't even know
what shortcut I mistyped... or that Emacs can do emails! (along with
being a text editor, calculator, web browser, tetris game, and
psychiatrist)