ajax/python commentbox source

[Isaac]

Source:
http://testing.isaacg.net/commentboxa/

I've given up on this one. Now that I have an idea of how to make ajax and python pass data I'm going to work on a new version that's uses classes instead of a bunch of try/except conditions, which I think are ugly!

[fliptw]

uh... yeah, they are meant for exceptions.

try/catch isn't a good substitute for if statements.

[Jeff250]

Use "is None", "is not None" (pointer comparison) instead of "== None", "!= None" (value comparison). None is a singleton object, so this always works, and it is faster and more pythonic.

Use != instead of <>. Note that <> was finally removed in python 3.

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if name == '' or name == None

can be replaced with:

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if not name:

Use xml.sax.saxutils.escape instead of rolling your own escape function.

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{boxname:{date:{name:comment}}}

looks suspicious. Don't you want something like:

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{'date': date, 'name': name, 'comment': comment}

?

You want to use a database some day instead of pickling, but I suspect you already know that.

[Isaac]

Hmm. This might be a good time to ask.

Is using MySQL database better than saving to textfiles? I mean, so far I've never had a problem with pickling to a text file (man that sounds dirty).

[Sirius]

It's many times faster and usually more manageable, but not functionally different.