[Helma-user] helma 2 - alpha 1

[Hannes Wallnoefer]

Hi Michi,

thanks a lot for getting your feet wet!

2006/10/25, Michael Platzer <michael.platzer at knallgrau.at>:
> * calling 'ant jar' threw an error, due to a missing junit-3.8.2.jar in
> ANT_HOME/lib

It's silly, but the junit jar must be loaded by the same classloader
as the junit ant task, which is why we can't use our own jar file
directly. Should be in a readme file, which doesn't currently exist.

> * configuring jetty via jetty.xml is a big improvement, since it allows
> us to leverage all features of jetty; on the other hand i am at the
> moment not familiar with the configuration, and am a bit puzzled while
> looking at it

Well, you can't do the same thing the jetty.xml does in a simple java
class (actually, the xml just is just a list of java method
invocations). Or, you can mount the helma servlet in any servlet
container. I think the number of options is definitely a plus.

> * when calling http://localhost:8080/ then the content from
> /web/public/index.xml was being called, and return as text/plain. when
> calling http://localhost:8080/index.html directly the content is being
> returned as text/html.

This is weird. I guess it's a Jetty bug, or maybe it's because our
index.html isn't really a html file.

> * it took me a while to figure out, how to call the js-test-file:
> http://localhost:8080/test.js ; how does helma2 decide whether the
> request is static or dynamic?

It just adds the respective Handlers in etc/jetty.xml using a jetty
HandlerCollection. From the HandlerCollection API doc[1]: "For each
request, all handler are called, regardless of the response status or
exceptions."

[1] http://jetty.mortbay.org/apidocs/org/mortbay/jetty/handler/HandlerCollection.html

Generally speaking, there should be some explanatory stuff on the
index page (which can be dynamic or static). I know the current
index.html is _quite_ lacking in this regard. :-)

> * it seems that session-management does not work yet; i can access
> 'session' as an object, but no session-cookie is being stored; and
> calling session.id throws an error

I'll have to look into that. Obviously, ServletRequest.getSession()
returns null, although it should actually create a session object.

> * req.getHeaders returns nothings; req.headers seems to work fine;

req.getHeaders() takes a string argument. This is a special method for
the case where there are multiple headers with the same name, and it
returns a JS array. I'm in the process of enhancing my rhinodoc doclet
to provide parameter information.

> as soon as there is some templating-engine and a working
> session-management, i could do some more testing. at the moment, it is
> not obvious to me which are missing features and what is to be
> considered a bug.

Things will soon become clearer, and better documented.

> besides that, i really enjoy the cleanness of helma 2, and am looking
> forward to helma 2 alpha 1.

thanks!

hannes