Dev-Picayune

As the new Livelink administrator for our company, I found myself in a situation where I was supposed to add 120+ new users to the system. The problem with that is that it is entirely web-based and generally no fun to manually enter things into. After setting up about 5 users, I decided that I needed to see what I could do with Python. I knew that Livelink used session-based cookies, so I needed something that would handle that for me. First I found Puffin, and I felt overwhelmed. It seemed like it did too much and it would take too long to learn it… plus I didn’t know if I would be able to easily get the users into the xml config files.

Then I found PycURL and it was just what I needed. I was able to write about a 75+ line program that would read a comma delimited file of users and config options and added them using the Livelink web forms. I probably spent a few extra hours than if I had just done it manually, but now I have a cool utility for doing batch user creation as well as knowledge to leverage when needing other mass update utilities. And the code looks so cool. I even used a little list comprehension here and there. It was good to use Python again and get something cool done.

The end of the year is fast approaching, so if I have any shot at writing a Quicken replacement, then I need to start now. So the Alamo design has begun. My biggest issue is over language selection. The application will have a fairly complex UI and will require a lot of details. One of the major things I think I would like is a list box with a variable number of child records (not quite a tree control but really similar). And because I want the interface to be fresh looking and changeable, I am leaning towards doing C#.NET with an embedded IE control to display the ledger. Using XML, XSL, CSS, HTML, I should be able to make pretty substantial changes to the look and feel without any significant coding changes. I should be able to provide different themes and skins by just replacing a few files and without recompiling anything. The difficult part of this is hooking into events and really taming the IE control to the degree I need to. wxPython offers several really cool controls that are also tempting. There is a virtual list box that allows you to use HTML as the text for each item element. So again, I might could create the look I am going for by doing that. wxPython also offers an HTML control that allows for basic HTML formatting (but obviously not CSS and some of the more advanced techniques) but using it would improve my chances at making a cross-platform application (although that is definitely not high on my list).

My thinking is that with C#, I know a little more of what I am doing and I know that with the massive amounts of intellisense, I can muddle my way through. However, attempting to hook deeply into IE will be a bit of a challenge. With wxPython, I think I can do what I need to do, but I fear that I won’t resolve things as quickly and I could end up making poorer design decisions.

As for the backend, I will either use MySQL or SQL Server 2005 Express. They are both free in one way or the other. I’ll most likely use Express if I use C# and MySQL if I use Python. I would use SQLite but it is not truly a client-server database and so hitting the database file through multiple computers could result in corruption. I haven’t totally figured out the SQL Server 2005 Express architecture but what little I have read seems promising. So that’s a whole additional area that I have to research if I am doing this. Ugh! I suddenly am figuring I am not going to make it.

I was beginning to wonder if IronPython was going to ever get real attention and be fleshed out as a complete or nearly complete implementation. I was also wondering if Jim Hugunin was ever going to make another entry in his blog. Alas, new news has arrived from Jim. Apparently he gets to hire someone else to help him. I would take it as a good sign that Microsoft is willing to hire extra bodies and the guy doing the hiring has IronPython as the first priority after the person comes on board. I’d say the future is bright, but only time will tell.