@Shawn,
Thanks a lot for your time and response. I don't need any animations,
but I do need a presentable web-page which is user-friendly. I already
built all of this in PHP and I just hate it (it looks very clumsy , in
terms of presentation and code-management). So I decided to give
Django a try.
@Shawn/All,
If any one in this community wouldn't mind giving me some pointers on
what I want to do specifically, that will be great. ( I kinda want to
deliver a simple web site by Monday, and any help in this regard is
greatly appreciated). I wouldn't be mean by asking your for a specific
solution, but I will be very pleased to get some suggestions and
ideas.
Here is a brief write up of what I am doing and what I need.
1. My Objective:
To build a modular/easily manageable web application which allows
users to view a data repository that I built. The user can then
compare his/her data with the data in my repository and carry out some
statistical analysis ( I have the tools build for it (in Python)
already.). The results of the statistical analysis are the real
deliverables to the end-user. My repository is the 'seed-data' to run
the statistical models. The hope is that users will like the tool and
(as a token of gratitude) choose to donate their data to the
repository (which I expect to be useful to the community at large).
2. My specific requirements:
A. I want to know who is using the tool and what they are submitting.
So I want only the logged-in users to play with my web-tools. So, I
need a user self-registration module.
B. I want an admin-management module - to administer user access. In
addition, I want to have user specific access control to the data in
my repository. (but this is in the phase-II plan, so it is not an
immediate requirement).
C. I want data level access control . i.e., I want to ensure that if I
choose to mask certain data to certain users, I should be able to do
so. (but this is phase-II and not an immediate requirement.)
D. I want to render my results as "html web pages" containing "tables
(data)" and "images (plots)". The data in the html tables should be
exportable as csv files and plots exportable as pdf reports. ( so I
need an 'export' functionality. Part of this requirement in phase-II.
So basically I will do what ever I can in phase-I).
E. I want to enforce certain basic security measures (to prevent my
web server from crashing). Specifically, I want to ensure I don't get
repeat hits from the same IP/domain. Also, I want to ensure that my
web server is not used as an intermediate route by hackers ( so I
basically should have a very strict set possible operations by the
user). I will prefer using https and i will prefer 'masking' my URL's
( so they really dont know where the actual data resides).
3. What am I seeking from this community?
1. Pointers to pluggable django apps. (this is what I really need)
2. Brief ideas of how you would go about with each of these
requirements , if you are dealing with similar things. ( of course if
you have some time to spare and wouldn't mind doing thing -- but I
will reaallly appreciate any mentoring in this regard).
4. Logistics:
I have a fedora box on which I will host my application. I will have a
firewall and make sure I have only specific ports open. Obviouslly, I
will be using Apache as the web server. As of now, I am planning on
using sqlite as my database.
Regards,
Datta.
On Dec 23, 9:50 pm, Shawn Milochik <sh...@milochik.com> wrote:
> On Dec 23, 2009, at 7:43 PM,Dattatreya Mwrote:
>
> > 1. @Shawn, Thanks for the reply. I appreciate you taking time to answer.
>
> > 2. I am going through the Django tutI was wondering if there is
> > something else that would save me hours of 're-inventing' the wheel (with
> > regards to designing websites using Django). (cook book/ for 'dummies' kind
> > of a thing/ etc...??)
>
> > 3. By UI design, I mean, those flashy websites that people make. As it is,
> > I write code to manipulate data. For the first time I am hosting a page for
> > the world to access one of my statistical models. How do I make those
> > flashy-flashy things..
>
> > Regards,
> > Datta.
>
> Well, Django lets you do anything you can do with any other server-side
> language. If you want to add animation and stuff like that, that's not
> Django. Nor is it PHP, ASP, or any other language or framework. You might
> want to look into Flash. Django doesn't make the "look and feel" of your
> site. It serves up the data. Even things like JavaScript are outside of
> Django's domain.
>
> It sounds to be like you aren't really looking for Django, but maybe
> something like Dreamweaver. The stuff you call "re-inventing the wheel" is
> what I call "learning to program." You have to copy what others have done to
> learn how it works,
