under construction...
AJAX
AJAX used to stand for "Active Javascript And XML,
but it has grown to refer to any communication
between a web browser and a server using javascript callbacks
that don't reload the HTML page.
The
PCMAG Encyclopedia page on AJAX is a pretty good place
to start reading about the topic.
API (Application Programmers Interface)
An application programmer interface (API) is a collection of
functions, constructors, and methods provided programming
library. Applications programs use the defined interface to
access the functionality of the programming library.
Application (wsgi application)
A WSGI application is a Python function (callable) which
delivers a response to a HTTP request in conformance with the
WSGI interface standard. See the entry for WSGI below for
more information on WSGI.
CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
The Common Gateway Interface is a standard mechanism whereby
web clients send information from web forms to web servers.
Read more at
http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/CGI/cgi1.html
Cookie
A cookie is a short string which a web server stores
at a web client in order to connect information across
a sequence of otherwise independent web requests.
Read more at
http://www.httpwatch.com/httpgallery/cookies/
Fragment (WHIFF application fragment)
A WHIFF application fragment is a smaller WSGI application
used to format part of a web page. Web pages may be constructed
from many fragments, and a given fragment may be used many times
with different parameters in the same web page.
HTML (hypertext Markup Language)
HTML is a text format used for formatting information
into documents for presentation in web servers.
Below is a simple example of an HTTP formatted document.
<html>
<head> <title> example html document </html> </head>
<body>
<h1>Hello world</h1>
This is a very simple <em>HTML document</em>.
</body>
</html>
Read more at
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/
HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol)
HTTP defines the method used by web clients to request and receive
web content (such as HTML pages and images) from web servers.
For a pretty good introduction to HTTP go to
http://www.httpwatch.com/httpgallery/introduction/
JSON (javascript object notation)
JSON is a popular format for transmitting structured information
between web servers and web clients. Below is an example JSON structure
describing a list of dictionaries.
[
{
"bynick": "george",
"attime": 1,
"said": "I like cats",
"title": "just making conversation"
},
{
"bynick": "sally",
"attime": 2,
"said": "me too",
"title": "babbling"
},
{
"bynick": "sally",
"attime": 2,
"said": "they are really cute",
"title": "babbling"
},
{
"bynick": "sally",
"attime": 3,
"said": "and cuddly",
"title": "babbling"
}
]
Read more at
http://www.json.org/
Middleware (wsgi middleware)
A web application middleware is a web application that uses
the output of one or more other web applications
during the process of computing
its own output. An example middleware in the WHIFF distribution
is the
quoteHTML middleware which replaces HTML special
characters with HTML entities so that the HTML tags become visible
The example above uses the
quoteHtml middleware
to embed an example HTML document in a larger HTML text with the
HTML tags visible.
Scaffolding
The term scaffolding
usually refers to an outline of an HTML document (or other format)
which has "variable positions" for holding values that are specified
elsewhere. For example the "resume" tutorial has a scaffolding which
defines the general format for a resume with positions for placing the
Name, Address, Experience and other parameters.
WSGI (web server gateway interface)
WSGI is an interface standard which is supported in many environments.
WSGI defines how Python web applications communicate with each other and
with the web server.
Read more at
http://wsgi.org/wsgi/
