From: Avi Bryant <avi@...4.com>
Date: 2001-05-08T04:57:17+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:14807] Re: Ruby and Web Applications

On Tue, 8 May 2001, MJ Ray wrote:

> I am aware of IOWA, but it seems not to work with older rubies (yeah,
> I'll look again once I've got a newer version).
>  It superficially
> seems to be based around interpreting embedded code again, which isn't
> the right way to do it.

No, it's not, and no, that's not how IOWA works.  I now regret having
chosen to allow combining the ruby code and the html template into a
single file - it's convenient, but seems to lead to misconceptions.
The archictecture of IOWA is actually almost identical to your data-flow
diagram:

>             Data source                   Formatting data
>                 | ^                             | ^
>                 v |                             v |
> Browser -> Logic object -> Data objects -> Layout objects -> Output
>    ^                                                           |
>    `-----------------------------------------------------------'

More accurate might be:

    Data Objects         Formatting Data

      | ^                  | ^
      v |                  v |
   Logic object   <----> Layout objects   ---> Response  ---> Browser
      ^                                                        |
      |                                                        v
   Logic object   <----  Layout objects  <---- Request   <--- User


However, the syntax I initially chose looked like:

<%
   #logic object code 
%>

<?
   #bindings between logic and formatting
?>

<html>
<!-- formatting data -->
</html>

Which makes people think of PHP and other embedded code systems.  Oops.

Avi