From: Kirk Haines <khaines@...>
Date: 2004-05-08T20:03:50+09:00
Subject: Re: What is Borges?

On Sat, 8 May 2004 13:03:56 +0900, Francis Hwang wrote

> What does a session imply here? Is there any room in this paradigm 
> for reflecting some state in a cookie and some state in a URL?

A session is all of the data that makes up a user's unique interaction with 
the application.

With Iowa one can use the query string portion of a URL, if one wants.  
However, in my own use I've never found the need to put data back into a 
query string.  It's simply used as an entry point to provide parameters.

Example:  I have an application that provides a report on roof conditions 
for buildings.  This application takes a set of query string parameters that 
provide information on what data to query for the report.  The report, 
however, is interactive, so once they click on a control to start changing 
what is being displayed in the report, the query string parameters are left 
behind and everything is kept on the server associated with the session.
 
> Let's say I'm selling some of my old CDs online, using a site that
> uses cookies for login. And I want to reprice them by opening up a
> bunch of tabs in my browser, which all might point to URLs like
> 
> http://my.site.com/reprice.rb?item=8787
> http://my.site.com/reprice.rb?item=8788
> http://my.site.com/reprice.rb?item=8789
> http://my.site.com/reprice.rb?item=8790
>
> There are two types of state here: The logic information keyed to a
> cookie, and the item information keyed in the URL. Is this the sort 
> of thing that could be done in Borges?

Not exactly the way that you show.  *ponder*  Hmm, Eric, how would you do 
this with Borges?

With Iowa, if one expected that someone would want to do this, then one 
could create an entry point into the application mapping /reprice to the 
Reprice component, for example.  And the Reprice component would look for an 
item= parameter to get the item number.  This would let the application 
construct URLs like this:

http://my.site.com/reprice?item=8787
http://my.site.com/reprice?item=8788

and so on.
 

Kirk Haines