Ajax marches on (chat excerpt)
Frisco and Mark chat about Ajax and then troubleshoot a server-error and talk about sysadmin utilities that should exist.
[11:43] friscolr: http://ajaxwrite.com/
[11:44] friscolr: ajax implementation of MS-Word compatible word processor
[11:45] manikmarkus: heh. we’ve been watching a few of those, FCKedit , ,others.
[11:46] manikmarkus: what does it mean “MS-Word compatible”? the interface is the same? does it read and write word files?
[11:46] friscolr: yeah, it’s open/save features do MS word docs, though i haven’t tested it fully yet.
[11:47] manikmarkus: wow. very impressive.
[11:48] manikmarkus: javascript could replace java for platform independent software development, er.. anything that is database-backed for sure.
[11:49] friscolr: yeah, and then security lists will truly overflow with XSS
[11:49] manikmarkus: XSS?
[11:50] friscolr: cross site scripting
[11:52] manikmarkus: wonder how they’re making money off this.
[12:01] manikmarkus: Matt tells me that google bought “writely” and now other folks are in a hurry to try and make an ajax-based editor to sell to someone.
[12:02] manikmarkus: I could see a need for a really solid Ajax-based HTML editor. I’m sure such things are under works. Like an Ajax based dreamweaver. Cause all this use of “textile” like markup for content management isn’t cutting it for me. Definately there would be a big market for an HTML editor that is as easy and familiar to use as Word.
[12:04] manikmarkus: Nice — i went to http://ajaxlaunch.com and got a Smarty (yuch) error!!:
[12:04] manikmarkus:
Fatal error: Smarty error: unable to write to $compile_dir ‘/var/chroot/home/content/a/j/a/ajaxpc/html/postnuke/html/pnTemp/pnRender_compiled’. Be sure $compile_dir is writable by the web server user. in /var/chroot/home/content/a/j/a/ajaxpc/html/postnuke/html/includes/classes/Smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1088
[12:05] manikmarkus: it means they’re using PHP, intersting. I tried combining Smarty and Ajax once — it was a nightmare. The php code that Smarty generates will generate Notices which was breaking my Ajax. Smarty expects that you turn Notices off (not helpful for development) and they don’t mention this anywhere.
[12:05] friscolr: need a bot that constantly crawls a website looking for such errors, and pages me when they occur.
[12:06] manikmarkus: wouldn’t be that hard to write one that pattern matches for PHP-style errors, rite?
[12:06] manikmarkus: (not that I have any experience writing bots)
[12:06] friscolr: but how do you know if the error is supposed to be there or not? as in, a class page that is demonstrating those errors?
[12:07] friscolr: sometimes i do use our search to look for “WARNING” and other keywords
[12:07] manikmarkus: that would have to be an exception to the rule that you could manually flag as OK somehow so the bot ignores it
[12:07] manikmarkus: like in a config file
[12:07] friscolr: probably creating a baseline would be easiest
[12:07] manikmarkus: the amount of AI you would need to have a bot be that context sensitive would be prohibitive
[12:08] manikmarkus: baseline?
[12:08] friscolr: crawl the site once while in a known-good state, if ‘warning’ or ‘error’ appear afterwards, page me
[12:08] manikmarkus: ah
[12:08] friscolr: i mean, if those words appear in different context
[12:08] manikmarkus: why not just keep a watch on the errorlog? I mean, we shouldn’t be outputting errors to the screen on production sites anyway.
[12:09] friscolr: because “we shouldn’t” != “we don’t”
[12:09] manikmarkus: error_repoting = Off; log_errors = On; error_level = E_ALL | E_NOTICE; # no?
[Ed: frisco explains that his users have a business need (my words) to see PHP errror message outputted to the screen, yet he still needs to monitor them in cases where the warning messages are “indicative of larger problems on the site that are [his] responsibility.”]
[12:11] friscolr: in the case of the warning message you showed me, the smarties thing, i wondered if it was a perm issue or a disk full (so still no writes).
[12:11] friscolr: a disk full would be my responsibility (though i monitor for that separately)
[12:12] manikmarkus: i bet it is a perm issue or a disk full issue. check out the nested folders : “a/j/a” that means there might be hundreds of thousands of sites being hosted on this thing?
[12:12] manikmarkus: I still think it’s strage that “ajaxlaunch” folks are outputting this to the screen.
[Ed: in the remainder of the conv., frisco explains to mark what chroot is and its strange occurence in the filepath. All in all we spent like half an hour analyzing this small error message, and I learned a bit from it. Great way to start the day! Thanks, frisco!]
[Oh and keep up the good work, AjaxLaunch folks!]