halley has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've done a bit of digging with Google and CPAN, but have come up with dead-ends and incomplete information.

I want to develop a proof of concept for a new visual analysis tool. The final tool needs to work well with a website, so I figured a javascript/ajax solution would work for the interactive elements. I have to admit I'm not very experienced in implementing any ajax, but I understand the basic concepts of how the javascript calls back to the backend to update stuff as required.

If you're familiar with LabVIEW (or even the new Lego Mindstorms NXT visual programming setup), you have seen similar interfaces. Various simple graphics can be dragged around a workspace, and various wire connections can be made from one "plug" to another.

Does anyone know of an AJAX toolkit that's perl-friendly on the backend, and able to do anything like the widget I'm describing on the browser end?

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[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

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Re: AJAX toolkits and LabVIEW?
by chargrill (Parson) on Sep 01, 2006 at 18:45 UTC

    Two that come to mind immediately are HTML::Prototype and CGI::Ajax. There were also some great AJAX related talks at YAPC::NA 2006. You can find some slides at http://yapcchicago.org/wiki/index.cgi?YAPCSlides

    I'm not familiar with LabVIEW, though. Perhaps other monks are?



    --chargrill 
    $,=42;for(34,0,-3,9,-11,11,-17,7,-5){$*.=pack'c'=>$,+=$_}for(reverse s
+plit//=>$*
){$%++?$ %%2?push@C,$_,$":push@c,$_,$":(push@C,$_,$")&&push@c,$"}$C[$#
+C]=$/;($#C
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+$$C[$%++]}

    [download]
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Re: AJAX toolkits and LabVIEW?
by stonecolddevin (Parson) on Sep 01, 2006 at 20:39 UTC

    LabVIEW is used at my dad's work (http://www.aei.com), it's a graphical representation language where basically UML and code are combined. You create circuits of sorts that represent functions, loops, etc.

    It's mainly for hardware interfacing i believe...Although not much coding is used, the more you know about basic programming the more complex programs you can write, and quickly, at that.

    It's neat, but very slow from what i remember.
    meh.
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Re: AJAX toolkits and LabVIEW?
by rvosa (Curate) on Sep 02, 2006 at 01:00 UTC
    The notion of using CGI::Ajax to generate dynamic svg excites me to no end, but I can't speak from personal experience whether that would be easy to do in practice.
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