[mythtv] Intro and Mythweb

[Erin Tomson]

I think that sounds like an excellent idea. Mythweb retrieves program 
guide data directly from the database, not through the backend, but 
scheduled recordings do come from the backend and could benefit from 
selective queries.

I believe Isaac had listed a new protocol as one of the things he'd like 
to see done--it seems like your suggestion would be good to address as 
part of that.

However, it might be best to go ahead with the AJAX stuff separately 
from changes to the protocol then join them up later. Changing the 
engine on a moving car is tricky business.

David Shay wrote:
> 
> 
> Erin Tomson wrote:
> 
>> <snip>
>> I've been working on some changes to mythweb lately, and wanted to run
>> them by you all. My goal is to add support for mythweb themes that use 
>> AJAX. (there's a good description of AJAX at 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX if you're unfamiliar with it)
>>
>> An AJAX theme has the potential to be much more responsive, since the 
>> amount of data that needs to be initially loaded is smaller and 
>> changes can be made to the database without refreshing the entire 
>> page. Many tasks in mythweb will be dramatically more fluid.
>>
> Sounds like a great addition to me.
> 
>> The downside of this is that it requires a fair amount of code 
>> restructuring. Currently, mythweb builds large data structures that it 
>> then passes to the theme for display. That's a slow process, 
>> especially when an AJAX request may use only a tiny portion of that data.
>>
>> So instead, I propose that rather than using global variables, mythweb 
>> would instead provide functions that query and return specific pieces 
>> of data. Themes that need all the information at once can easily 
>> retrieve it, while themes that don't can avoid paying the overhead.
>>
> Although this could certainly done in Mythweb itself, another approach 
> could be to extend the mythtv protocol to provide some program guide 
> access functions, for example to retrieve program data by date/time 
> range and channel range.  This could provide a standard way to retrieve 
> a subset of guide data.  One benefit here would be to provide for a 
> simple way for other devices (i.e. the mvpmc project) to access the 
> guide data.  It could be optimized within the backend as well in order 
> to avoid repeated SQL calls for the guide data.
> 
> If there's any interest in this approach from the core developers, I 
> would be willing to extend the protocol to provide these functions and 
> work with you to get them into mythweb.
> 
> 
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