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jsonrestpython-3.xcherrypymako

Templating JSON from REST results

Premise: This question is more like "is this the correct approach?" rather then "how do I do this?"

Situation: I have created a CherryPy REST application following this tutorial. The data are returned using the json module with a simple json.dumps. This example works. I have a mako template which I would like to use to create a HTML table with the data. Again, the template by itself works.

The question: In my head, it works this way:

  1. The user asks for a URL
  2. The REST API creates the JSON with the results
  3. The mako template produces the HTML given the results
  4. The HTML is returned to the user

My problem is, I'm not sure this is the right approach: in my (small) experience, the JSON should be returned to the client, which should render it in some way (using jQuery or some other client-side language); instead, the mako template works on the server-side, and that's where I got stuck.

Do you have any advice?

Solution

  • You don't need REST to solve this, this is a regular web application. Just to show you how this works by a REST service:

    • The user asks the REST client to do some-automated-stuff on the service
    • The client requests example.com/api/v1 to get the main page
    • The client looks for hyperlinks on the main page
    • The client finds hyperlink with relation=some-automated-stuff
    • The client follows that hyperlink and gets a JSON result from the REST API
    • The client uses the mako template and produces the HTML given the results
    • The HTML is returned to the user

    A typical client is a 3rd party server side application, which is registered by the service and got a unique API key. The users allow to the clients to do some-automated-stuff on their account by giving permissions to API keys. So for example the service can be the facebook API and a client can be an application developed by Zynga e.g. Farmville. When you allow to the client to post on your news feed that you just harvested 100000 crops on your farm, then it sends a request about this to the facebook API and so some automated message will show up on your news feed.

    Ofc. you can write a 1st party AJAX or server side client if you want, but if you don't want to support 3rd party clients, then it does not make much sense to develop a REST service. Ofc. your client won't break as easy as by regular applications, so it might worth the effort if that is important.