added basic support for serving snippets of code up to the UI

[mikedewar]

so, for example:

curl "localhost:7070/macros" -d'{"Type":"annotation","Dimensions":{"X":10,"Y":20,"W":100,"H":10}}'

returns

{
  "Content": "<h1>What Ho, Streamtools!</h1>\n<script>\n    console.log(\"hello\")\n</script>\n",
  "Dimensions": {
    "H": 10,
    "W": 100,
    "Y": 20,
    "X": 10
  },
  "Type": "annotation",
  "Id": "4"
}

[nikhan]

what kind of experience do we want here?
because as it stands, the affordances built in this PR do little to automate the "settings" of a macro, meaning that if you wanted to write a macro in HTML that made a D3 chart you would need a way to specify which endpoint it was hitting. Making this UI friendly would require figuring out a way to parameterize JS/HTML in way similar to how the blocks are paramterized, but with the added difficulty of dealing with how to work with free-form HTML. Meaning that we'd have to create some kind of templating engine...

If we agree that the block is basically an HTML/JS block and that editing HTML/JS is required, then things become much simpler.

[mikedewar]

The way I would like to see this code used is to deliver carefully designed bits of HTML/JS to the user. The user would be able to adjust the position and size of the enclosing div by default; any other affordances would be provided by the delivered HTML/JS.

Would it make sense for me to make a sample annotation macro?

[nikhan]

so, you would have a D3 chart that has some kind of drop down that populates with the available blocks that it could listen to?

[mikedewar]

Sure!
On May 2, 2014 1:13 PM, "nik hanselmann" [email protected] wrote:

so, you would have a D3 chart that has some kind of drop down that
populates with the available blocks that it could listen to?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/454#issuecomment-42055248
.

[jacqui]

@nikhan wrote, "Meaning that we'd have to create some kind of templating engine..." and I had a minor freakout :)

So if I understand the discussion so far, this pull request is intended to lay the foundation for adding macros/comments to streamtools, but more work is required to get them in the GUI? If I'm wrong, please explain?

[nikhan]

yep, that's entirely right. but depending on how we want things to work in the interface, things in the backend may have to change.

[mikedewar]

I think probably this needs a couple of examples before it's going to
resolve into a good idea or not...
On May 6, 2014 9:45 AM, "nik hanselmann" [email protected] wrote:

yep, that's entirely right. but depending on how we want things to work in
the interface, things in the backend may have to change.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/454#issuecomment-42319812
.