RevServer Clarification

[cborn]

I'm relatively new to LiveCode, but have been working it in steadily in the last year to develop audio and video recorder modules that are embedded into our course management system. Being able to create these revlets quickly in LiveCode, has been the single biggest win for us, as we are trying to replace commercial software that is failing us on campus.

However, the instability of the RevWeb plugin on Windows is really hurting us right now. We are a cross-platform campus, and are dedicated to providing equally available resources to both our Macintosh and our Windows clients. Although students have access to either platform in public labs all over campus, both students and professors are pushing us to make more services web-bases and equally accessible from both platforms.

So I'm wondering if I should explore RevServer, instead of using revlets? These modules record audio and/or webcam video to a local temp directory on the client computer. Then it is sent (along with a number of other params) to the course management server when they hit submit. If I were to try to use RevServer alongside our course management system, even embedding the code in those pages, would it work? Is RevServer as full featured as the regular development environment? Can it access externals? If it records audio, can it save directly to the server rather than having it on the client computer? And will it solve my platform problem?

I'm tentative about getting in too deep with RevServer if it will not be robust enough for what we need. I am only just learning to become a programmer (I'm trained as a teacher of foreign languages), and I don't have good backup right now. So I'm on my own!

I hope the LC community can help me decide where to go with this project. All thoughts and suggestions are appreciated!!

Carly

[asayd]

Hi Carly,

RevServer is not really the right tool for what you want to do. It is a server-side scripting language, comparable to PHP. It's fast and capable, but the thing you have to know is RevServer has no user interface component, so you can't build a LiveCode interface with it or use any of the objects you're used to in the desktop product. It is well-suited for creating dynamic HTML that can be rendered in a browser, but in that environment, you are pretty much stuck with using JavaScript to create the user interface.

I had a very similar need to yours here at BYU, and I created a web-enabled desktop application that did what you describe--it does the audio recording, saves it to a temporary file, then uploads it to a database on our server. The instructor then can use a teacher module to download and review the recordings that students have made.

In theory, all of this ought to work in the revWeb plugin, but as you've noted, there are still problems with the plugin. Updates have been promised for several months now, in conjunction with LiveCode v. 4.5. Perhaps now that v. 4.5.3 has been released the mother ship will be able to turn their attention to the plugin.

Hope this helps.

Devin Asay
BYU Humanities Technology

[cborn]

Hey Devin,

Thanks for the reply. I suspected just as much, but it was a little unclear from what I read about it. It might be useful at some point, but it's nice to get clarification that it's not what I need right now.

I've seen your work at CALICO, and I am considering moving back to a desktop application just to get the functionality back. But there is strong pressure to make it all fully integrated into our CMS (Moodle) and web-based. I've seen the promises for updates to the RevWeb Plugin, but am really hurting that they have not yet been delivered.

Here's hoping that it'll get some attention soon!

Thanks, again!
carly

[kray]

One thing that might help is that you can add a web protocol to the OS so that clicking a web link would launch or hand data off to a desktop app. OceanBrowser is a Rev app that does that though the "oceanbrowser:" web protocol.

Not the same as a plugin, but more integrated than a normal standalone app.