[sword-devel] Prototyping node-sword-interface web service

[Tobias Klein]

Hi Fred!

I suppose the redundancy is a general issue of json or xml when having long 
lists of elements.

Http servers and clients support gzip compression (and other more modern 
algorithms). That's something I could check to optimize the data amounts 
that are sent when making requests on this web-based API.

Best regards,
Tobias

Am 11. August 2024 21:03:26 schrieb Fred <fred.fredex at gmail.com>:
> I'm just a lurker here, but... even though I've dabbled in json, I gotta 
> say that is  horribly verbose! I'd be willing to bet oh, say, fifty cents 
> that a slow link would perform poorly. since (as I understand it) it is the 
> remote server sending all that, that there'd be no way to filter out all 
> the redundant json on each verse, which I'd expect to make it much more 
> slow-link-friendly.
>
> Fred
>
> On Sun, Aug 11, 2024 at 1:56 AM Aaron Rainbolt <arraybolt3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Haven't been replying since I'm busy, but this is awesome. Thank you
> for actually giving my idea a shot! I'll have to experiment with it :)
>
> On Sun, 4 Aug 2024 21:00:24 +0200
> Tobias Klein <contact at tklein.info> wrote:
>
>> Hi Aaron & all,
>>
>> so, this whole thread about SWORD over network inspired me to play
>> with existing technology a bit.
>> The goal: Run Ezra Bible App accessing the SWORD modules via a remote
>> server instead of locally.
>>
>> I implemented a small web service API based on node-sword-interface
>> and expressjs.
>> See https://github.com/ezra-bible-app/ezra-bible-app-server
>>
>> Example -
>> https://github.com/ezra-bible-app/ezra-bible-app-server/blob/main/routes/module.js
>>
>> // Delivers the text of a chapter via the url
>> /module/<moduleCode>/chaptertext/<bookCode>/<chapterNumber>
>>
>> router.get('/:moduleCode/chaptertext/:bookCode/:chapter', (req, res)
>> => { const moduleCode = req.params.moduleCode;
>>    const bookCode = req.params.bookCode;
>>    const chapter = parseInt(req.params.chapter);
>>
>>    const chapterText = nsi.getChapterText(moduleCode, bookCode,
>> chapter); res.json(chapterText);
>> });
>>
>> See here for example server deployed on some AWS machine I quickly
>> set up. The following URL delivers the KJV text of John 5 as JSON.
>> http://ec2-13-48-148-192.eu-north-1.compute.amazonaws.com/module/KJV/chaptertext/John/5
>>
>> Then I made some adjustments in the backend of Ezra Bible App,
>> implementing a "switch" in a few methods that normally access a local
>> node-sword-interface / SWORD installation.
>>
>> The respective example section in the Ezra Bible App backend looks
>> like this:
>> https://github.com/ezra-bible-app/ezra-bible-app/blob/web-api/app/backend/ipc/ipc_nsi_handler.js#L243
>>
>>      this._ipcMain.add('nsi_getChapterText', async (moduleCode,
>> bookCode, chapter) => {
>>        if (!this._useWebApi) {
>>          return this._nsi.getChapterText(moduleCode, bookCode,
>> chapter); } else {
>>          return await
>> this.getFromWebApi(`/module/${moduleCode}/chaptertext/${bookCode}/${chapter}`);
>>        }
>>      });
>>
>> Based on the switch useWebApi (currently just a constant) I can
>> switch between the "local version" and the "remote version".
>> The interface is compatible, because both the local version and the
>> remote version pull data from node-sword-interface and that already
>> returns JSON as of today.
>>
>> I ended up with a test version of Ezra Bible App that would load
>> module lists and offer the regular browsing capabilities as the
>> normal "offline" variant.
>> The performance in the UI for regular Bible browsing is nearly the
>> same.
>>
>> The use case that I see is to install a bunch of popular modules on
>> the server side for different languages and offer these to the user
>> based on quick "online access" right after installing the app.
>>
>> I am also interested how this behaves when the internet connection is
>> slower. I'll report some findings once I have them. It should be easy
>> to simulate that now based on the developer tools built into Electron.
>>
>> Right now this is an experiment. I'll explore a bit more and if this
>> turns out useful, I may think about integrating this into Ezra.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Tobias
>>
>
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