Using same code client- and server side

Anvil Q&A
1

Hi,
apologies if this is obvious for experienced python coders, but:

Is there a way to use the same code on both client and server side without copy & pasting?

For example, in my code I will use a translation dictionary between German and English for some terminology that needs to be used by both client- and server-side code.
The dictionary will only be set/changed at design time, so I am not talking about client- and server code making changes to the same data at runtime, I just wonder if there is a way to avoid basically having two separate files which I manually have to keep identical…

Thank you very much for your help!

2

All your client code is also available to be imported in your server modules.

The portable classes docs have examples of that being used:

2 Likes
3

@owen.campbell , great thank you!
As I said, in my use case there would be no changes to the contents at runtime, so would this solution ensure that the client code reads the data from the server only once during a session? Obviously I wouldn’t want a German<->English dictionary to be sent forth and back between client and server unnecessarily…
Sorry if this is obvious from the documentation you linked to, but the part about serialization goes a bit over my head at this point, so I just want to make sure I’m not unnecessarily sending data forth and back between client and server…

Btw, thank you so much for your work on anvil extras. I admit that there are some parts that I probably don’t even fully understand fully, but the parts that I get already make my life much easier. In fact, having slider with two handles will allow me to give my user interface some totally new functionality. Thank you!!

4

Your original question seemed to be asking about using code on both client and server side. The answer to that is yes, you can - if you write that code in a client module, you can import it into a server module.

You now seem to be asking about passing data between server and client, which is a completely different matter.

Glad to hear you like anvil extras!

5

Yes, you are correct, I was a bit unclear there, sorry! Anyway, I think your answer above has given me ideas for how I could do either. Thanks!

1 Like
6

Perhaps Owen’s mention of the portable classes confused you.

The answer to your question was his first phrase:

That’s all you need: create a client module, and you can import it both on server and client side.

3 Likes
7

Thanks, @stefano.menci!