Christmas Bird Count history report system

# - - - - -   m a i n

def main():
    '''Main program.

      [ if (the pycbc database is available) and 
        (PASS_FILE names a readable file containing the pycbc
        database password) ->
          sys.stdout  +:=  a web page that allows the user to select
              a region index page out of the set of regions in pycbc
        else ->
          sys.stdout  +:=  an error web page ]
    '''

The main is broken into three steps: create an empty page; fill it with content, or an error page if there is any problem; and write the completed page. See Section 6.5, “buildEmptyPage(): Set up an empty page”.

    #-- 1
    # [ sys.stdout  +:=  CGI header for HTML output
    #   page  :=  a tp.TCCPage instance ]
    print "Content-type: text/html"
    print
    page = buildEmptyPage()

The page-building step is wrapped in a try-except block so that a ScriptError raised anywhere will exit immediately to error page generation; see Section 15, “class ScriptError: Our exception”.

    #-- 2
    # [ if the pycbc database is available ->
    #     page  :=  page modified to display a form for selecting a
    #         regional index page for one of the regions from that
    #         database
    #   else ->
    #     page  :=  page modified to display an error page ]
    try:
        #-- 2.1
        # [ if  (PASS_FILE names a readable file containing the
        #   CBC database password) and (the pycbc database is
        #   available) ->
        #     db  :=  a pycbc.CBCDatabase instance representing that
        #             database
        #   else -> raise ScriptError ]
        try:
            db = lib.openDatabase()
        except IOError, x:
            raise lib.ScriptError("Can't access the CBC database: %s" %
                             str(x))

See Section 6.6, “buildRegionsForm(): Build the table of region radiobuttons” and Section 17, “buildErrorPage()”.

        #-- 2.2
        # [ page  :=  page modified to display a form for selecting a
        #       regional index page for one of the regions from db ]
        buildRegionsForm(page, db)
    except lib.ScriptError, x:
        #-- 2x
        # [ page  :=  page modified to show str(x) as an error ]
        lib.buildErrorPage(page, x)

    #-- 3
    # [ sys.stdout  +:=  page, serialized as XHTML ]
    lib.addDocLink(page.content)
    page.write(sys.stdout)

See Section 19, “addDocLink(): Add a link to the documentation”, which adds a pointer to the documentation.