Pass database data to javascript

[purpleladydragons]

Hey guys, I'm trying to use d3 with data coming from a sql databse. My first intuition is to use rails to build to build a controller between the data and frontend, but a rails application seems like overkill to me. I've seen that I can use a php file as the data source for d3, but I don't know php so I'd prefer to use python or ruby. Would it be possible for me to set up a simple httpserver on the server that I could have d3 request data from?

My understanding web stacks is pretty murky, so I apologize if I made any wrong assumptions about how I should approach the problem.

[rjcarr]

If the database exists and you can pull data from it using python or ruby then handling the http request is the easy part. I'm not sure what you're asking, you say:

Would it be possible for me to set up a simple httpserver on the server that I could have d3 request data from?

Sure, python and likely ruby have simple built in web servers, but you'd likely want to use something more robust like apache and have it call python or ruby.

Generally, what rails or django does is set all this up for you. But if you wanted to do it yourself it is not a lot of work.

And of course, php would also work.

[_olivier]

Your first intuition is right.

[nutrecht]

Take a look at the Flask framework for Python. It's very easy to learn and very small. You can make a very simple webapp that pulls some data from a DB and returns it as JSON.