System and method for dynamically expanding and collapsing a tree view for an HTML web interface

• US 6,314,424 B1
• Filed: 09/28/1998
• Issued: 11/06/2001
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Kaczmarski, Michael Allen, Tung, Randy Yuan-Yi
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam, Hosain T.
• Assistant Examiner(s): ALAM, SHAHID AL
• Application Number:
  US09/164,442
• Time in Patent Office: 1,135 Days
• Field of Search: 707/8, 707/10, 707/100, 707/200, 707/201, 707/203, 707/531, 707/513, 707/517, 707/2.3, 707/4, 707/5, 707/104, 707/501, 709/212, 709/216, 709/237, 709/248, 709/310, 709/218, 709/224, 345/340, 345/357
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

The present invention provides a system and method for expanding and collapsing a tree view from a web interface by using HTML to build the visual representation of the web server'"'"'s information structure, which has the capability to preserve previous tree expansion states in the stateless web HTML environment. In a method according to the present invention, a request comes in from a client browser which contains a universal resource locator (URL). The web server passes the URL to the tree HTML page generation engine to generate the collapsible/expandable tree. The tree HTML page generation engine server will call the corresponding query modules according to the information passed in from the URL. A linked list is generated according to the results returned from one of the query modules. The linked list is then passed into the tree HTML page generation engine. The tree HTML page generation engine generates the HTML page containing nodes. Each node has an embedded URL associated with it and contains a special encoding to memorize the tree expansion state information. The generated tree view is then returned to the web server and then to the browser.

Claims

1. A method for generating a tree view for a web browser comprising the steps of:

receiving a request for information from a web browser;

searching an information system based on the information requested;

generating a linked list of the searching results;

building an HTML page from the linked list which includes pointers to the information searched; and

returning the HTML page to the web browser.

2. The method for generating a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 1, wherein the request for information contain a URL.

3. The method for generation a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 1, wherein the HTML page includes nodes and branches to access additional levels of information.

4. The method for generating a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 1, wherein the information system is a database.

5. The method for generating a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 1, wherein the information system is a network domain.

6. The method for generating a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 1, wherein the information system is a file system.

7. A method for generating a tree view for a web browser comprising the steps of:

receiving a request for information at a web server from a client browser, said request containing a URL for the information;

invoking an HTML page generation engine to build an HTML page for visual presentation of the information;

executing a query module from the page generation engine to an information system to search for the requested information;

building a linked list from the results of the query module;

generating an HTML page from the link listed information, said HTML page having embedded pointers to tree expansion state information; and

returning the HTML page to the client browser.

8. The method for generating a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 7, wherein the information system is a database.

9. The method for generating a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 7, wherein the information system is a network domain.

10. The method for generating a tree view for a web browser as claimed in claim 8, wherein the information system is a file system.

11. A system for generating a tree view for a web browser comprising:

an application server for receiving a request for information from a client browser and returning an HTML page back to the client browser; and

an HTML page generator comprising query modules for searching an information system and building linked lists from the results, said HTML page generator having means for embedding information state information from the linked lists into the generated HTML page.

12. A computer product comprising:

a computer usable medium; and

a computer readable code embodied on the computer usable medium, said readable code configured to cause the computer to construct a dynamic tree view from a linked list by embedding tree expansion states into an HTML page.

13. The computer product of claim 12 further comprising code to cause the computer to send the HTML page to a browser.