[Gambas-user] Gambas server pages

Mon Sep 22 15:06:05 CEST 2008

Hi,

In the last revision of the 2.0 branch, you will find some sort of gambas 
scripter hack that allows you to write ASP-like files that I named "Gambas 
server pages".

Put that in a text file, make it executable, and run it. Do not forget to 
run "make install" in the app source directory to recompile and install the 
new scripter.

--8<--------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/env gbw2
<%
DIM sEnv AS String
%>

<!-- Variable declaration must come before any HTML -->

<html>

<h2>CGI script environmental variables</h2>

<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2">

  <tr>
    <th align="left">Name</th>
    <th align="left">Value</th>
  </tr>

<% FOR EACH sEnv IN Application.Env %>
  <tr valign="top">
    <td><%= sEnv %></td>
    <td><%= Application.Env[sEnv] %> </td>
  </tr>
<% NEXT %>

</table>

</html>
--8<--------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see, the server page is a script, but the script executable 
is 'gbw2', not 'gbs2'. 

'gbw2' is actually a symbolic link to 'gbs2'. When 'gbs2' detects than it is 
run from the 'gbw2' symbolic link, it knows that it will have to process a 
server page and not a script. Then 'gbs2' will transform the server page 
into...a normal script, and will execute it.

Except the initial line with the '#!/usr/bin/env gbw2' magic, the syntax is 
very similar to ASP pages.

* <% XXX %> introduces any Gambas code.

* <%= XXX %> evaluates a Gambas expression, translates it into HTML, and 
inserts the HTML inline.

Note that the gb.web component is used by default. So you can use the Session 
object, the Response object, the Request object, and so on.

These Gambas server page are CGI scripts, and must be managed as any other CGI 
script in your preferred web server.

I hope I gave enough information so that you can test that quick & dirty 
hack. :-)

Regards,

-- 
Benoit Minisini