Hi Abber,
Now that You are on the Net, You might enjoy this:
Excerpted from Dr. Dobbs Journal December, 1996, pp. 80-84
WEB PROGRAMMING WITH VISUAL FOXPRO
by George F. Goley IV
Visual FoxPro (VFP) is a database development tool that lets you create
classes either visually or by command line coding. Visual FoxPro comes
with a number of wizards - one of which is the WWW Search Page Wizard
that builds HTML documents instead of VFP objects. You can then link
that HTML search page to a VFP table or view...
...The WWW Search Page Wizard consists of the WWWPAGE.APP wizard,
VFPCGI.EXE CGI script, and SERVER.APP query-server application. ...the
User of the WWW SPW will load a WWWPAGE.APP-generated HTML document into
a web browser, provide a single value to use in a simple query, and view
the result. The developer will use WWWPAGE.APP to generate the HTML
query document and install the SERVER.APP and VFPCGI.EXE files on a
Windows based Internet server. None of the WWW SPW components reside on
the user's machine. The HTML document includes instructions for the
Internet server's HTTP service to run a copy of the VFPCGI.EXE script
(also on the Internet server) when the user elects to search. VFPCGI.EXE
writes files to a directory on the Internet server. SERVER.APP constantly
searches the Internet server, looking for files written by the
VFPCGI.EXE script.
In short, the WWWPAGE.APP wizard is used to create a search page, a
result-page template, and a query template. VFPCGI.EXE is used to
convert search requests received from the web browser into text files.
The SERVER.APP reads the text files, runs the query, and places the
results in a HTML document. The resultant document is packed up by
VFPCGI.EXE and returned to users through the HTTP service. The
WWWPAGE.APP wizard employs the standard Microsoft Wizard interface to
prompt the developer for the following:
- The table to be queried.
- The index expression against which the
user's input will be compared.
- Title and description to appear on the
Web search page.
- Search-page header and background
image files.
- Permission to download the query
results as a file.
- Fields to be included in the result set.
- Result-page header and background
image files.
- The maximum number of rows to be
returned (This is the total number of
rows to be returned. The Wizard does
not support progressive fetching of
result sets.)
- Name of the search page .htm file
("DrDobbs.htm" for example).
Using this developer-supplied information, WWWPAGE.APP creates the
following:
- DrDobbs.htm, an HTML document to
be loaded by the user using any web
browser. (This document prompts for
the search value and includes a Search
button to execute the query.)
- DrDobbs.htm, an HTML, template used
by SERVER.APP to format the results of
the query.
- DrDobbs.ide, a text file with a template
for the generated query. (The query has
a placeholder for the user-supplied
search value.)
When users load DrDobbs.htm, they are presented with a text box and
command button. After filling in the text box and electing to search,
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