Scripter Clears Your Web Cache
CHT Scripter now will clear your web cache whenever you save/generate your scripts or when you push the preview button. The preview button, by the way, does an automatic save/generate so you don't need to push save before pushing preview.
Most browsers have a way of internally caching objects while they remain open so any cache clearance that Scripter performs only really takes affect when you exit the browser. My normal modus operandus is always to close the browser after a test/preview session. That way, any changes to scripts in the next preview session will take affect immediately.
Preview is able to enter any secure page in your site directly without prior login, if you have Scripter login set up in your browser server app and your server member file contains a valid scripter account. The trick is to set up the CALLSERVERWITH tags correctly for any secure page that would otherwise require login prior to your being able to enter it.
An Example Use Of The CALLSERVERWITH tag:
CALLSERVERWITH(QRY$~sessionid~viewid=NGMEMBERSVIEW&querypage=1&end)
The ~sessioid~ macro that you see above is used as a place holder for the session id. When your test server is set up with a valid scripter account, your server logs that account in when your server starts and inserts the sessionid value into the server's config file. That config file is shared by CHT Scripter during any test session so Scripter reads the session id from the config file and inserts it into the CALLSERVERWITH string where the ~sessionid~ macro appears. The remainder of the server command inserted in the CALLSERVERWITH string is any valid server command. Above we're sending the QRY$ (Query) command to open a query page on the NGMEMBERS view using the entry point in your server provided by BuildQueryPage_BIC template instance #1.
Scripter Can Generate Standalone .JS and .CSS Include Files
Prior to this latest version of Scripter (C6 or C7 versions are interchangeable) all .JS scripts genereated into the SERVERNAMESUB.JS file and all .CSS scripts generated into the SERVERNAMESTY.CSS file. These two files are automatically inserted into the top of any web page issued from your browser server. The latest server version generates any javascript collection scripts ending in .JS into a separate file using the name provided in the "Item Name" Scripter field. Scripter then makes an entry for that file in your server config file where your server can pick up the name of that file dynamically and insert it into the HEAD portion of your dynamic web pages. What this change provides by way of improvement is the ability to:
a) insert whole 3rd party generated scripts (say from Dreamweaver or XARA)
into scripter and maintain them there intact
b) allow you to add new scripts without having to recompile the server to add another page INCLUDE file.
HNDMTSNG.APP Updated To Version 8.0.0 and Scripts Modified
I've changed HNDMTSNG.APP (the browser forum app) to conform to the Scripter changes introduced above. HNDMTNSG.APP no longer uses any template-inserted include files, which require a recompile to change them. All include files used are now inserted dynamically via the server's config file. At the moment these config-file
INCLUDE usages are embedded in the server manually for testing purposes. This update includes a version of HNDMTSNG.APP that does this so you can try it. Once the testing period has passed I'll be adding template subroutines that write these
presently hand-embedded sections automatically.
Problems Not Yet Addressed In This Update
The C6 version of Scripter lets you open The "Edit Scripts" window, at the same time as the "Configure Variables" window, at the same time as the "Local Server" window, no problem. The C7 version of Scripter chokes on this. Since code-wise these Scripters are identical, this bad behaviour from the C7 scripter is a thread contention problem related directly to C7 similar to the lockup issue in the C7 IDE itself when left or right fly windows cause the C7 IDE to hang. As far as the C7 Scripter is concerned be aware that I'm aware of this problem and I'll eventually find a workaround or a solution.
There's a problem with BuildQueryPage_BIC templates (again only in the C7 code generator) with deleting one of these templates and inserting a fresh one in its place. The numbering scheme can be off by one and some code from the deleted one continues to generate. Again I'm aware of the problem and am working on it. These templates work fine in the C6 version generator. So again this is some anomaly happening in C7 only. An obvious C7 workaround for the time being is not to delete
an existing BuildQueryPage_BIC template before adding another one, but to simply change the parameters on the one you were planning to delete to the parameters of the one you intended to add.
Forward Plans, Now To New Year's
I was planning another .DOT .NET seminar but have decided to move these plans forward as we still haven't seen the .NET code generator.
There is a great deal of movement in the portable computer (Tablet) market and in the price, speed and connectivity available to portable devices. Since CHT Browser Server technology is perfectly positioned to provide interactive data applications to smartphone devices (like Blackberry) and tablet devices (like Blackberry Playbook) I'm doing a round of updates and changes (like the ones announced above)
to make it easy as possible for CHT developers to take advantage of the latest portable computer/smart phone devices. Initally we'll address the browsers in these devices so that the client side of your application runs as HTML/Javascript/Flash/ script. In the background, I'll be keeping an eye on how we can help you build compiled clarion clients (or at least hybrid clients) that run directly on these devices.
The next few CHT Webinars will zero in on CHT Browser Server application building, at the basic level but also introducing outside script sources from DreamWeaver, XARA and others (in the fashion that Didier Le Duc is doing). Time permitting before
Christmas we may be able to illustrate running CHT scripter generated applications inside a Blackberry smartphone emulator or in a Blackberry Tablet emulator.
That's all for now.
Cheers...
Gus Creces
The Clarion Handy Tools Page
www.cwhandy.com
gcreces@gmail.com
December 1, 2010
