Re: Impressions of EGL - Part Duex

[Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Joe Pluta wrote:
> Have you tried dropping a field or a record or an array of records 
> onto a web page?  The fact that
> the data from the EGL fields is automatically passed
> to the page with no work on your part, that's what
> I find lacking in any tagging approach...

Joe, you seem to have a misconception about HTML templates used by 
CGIDEV2 and similar toolkits.  They're much different than the "tagging 
approach" used by Java frameworks.  But you can do the research 
yourself; I just mention it as an aside.

I really wanted to ask about the "no work on your part".  What about 
defining EGL records?  And what is it that automatically binds them to 
fields on the page?

If an RPG program uses templates, you'll see code like the following 
that inserts field values into a page:

rptVarSet('type':%trimr(codetype));
rptVarSet('desc':%trimr(typedesc));

Notice that the API also allows the %trimr() function to be called, but 
it could just as well be any other type of data formatting, or even 
decrypting the field before outputting it.  Or if the user is not 
authorized to see the field, an empty value could be returned.  Or the 
statement could be conditional.  This is quite powerful on the one hand, 
and perfunctory on the other.  It's the type of code you could do when 
your half asleep.

And if it's just too perfunctory, you could write a procedure to 
automatically map fields from an externally defined data structure to 
fields on the page with a single function call, which is what the folks 
at cnxcorp did in their Valence RPG toolkit.

Nathan.