AppWrap web frontend to workgroup data / News: Recent posts

Please visit http://www.appwrap.org/ to see a public demonstration of the AppWrap project. This demo shows off the end-user experience of entering and navigating data and reports.

This is a milestone for the project in that AppWrap is comprised of Perl Modules used with mod_perl, which SourceForge project web pages do not presently support. Mod_Perl embeds the Perl interpreter into the Apache process space, thereby dramatically accelerating CGI scripts, database access and dynamic web pages. 100% of the pages in the AppWrap web demo are dynamic.

Table namespace was cleaned up to reduce potential conflicts with private tables; code was refactored in support of the namespace cleanup; people and contactinfo tables were added for better support in enterprise environments; bug in history writing function was squashed.

This is our Halloween Release. Recently deprecated images and other files were deleted; &column_meta and &isMysqlNumber were refactored for performance and memory footprint; INSTALL file was revised; bug attributed to missing "use foo" statement was fixed.

The current "tabbed folders" navigation metaphor is retained but was changed to use a single tab image that is manipulated using CSS (with thanks to mozilla.org.) Previously each unique tab required 2 separate images. Gecko-based browsers and Opera handle this well; IE works but disappoints.

An error in the database may cause a "Server Error" upon submitting a request. Apply the following changes to the database.

UPDATE `my_tables` SET `admin_value` = 'Apache::AppWrap::Subs::help_vbar($opts) ; Apache::AppWrap::Catalyst::favorites( $opts)' WHERE `idnum` = '37' LIMIT 1;
UPDATE `my_tables` SET `admin_value` = 'Apache::AppWrap::Subs::top_menu($opts) ; favorites($opts)' WHERE `idnum` = '96' LIMIT 1;
UPDATE `my_tables` SET `admin_value` = 'favorites( $opts)' WHERE `idnum` = '219' LIMIT 1;... read more

After a lengthy release hiatus version 0.11 has been uploaded to SourceForge. Development has continued, and highlights include documentation upgrades, greatly improved error checking for configuration variables and meta data values, error check all eval statements by testing for $@, new color-coded severity scheme, improved integration with existing web sites, and etc.
See the ChangeLog for mind-numbing details of these and many minor bug fixes and code tweaks.

For i18n all displayed text has been removed from code, now stored in table my_text; DB queries are cached and DB inserts and updates use placeholders and bind values; Modules Focus & Pager recoded, migrated to CSS presentation, comments and error checking added; Doorknob error checks required directives; HTML <img> tags use "title" attribute.

The display of all pages is now controlled almost completely by Cascading StyleSheets using the includes/AppWrap.css stylesheet. Some table HTML cruft remains to be removed, and that will occur over time. Pages are between 5-20% smaller than before, and changing the look of the site is as simply as substituting a new stylesheet. This means that AppWrap can now be skinned. Users need a personal home page capability to select a preferred stylesheet, and thats on our list.... read more

The previous release contained an error now corrected in Release 0.08.

Module Apache::POST2GET had been moved to Apache::AppWrap::POST2GET in the interest of maintaining a clean namespace. This was done at rather the last minute and badly. Several references to the old module name remained unchanged throughout the distribution. Mea culpa. These have now been changed and POD updated.

Additionally, site layout is now based more fully on Cascading Style Sheets, CSS, rather than relying on HTML tables for positioning. This effort is not complete, but the fundamental page layout is, resulting in about 15% average reducting in number of bytes sent per page, plus all the other advantages of using CSS.... read more

Release 0.07 contains an error which we will correct with release 0.08 as soon as we can.

Module Apache::POST2GET was moved to Apache::AppWrap::POST2GET in the interest of maintaining a clean namespace. This was done at rather the last minute and badly. Several references to the old module name remained unchanged throughout the distribution. Mea culpa. These are bing changed and POD updated.

Sites running previous versions of AppWrap may not notice this bug as Apache is likey to find and use a previously installed version of Apache::POST2GET. Sites installing AppWrap for the first time will likely have a broken installation.... read more

An option was added to AppWrap_admin.pl which adds meta data tables to the display under the "Admin" tab. The purpose of displaying meta data tables is to increase user understanding by making available to users as much site information as possible. Meta data tables cannot be edited by users, they are read only.

Another option, -R, was inserted for deleting existing directives before adding new one when creating a new report. This option is analagous to the -T option for user data tables, and complements the -r option (which is itself analogous to -t.)... read more

All POD now can be read from within the application by clicking the "Modules Guide" hyperlink under the "site guides" tab, then click on the desired module hyperlink.

HTML files of all POD have been packaged with the release in the htdocs directory. HTML versions of POD also have been posted to the project home page on SourceForge <http:://appwrap.sourceforge.net/docs>.

Displaying POD within the site itself required modification to Apache::AppWrap::GetPage, so we cleaned up the entire handler. Under the "Site guides" tab names of all modules containing POD are displayed when the Module Guide hyperlink is clicked. When a specific POD is requested it is coverted to HTML on the fly.... read more

This release includes numerous bug fixes, documentation clean up and a complete rewrite of AppWrap_admin.pl, the AppWrap administration script. The rewrite includes new options and streamlines code organization and execution. Because of these changes it is able to add more meta-data directives when creating a new user data table, and will be much easier to extend in the future. This release also concludes the migration from our production environment to a fully generic Open Source distribution. We believe all bugs related to that migration have been found and fixed, and all links now function as expected. Please report to SourceForge any bugs found. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=57509&atid=484393.

We changed the demo database so that it better describes what is shown onscreen - this should help people understand how AppWrap works; there are many documentation updates, some minor, some large: we added an "about AppWrap" POD whoich essentially describes how AppWrap came to be; we revised modules to take advantage of new CSS styles to go along with the revisions to the demo db and added the styles to site stylesheet; we continue to revise the admin script (AppWrap_admin.pl) to make it more modular and supportable.
All these changes are still part of our continuing effort to make the install and use simpler and more sensible, and this will continue. In particular we continue to refine the AppWrap_admin.pl script to make it even easier to add user data tables and reports to AppWrap.

AppWrap is a web GUI frontend to a backend database. Users can input and edit data, view, sort and filter it onscreen, and also download data,chart it, calendar it and audit data changes.

This release concentrated on improving the installation process. If prerequisites (mod_perl, MSQL, PHP helpful, but not essential) already are installed, then "perl Makefile.PL && make && make install" will install the distribution. Then upload the included demo database and start the server. That's it. Lots of documentation included, both in the demo db, and as POD.

22 July 2002 by PlanetMan