re[4]: [Rlib-users] new test release soon

[John B. <jo...@ma...>]

> John you are my hero!!!!
> You saved me a whole hell of a lot of time
> This now works... and I assume the bindings will be just as easy in
> other languages :)

Yes, because your normal api is a very thin shim on top of your C api, =
all the languages will work the same way, with exactly the same api. =
Makes documenting really easy too.

I see that you added rlib_set_output_format_from_text() so as to get =
rid of the ENUM -- that's the right way to do it.

This isn't a big deal, but if you added two bools to the struct ("test" =
below) you hold, with

bool has_initialized;
bool has_executed;

then when rlib_add_datasource_mysql() is called, rlib_init(); could be =
called automatically, and the same thing with spool() calling =
execute().

Can one re-use a report object, or must it be freed after use? If it =
has to be freed, then you might as well make spool() call free().

Another easy feature, that'd be convenient, and make your api cleaner, =
would be a short-form call that does it all, namely:

rlib_mysql_report("localhost", "user", "password", "database", "select =
* from example", "PDF")

that gets rid of the need to keep an object around, and thus worrying =
about freeing memory.  Memory leaking is probably my biggest worry =
about embedding rlib in another language, so wrapping the entire report =
request in a single stateless call gets rid of that.  Also, I've =
noticed that the biggest problem people have with getting rlib to work =
is with the various api calls. Making this "short form" call the one =
most people (at least initially) use would solve that.  I can, of =
course, write this call for you if you like, but it's a trivial piece =
of C.

-john



> #!/usr/bin/python2.2

> import librlib;

> test =3D librlib.rlib_init();
> res =3D librlib.rlib_add_datasource_mysql(test, "mysql", "localhost",
> "user", "password", "database");
> librlib.rlib_add_query_as(test, "mysql", "select * from example",
> "example");
> librlib.rlib_add_report(test, "report.xml", "");
> librlib.rlib_set_output_format_from_text(test, "PDF");
> librlib.rlib_execute(test);
> librlib.rlib_spool(test);
> librlib.rlib_free(test);

> - bob

> On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 19:02, John Buckman wrote:
> > > swig looks really nice...  I wish I saw that earlier... I'll go =
swig
> > > instead... so that way we can have tons of bindings ;)
> >=20
> > Yeah, I was one of the early developers on it, years and years ago. =
 Once you define
> the C bindings, it'll do everything else for you. The only caveat is =
that it doesn't
> make crash-proof APIs (ie, no real parameter checking) but for rlib, =
that should be
> fine.
> >=20