Re: [SL] Programatically Entering Sales Orders

[Tony F. <to...@sy...>]

On Mon, 2006-11-13 at 14:32 -0500, C. Duncan Hudson wrote:
> I have several shell scripts that load invoices & pos, and which
> print 
> pick lists.  I'm in the process of moving them all to
> LWP::UserAgent.  
> The way I see it I'm safer with LWP then I am with the API - the API 
> requirements are far more likely to change then the screens are.
> Even 
> if the screens do change then it's pretty straight forward updating
> the 
> Perl script.  Also, I agree that it's better to not have to shell to 
> call the API as that's just another point of failure.  It's also 
> difficult to determine whether the API call actually worked or not.
> I 
> think there was some talk, along time ago, about a Perl module for 
> SQL-Ledger, but that would get outdated in no time.  LWP, in my
> opinion, 
> is a better fit.

I agree with your LWP opinion. The API and the HTML forms are basically
the same. All the API is is a way to supply the CGI scripts a query
string as a command line parameter. I also think that scripts that use
LWP (or any HTTP library) are more flexible, all they need is HTTP
access to you SQL Ledger installation. They don't need to run locally on
the SQL Ledger server.

Some time ago I wrote this proof of concept code:
http://openledger.sourceforge.net/SL-Api.tar.gz

Basically, it provides a simple to understand PERL API by automating the
SQL Ledger web interface with LWP anf HTML::Form in the background. As
it was only a proposal and no one showed any interest in it at the time
it only works with the GL. Adding more modules shouldn't be a big deal
though.

-- 
Tony Fraser
to...@sy...
Sybaspace Internet Solutions                        System Administrator
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