Advice needed as to correct procedure for movement of data from internet page back to OI, process and send back to browser, an HTML document. So far I have:

1. A Form (also an HTML page) which asks for a Client Code, a company name to lookup in OI and a report type to return.

2. A program which controls the above form, which does a lookup of the Client Code and should return the Client Name, check to see if a report exists for the desired Company, output this information using OI to construct an HTML document and "hopefully" publish to the browser.

3. Apache web server running locally.

By following the 5 step instructions from Revsoft on how to publish to the web, I have the Form displaying in the browser; I can fill it in and activate the "SUBMIT" button. At this stage I am receiving the following error message: 'RList Error - Cannot find report CLIENT_REPORT'. Why such an error message?? There appears to be more to this operation than is mentioned in the OI documentation.

Leigh,

There are two ways of running a report with Inet_Rlist. Either you run a report already defined in Report Builder, or you run an Rlist statement. I assume you do the first. I think that's what was described in the instructions you mention.

You will get the "RList Error - Cannot find report XXX" message (1) if the report XXX doesn't exist (you forgot to define it, or you used the wrong name), or perhaps (2) if you defined XXX in a different application (e.g you defined XXX in your own app MYAPP but runs OI and Inet_Gateway from SYSPROG).

Hope this is of help to you.

- Oystein -

Thanks for the prompt reply. I do not expect to have RList do anything! I expected that by pressing the SUBMIT button, processing would take place in my underlying program and retrieve the Client name, and display in Client Name field of webpage. Then do more checking and eventually return an HTML coded document representing the Company information which was found from database records. I hope this makes the problem more clear. The RList error message has me completely confused.

Leigh…

Leigh,

Perhaps if I checked RevSoft's instructions again I might better understand what you do. Excuse me for not doing so.

Advice needed as to correct procedure for movement of data from internet page back to OI, process and send back to browser, an HTML document.

Here you seem to say you have a web form meant to contain data from one table row. You want to read and write a row, just like in a regular databound OI form. You want to read a row from the database and display it in the web form (Inet_FormRead). You want to change that row, or fill in data for a new row, and write that row back to a database table (Inet_FormWrite).

1. A Form (also an HTML page) which asks for a Client Code, a company name to lookup in OI and a report type to return.

Here, on the other hand, it seems you have a form from where you will run a report (Inet_Rlist). From your second posting I doubt that was your intention, but from the message you quoted, this must be what happens. (And you certainly can have web forms with both kinds of functionality if you want to.)

If successful Inet_Rlist will return a result list in columnar form, formatted as a web page with a table, similar to what Rlist does in e.g run Rlist "LIST MYTABLE FIELD1 JUSTLEN 10 FIELD2 JUSTLEN 50", 1 from Sys Ed's Exec line. And Inet_Rlist uses Rlist to achieve its goal.

If you study your html code I think you will find the string "Inet_Rlist" somewhere, probably in the FORM ACTION attribute. But without having seen your html page it's difficult to suggest corrections. Can you publish it here? Or mail it to [email protected]? (And perhaps your program too.)

- Oystein -

Leigh:

The default OI internet reporting tool is a stored procedure called INET_RLIST. It expects to be provided a parameter called REPORT_ID that contains the name of an existing RLIST report.

To make an rlist report:

Start the window ORMAIN by with a shift-dblclick on it in the repository outline under Openinsight…Openinsight Executables…OpenInsight Form Executables, or EXEC ORMAIN in the system monitor

Use file New to create a new report, choose a table, choose some fields, save this as CLIENT_REPORT. Your form should now work, running this report. It will work because it has a control on it named REPORT_ID whose value is set to "CLIENT_REPORT". If you change that control from an to a you will have a drop down list box that will run one of multiple reports that the user chooses.

For Example:

(Type a title for your page here)

CLIENT_REPORT

RPT_INET_TRANSACTION

If you are clever with your report names then the user will think they are picking the client when they are really picking the name of a report.

I know this is not what you want, but its a start.

The next step is to write a shell around INET_RLIST that will parse the html query, using the INET_QUERYPARAM Function

for example:

Function INET_RLISTDEMO(request)

$insert inet_equates

declare function Inet_QueryParam, Inet_Rlist,Inet_Msg,Inet_WebList,Inet_Log_Transaction

*—

* Did We get a command?

*—

rtext=Inet_QueryParam(request, 'RLIST_TEXT')

Convert @lower.case to @upper.case in rtext

report_id=Inet_QueryParam(request, 'REPORT_ID')

varHtml="

Begin Case

Case len(rtext)

• —

• Custom Rlist

• Pass RLIST syntax as second parameter

• rtext can pass through from browser

• —

              rlist_cmd=rtext

• or you could build rlist on the fly

              start_date=INET_QUERYPARAM(request,"START_DATE")

• … error checking here …

              rlist_cmd=LIST MYFILE WITH START_DATE=:Quote(start_date)

              varHtml=Inet_Rlist(request,rlist_cmd)

Case len(report_id)

• Canned Report

       	varHtml=Inet_Rlist(request)

Case 1

• Error

	varHtml=Inet_Msg(request,"Attention: You did not enter an RLIST Command!")

End Case

Return VarHtml

To call this function, set the ACTION= parameter of your form to

action=cgi-bin/oicgi.exe/rlistdemo". Create a textarea on your form called RLIST_TEXT and you can do rlist on the web.

The next level of sophistication is to blow off RLIST entirely and write your own custom report that prints out HTML. If your reports are under 64k just return the html directly. If over 64k, print it to disk in a web-accessable directory, return the user a page that says "Your report is done, click here to see it."

Hope this helps.

Bob

[email protected]

Bob:

Thanks a lot, I have just found the PDF file on the Cd received at the recent conference DownUnder. That has also helped somewhat in understanding my dilemna. However, this is what I want to do.

* Create a form containing ClientCode, ClientName, CompanyName, or ACN, radio buttons allowing selection of a report type, and a Submit button.

* A client would enter their code, ComapnyName or ACn (this is a unique number) and select a report type(mine not RList), then press Submit.

* I need to know what they have done, find a Company record, build an HTML document and send back to the client for viewing or printing.

I cannot find any reference to the Inet_QueryParam(request,"????") explanation. The "????" is not documented anywhere. When I get this sorted I will be on my way.

Am currently using AREV to convert 40,000 WordPerfect documents into a database, and then have to be able to reconstruct to HTML upon request!!!

Thanks

Leigh… [email protected]

Comdata Australia

Leigh,

It should be documented in the Basic+ help file.

The first param is the HTTP request passed to you from OICGI.

The second parameter is the name of the argument whose value you need to find in the http request.

Basically when you get a HTTP request the data is in the format:

ARG1=VALUE1&ARG2=VALUE2 etc

So, if the user enters a report name of TEST_REPORT in the REPORT_NAME control on your HTML document the HTTP request will look like:

REPORT_NAME=TEST_REPORT

So to get TEST_REPORT from the HTTP Request you use INet_QueryParam like so:

RepName=Inet_QueryParam( Request, "REPORT_NAME" )

[email protected]

Sprezzatura Group

World Leaders in all things RevSoft

Leigh,

Let's say you have two different report formats, one simple and one detailed, and the following radio button group in your form:

Plain and simple

Very detailed

Let's say you have the following button for the user to press when she wants to see the report:

Let's furthermore say you've made your own function Inet_MyReport( Request ) to handle the request from the form. (You can perhaps manage with OI's own Inet functions, e.g Inet_Repos, but I'd guess it's easier with a custom made one.) The simplest way to get Inet_MyReport to run is to specify it in the ACTION attribute of the FORM tag:

In Inet_MyReport you need to find out e.g which radio button the user selected. That information is in the Request parameter. To be more specific it's in the element Request. In my example above Request will e.g contain "format=simple&$SUBMIT=Show", telling you that the user had selected format simple and not format detailed, and that she pressed the Show submit button (you form may contain several submit buttons if needed). To help you pull out the format you may use the Inet_QueryParam function Bob referred to. Just do

Format=Inet_QueryParam( Request, "format" )

(So that second parameter is a string of your own choice - the NAME of some input element of your form. Radio buttons are funny because you have several of them with the same NAME. But that's what makes the browser understand they constitute a group.)

- Oystein -

Thanks for your help, I will try your suggestions.

Leigh….

Well Folks

I have internet pages working, the vital missing link was:

http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/oicgi.exe/INET_REPOS?DOC_ID=IREPORD

However, the next problem is with loading BACKGROUND=TEXTURE.GIF and a logo As soon as OI sees the BACKGROUND statement, the debugger is called and displays a message indicating that it cannot find INET_TEXTURE.GIF. Is there a special way of calling these GIF files??

Leigh….

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