Books to learn how to create Webpages with OpenEdge

Posted by cngarcia on 05-Jan-2017 07:54

Hello,

Does anyone know if there is a good book (not a tech. manual) to learn webpage programming with OE?  I know how to program CHUI and GUI in Progress and how to create simple html webpages, but I cannot figure out how to program webpages.  The OE manuals does not help me.

regards/Carlos García

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Posted by AdrianJones on 05-Jan-2017 08:57

there used to be a book "Webspeed complete" see www.innov8cs.com/publications_books.html

Quite old, but not sure if much has changed. Haven't read it myself so can't comment.

Posted by egarcia on 05-Jan-2017 09:51

Hello Carlos,

It depends on what you intend to do and the type of programming style that you plan to use.

Are you planning  to use WebSpeed, REST / WebHandler, Progress Data Service (JSDO)?

Also, you might want to look into using Kendo UI Builder for OpenEdge.

WebSpeed allows you to build apps using server-side generated HTML. You either use HTML with embedded SpeedScript code (ABL) or CGI wrapper procedures that generate HTML. This is somewhat similar to using PHP, ASP, or JSP.

Additional note: WebSpeed allows you generate not just HTML but any data format, including JSON which you could use to build a REST-service. However, if you plan to use REST, then you would use the REST and/or WebHandler tooling support which is specific for that.

The REST / WebHandler support allows you to build web-enabled data services that you can access from a HTML page using an AJAX approach to access the data (in JSON format).

You would generally use a JavaScript library / framework that gives access to data service. (Internally, the libraries use the XMLHttpRequest object to access the data.)

An example here is Kendo UI where you have the Kendo UI DataSource that gives you access to the data.

See sample programs at demos.telerik.com/.../

Please notice that you can do REST ( en.wikipedia.org/.../Representational_state_transfer ) with the REST tooling as well as the WebHandler tooling in PDSOE. The difference is that the mapping for the URIs and the parameters is done using a visual editor for the REST support, whereas for WebHandler, the mapping is done programmatically using ABL code.

The Progress Data Service support is a prescriptive approach to access an OpenEdge or a Rollbase backend.

The tooling in PDSOE generates a REST or a WebHandler service along with a catalog file that describes the logical schema and operations of the resources on the server.

The JSDO (JavaScript Data Object) is used in the JavaScript code to access the data. You can use the JSDO API directly or you can use the Kendo UI DataSource with "jsdo" as the type of data source.

See some sample programs at oemobiledemo.progress.com/.../index.html

Forum in Progress Community: community.progress.com/.../17

Kendo UI Builder for OpenEdge provides a way to developer web apps using a metadata / template based approach. Using the designer tool, you can import the catalog file from the Progress Data Service into Kendo UI Builder to define data sources, then you can generate views using pre-defined templates. The views are represented as metadata (using JSON files).

You can also use the designer to build views by starting from a Blank view and dragging UI components into the canvas. Views generated using pre-defined templates or starting from a Blank view include extension points where you can add JavaScript code for further customization.

Info at Progress web site: www.progress.com/.../kendo-ui-builder

Forum in Progress Community: community.progress.com/.../255

Please let me know if you need more information on any of these approaches.

I hope this helps,

Edsel

Posted by scott_auge on 05-Jan-2017 12:36

Here is a book - it is pretty old too, but focuses on the basics with Webspeed.

amduus.com/.../

A lot of the source code here is oriented towards web programming:

http://www.oehive.org/amduus/

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