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Help with ActiveVFP

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ravicoder

ravicoder

Programmer
Apr 29, 2006
30
IN
Hi all

Recently came across the activeVFP library as I understand it can enable Web applications using the VFP language

Was trying to find some documentation for this but was unable to find working sites. Can anyone help or has any knowledge of any useful documentation for this?

Also Are there any alternatives to activevfp for building Web apps using VFP?

Thanks
Ravi
 
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ravicoder,
One of the more prevalent alternatives is Fox In Cloud. I tried it some years ago, and I wasn't crazy about it, but I can see in some circumstances it can be a useful alternative.

The key here is, if your VFP application is pure VFP, you've probably got a reasonable candidate for it's use. If you're using 3rd party libraries or any API's, it will likely require a major rethink of your application. (This will be true regardless of what you use to be a "Web" application with a VFP backend.)

My main issue was that if you're wanting to move your VFP application to the web (and use only web) it was a good alternative. If you want to keep using a desktop based app+web, you may want to consider if you want to keep them as separate apps, as FoxInCloud kind of takes over your dev environment.


Best Regards,
Scott
MSc ISM, MIET, MASHRAE, CDCAP, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS, ATD

"I try to be nice, but sometimes my mouth doesn't cooperate.
 
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Claude Fox is inactive, so it's quite useless to get into ActiveVFP.

Web applications using the VFP language
Click to expand...
If you mean that literally you don't mean to make a foxpro desktop application available in the web, but plan a web application (with html frontend) backed with VFP scripts instead of PHP or ASP.net, etc.

Then I'd pick up Tore's recommendation. Web Connection is not only having features that enable to consume a web API, you can provide a web API and web applications with its functionalities.

See for the overview of Web Connection features.
See for how Web Connection provides a web server (and can also be hosted in IIS) for providing web applications.
See on the topic of providing a web API.

Well, and on the other hand, if you thought ActiveVFP makes it easy to provide your forms in the web and turn a desktop application into a web application, then Scotts mentioning of FoxInCloud will be what you actually need and ActiveVFP wouldn't help you with such plans.

Chriss
 
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There are also a lot of "WestWind Web Connection" tutorials on YouTube and interesting informations.

Have a nice time, Piotr :)
 
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Have a look at the solution given by Irwin Rodriguez.
MagicMenu - Powering your Visual FoxPro Projects: Simple and flexible library for building VFP based Web Applications: Source code foxserver:
Tutorial videos in Spanish:
FoxServer parte 1
Introduction to FoxServer: Developing REST APIs with Visual FoxPro: FoxServer parte 2
Creating a 'Web Application' Project from Scratch with MagicMenu: FoxServer parte 3
Method Add Controllers and Basic Routes : FoxServer parte 4
Project Compilation and Unit Review : FoxServer parte 5
Service Execution and Resource Testing /hello: FoxServer parte 6
Error handling with macro _TRY/_CATCH/_ENDTRY: FoxServer parte 7
how to return content and set HTTP response codes: FoxServer parte 8
how to get the headers, verb and body of the web request: FoxServer parte 9
Creating a Manual Dispatcher in an Implementation: FoxServer parte 10
Returning all products or a specific one in the GET method: FoxServer parte 11
How to connect to the database: FoxServer parte 12
FoxServer parte 13
MagicMenu for Visual FoxPro Active VFP, Console and Windows Services: FoxServer parte 14
FoxServer REST Services with Visual FoxPro: FoxServer parte 15
Using Visual FoxPro dbfs tables with FoxServer: FoxServer parte 16
Learn about JWT! tokens from Visual Fox Pro with FoxServer: FoxServer parte 17
Dynamic HTML from Visual Fox Pro: FoxServer parte 18
Dynamic HTML Part 2 from Visual Fox Pro: FoxServer parte 19
HTML MagicMenu and FoxServer from within Visual Fox Pro: FoxServer parte 20
Controlers with FoxServer from Visual Fox Pro:
 
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What if FoxServer loses support ?

VFP lost support and still works. With problems but works.

Have a nice time, Piotr :)
 
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So you say support is unnecessary? What if none of VFP experts would still answer VFP questions?

VFP - or parts of it, like its ODBC layer, its OLE automation capability are not necessarily working forever as standards could change. A newer automation abiliity other than OLE could get more important and OLE could deprecate by version, too, even if OLE just develops a newer standard. ODBC in itself is a stable interface to databses and when you use VFP you may say it's unimportant for you as you want to use DBFs, but using VFP as a frontend to database servers is a type of application in its own right, too. If that breaks off support of experts wouldn't be enough.

I have no idea how to get ActiveVFP going, maybe I could get there by spending more time looking into it, but the lost support of the devloper of it and the incomplete migration of Codeplex to GitHub makes it almost unusable, even if it technically still works, not even knowing how to add the resulting DLL into IIS is making it a useless project and the still supported alternatives a better solution, including - for now - the new candidate of FoxServer.

Irwin rings a bell to me, even, but not as big a bell as Rick Strahl and West Wind.

Chriss
 
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Sorry for my misunderstanding. I did not know that it was Open Source. Technical support is very important. Community support is essential. I have been using tek-tips information for many years. I meant the support of the manufacturer (project author). In liquidated commercial projects sometimes services are disabled, subscriptions expire, and libraries stop working.

Have a nice time, Piotr
 
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You can see from the Github data ActiveVFP was last updated 11 years ago, so it's quite reliably a dead project. Before, as it was on Codeplex, there was a download section that's missing from the Github repository, which included a setup. That's now missing. I guess you do a setup of manually configure IIS, if you know what to put where and how it's intended to be used. My guess is as a ISAPI DLL, but before I experiment on a dead project, I'd rather take one that's actively maintained.

Chriss
 
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