Web Site Development

[ramanjain]

Dear Programmers,
I want develop site in pure Foxpro/VFP without third party software.
I do not know about abc about development site in any other language.
Can some one help me to develop site in vfp. I have been used Foxpro since 1995 and developed lots of app for desktop and network environment but I did not developed any site. I love Foxpro programming and want develop site in Foxpro.



regards

 

[GriffMG]

To develop a site in VFP, you will probably need to learn HTML & JavaScript (at the very least).

I have developed quite a few website using the VFP database and a classic ASP (vbscript, there's another language you will
probably need), it's quite a leap. Probably beyond the scope of tek tips

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are not good for you. ​

 

[Mike Lewis]

Ultimately, all websites are HTML, usually plus CSS, and often plus JavaScript. Those are the languages that browsers understand. You can't run Foxpro code in a web browser.

You can, however, run Foxpro code on a web server. But in order to communicate with the user, the code would have to generate HTML. It's perfectly possible to develop an application that way, and in fact many people have done it.

My own view is that it's not worth the effort. I prefer use a dedicated server-side language, such as PHP. If you are comfortable with VFP, you should have no trouble learning PHP. But it's up to you to decide if you want to take that route.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Dan Freeman]

You cannot develop a website in just VFP.

The only language a web browser understands is HTML, which may host JavaScript or VBScript. On the web server side, you may use components developed in VFP which may or may not emit HTML to be used in the browser.

But entire applications developed just in VFP? No. It was *technically* possible when we had the ActiveDoc base class. It was touted as one of the HOT! new features of VFP6. It was fairly soon thereafter the subject of the first and only security patch for VFP and removed from the product.

There are products to assist with the interaction between a web server and your Foxpro application, but you've still got some learning to do. I'd suggest you dip your toe into web pages in general to better enable your evaluation of the alternatives.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

VFP2IIS and FoxInCloud are solutions webifiying your VFP Forms to HTML forms, but that's not your goal, if you want to create a website.

What will be the topic of the site? A CMS? There are many you can simply install. A shop system? Dito. A simple (static) "web business card"? You get that predefined from very many hosters.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[GriffMG]

Maybe he has a great app in vfp - but wants to publish the data to remote users...

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are not good for you. ​

 

[Mike Lewis]

Whatever route you take, your very first step should be to learn HTML and CSS - and some basic JavaScript. You can't do anything in the web world without that - even if you are using a pre-installed CMS or similar package. Then set up a small site of your own; it doesn't have to be anything useful. Once you've done that, you'll have a much better feeling for the whole web development business, and you'll be better placed to decide your strategy.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Dan Freeman]

Yeah, and I've argued for years that learning CSS is actually more important than learning HTML.

 

[ramanjain]

I know html I learned 10 years before but did not used as professional level I also know c/C++.I need basic information like I do not know how domain book and how web-space purchase and what files upload.

 

[GriffMG]

Not really a VFP question at this time, you would be better off looking at a web developers forum

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to cut down on the use of shrieks (exclamation marks), I'm told they are not good for you. ​

 

[mplaza]

You can start here:

http://activevfp.codeplex.com/

 

[Mike Lewis]

I suggest your start a new discussion in forum253.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Olaf Doschke]

>I need basic information like I do not know how domain book and how web-space purchase and what files upload.
Like said this isn't at all vfp related, nor HTML, well of course you need to know what to write first, then you know what to upload.

Start by installing IIS and perhaps activevfp, as Marco Plaza pointed to. The main idea behind activeVFP is make VFP act as a script language like active server pages once made VB a script language mixed into HTML to render HTML pages and process http requests GET or PUT input variables, but you need to refresh your HTML first anyway. Actually with HTML5 nd CSS3 things got simpler.

Anyway, I would really like to hear what type of website you're planning, I may help make a good choice.

It makes sense - as Griff imagines - you have your VFP data and want to do something on it via a web site. I'll just warn you developing an application is not the smaller part of web development. It's easier to make use of an existing system, of which there are many freely available, and migrate and transform your data into them, instead of reinventing a system based on your data. There's a lot on just the topic of security, you know a web site is very open, much more open than an EXE. Everybody can look into your HTML and the form actions are attack points enough to hack a site and get at customer data, emails, addresses, crerdit card numbers. Using an open source system much of that already is thought of for you.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[mmerlinn]

No matter what you do, as has already been noted, at the very minimum you will need to learn HTML. If you want anything more than a very basic static website, you will also need to learn Javascript. If you need control over HTML presentation, then you will need to learn CSS. That will only give you a very basic website. Beyond that are many other things you might want to learn to enhance your website beyond the very basics. Overall, building even a very basic website can be a daunting task using only VFP to build it.

Can VFP do most of the hard work for you? Yes, but it will mean a big learning curve before you will see the results you want on a consistent basis.

I primarily use FP to collect data for a website, then publish the pages with FP at a rate of over 1000 pages per hour. The pages then are uploaded to the net with a different program ready for viewers to view (It would be nice to have FP do the uploading, but I have not found a way to do that). Even though I use only HTML and Javascript (CSS would be nice but has not been implemented), it took months before I was able to learn enough to tell FP how to make the pages so everything always worked correctly. I am currently dealing with about 10,000 static web pages with tens of thousands of links, all of which must work correctly every time. Every working day I add or modify about 300 pages which would not be possible without FP doing all of the heavy work.

Could I do it better with PHP and a backend server database? Probably, but that entails another long learning curve before it could be done, a learning curve I cannot justify. The website I have now, though dated, very basic, and not all that pretty, does exactly what I want it to do, drive customers my way, often more than I can handle. I see no reason to fix what is not broken.

Bottom line is that you can use VFP to do most of the hard work of building and maintaining a website, but you will need to learn a lot about how to generate the code that makes all webpages work, minimally HTML, but most likely much more.

mmerlinn

http://mmerlinn.com

Poor people do not hire employees. If you soak the rich, who are you going to work for?

"We've found by experience that people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy at thinking and coding. Answering questions for careless and sloppy thinkers is not rewarding." - Eric Raymond

 

[ramanjain]

To OlafDoschke sir,
actually I want upload my vfp data on webserver and want access data from vfp programming, because the data is very confidential and we can not upload data on client's machine. I want distribute only my vfp based exe file to user, user will connect the innternet and start my programme. My programme will use webserver data.

Is it possible in vfp?
or I have to use HTML or other language.


regards
raman

 

[Olaf Doschke]

You can't host DBFs and USE them from a client application, you'll need webservices. Forget that. Better than that would be a database server like MySQL or MSSQL. But also forget that, because:
How about data encryption? Cryptor. You can encrypt your DBF/CDX/FPT files and install and use them as usual with a few lines of initialisation.

So you don't need hosting of data. Putting confidential data into the hands of a hoster also is contradictory.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Dan Freeman]

Security with DBF files is not an option. Your application must be able to access them via the filesystem, and if your user has rights to access them then your user has access to them outside of your application too. If you make your DBF files inaccessible to the users, then you also make them inaccessible to your application. Full stop.

You are looking at the wrong solution to this problem.

A far easier solution would be to include your DBF files in your application's EXE. Then they're never on your user's machine or network as separate files. That's probably not a workable option if your data ever changes.

If you absolutely need to host your data on a web server, you should use a proper database (where security IS an option) and surface your data through web services. Those services can be consumed by a VFP application but at that point one wonders why you'd bother. It would be a little like putting a new flagpole on a condemned building.

It looks like you're asking for a solution that does not exist and won't actually solve the stated problem anyway.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

>If you make your DBF files inaccessible to the users, then you also make them inaccessible to your application. Full stop.
If they are encrypted with cryptor, that's a different story. Only the EXE will know a key to read them as if they were unencrypted. Decryption using reads is then bound to the processid of the EXE, as far s I know. Anyway the file is not decrypted, cryptor is just decrypting the read/write stream from/to the encrypted files. It's the same level of security you accept with including DBFs into the Exe, even higher, as you can't hack the exe and find the dbf sections in it, which you can do embedding the DBF files in there. Tables encrypted with cryptor are also writable. Access outside of the application only gives access to the encrypted data.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Mike Lewis]

I want distribute only my vfp based exe file to user, user will connect the innternet and start my programme. My programme will use webserver data.

If your overriding aim is to let a VFP desktop application access remote data, then you don't need a web application. You need a database, hosted on a server, that is accessible to the application. There are several ways of doing that, but they have got nothing to do with web applications (in the usual sense of the term).

This thread seems to have reached the point where you really need to tell us more clearly where exactly you are starting from and what you want to achieve. We have already spent a lot of time answering the wrong questions.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Dan Freeman]

If they are encrypted with cryptor, that's a different story.

I can't in good conscience recommend a product that doesn't exist any more.

We have an app that uses it. I wish it didn't. That app is more prone to index corruption than any other app in the place and Cryptor is the only thing different about it.

I'd rip it out, but that's just the tip of the iceburg on that app and there are bigger problems to be dealt with first.