- Maxscript
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MaxScript command processor is an interpreter that implements a subset of the xBase programming language especially conceived to be used inside web pages to provide server side scripting capabilities. MaxScript is not to be confused with MAXScript, the scripting language of the 3D animation package 3ds Max.
As a command processor, MaxScript needs a web server to work with: whenever the web server receives a request for a MaxScript page it must pass it to the interpreter, that parses all the lines, top to bottom, in search of xBase cod to be executed. Then the page is passed back to web server that deliveries it to web browser.
MaxScript pages use the file extension .MSP. MSP pages are standard HTML pages: they can contain XHTML and Javascript code, as well as xBase code. xBase statements can consist on hundreds of lines or single function calls, always included into HTML server-side tags.
Tags for maxScript are similar to those used for PHP and other server-side scripting languages: to start xBase code into a web page the tag <% must be used. The tag %> marks the end of code. MaxScript is used as the core of freeware products like dbfree and in its commercial counterpart DBMax
The latest version (2.21) is dated 2008 and implements a large subset of xBase commands and functions, and the capability of writing UDFs (User Defined Function) to be integrated in the language.
MaxScript was expressly designed to dynamically present live data on the internet and acts as a web server extension to process xBase/Clipper code from inside an HTML page. As such the interpreter needs a web server to work with, and all the pages to be processed must reside on a web site accessible to it.
The MaxScript Engine comes in form of a win32 executable and implements an xBase, Clipper-like, programming language reach of features, commands and functions for any and all web application purposes, and uses built-in drivers to dynamically access live data from DBF[disambiguation needed
] tables and present them to internet without the need of ODBC or ADO connections.The engine supports most of the command and function of xBase (as USE, SET FILTER, INDEX, CREATE, etc.) and flow control structures (as DO..WHILE, DO..CASE, IF..ENDIF) and tens of standard xBase functions (for date handling, string manipulation, math managing, direct file access, etc.). User defined functions are also supported, and external libraries are provided for further extend language functionalities.
A simple hello world application:
<html> <body> Hello World! Time is <% ? time()%> </body> </html>
A complete statement (opening a table and printing all the content, one record per line):
<html> <body> <p>List of all customers:<br> <% use CUSTOMERS go top do while not eof() ? CUST_NO | NAME | SURNAME | ADDR | ZIPCODE | TOWN | STATE html skip enddo %> </body> </html>
An example of control structures:
<% nnn := 0 //-- creating a var (numeric type) //-- looping do while nnn < 5 nnn := nnn+1 //-- increasing if nnn = exit endif enddo %>The above samples are relative to the current implementation used by dbfree and its commercial sibling DBMax.
See also
Categories:- Interpreters (computing)
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