Article written by Paul Kenneth Egell-Johnsen. You can visit me at my Homepage, and you'll some times find me on IRC as SpdyViking.
Two and a half year ago when I started studying computer software engineering there wasn't much talk about the Web. Of course I knew about the Internet and e-mail, irc, ftp, etc., therefore I used them.
I had heard about the Web, seen some pictures in Byte and I knew the concept of hypertext from AmigaGuide on the Amiga, which I used very often.
In our second year we put up or own Web server, and made Web pages. I waited for half a year before publishing my 20 or so pages, which I did in this style which I was very pleased with. (And still is, as a matter of fact.
It wasn't long before I found the need for more 'functionality', I wanted a 'Guestbook'. Therefore I learned CGI (C++ I already knew from our classes) and made it myself. Why bother to reinvent the wheel (in the Guestbook case), well no-one had made something as good or userfriendly as my Guestbook of course.
Then during the spring of 1996 an idea formed in my head, why not make a Web administration tool? Of course this has been done before, but not on the Amiga or the HP-UX, and what I knew (and know) of other tools, they lack the most important part of computing, automatation and simplification.
The project I will undertake is two part:
Another problem is that some of my ideas are pretty darn hot, so I don't want to spill my beans, therefore what you get from this series of articles are some tools which aren't yet on the Amiga, but which are found on other platforms. (One reason I am writing this article series is that I'm a member of an organization which needsthis software.)
What we want for this system is the following:
The CGI package from NCSA is in C, and it's fairly cryptic code as well, so the first thing I have to do is make my own C++ library which does the same. But, there might be some (I've tried quite a few, and hasn't been satisfied with any) library already out which can help us, so if you know any good, give me a hint, and I will also look around for myself.
Time is a problem, I really should be concentrating on some projects which we have been assigned (and some chosen) at school, but I have promised John to help out, and this is a good way to structure my own thoughts and programming.
I'll just as well start with some specifications.
The shopping-cart should work with all browsers, therefore it is important to implement it both as cookie-based, and as a hidden-field based CGI application.
The customer should be able to query it's contents.
Items in it should be hypertext linked to item descriptions.
The prices should be automatically converted to local currencies.
Postage and handling should be automatically be added.
Not needed by ADF.
The program should help avoiding duplication of work.
In the next article I will go through the basics of CGI programming and Forms, then I will start programming the CGI/HTML class.
At the moment I haven't done much more than a sparse outline of the project, I'll refine it over time, and I'll also concider wishes and ideas for the project.