Writing a Web Page Template

An HTML from English web page template is a normal web page that includes a marker at the position where the Reality data is to be inserted. The template can therefore be created using a commercial HTML editor (such as Adobe DreamWeaver or Microsoft FrontPage). You can make your template accessible to Reality by using DIR-VIEW.

The Reality data marker is the tag <%GENML%>. For example:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Reality">
<title>Hotel Rooms</title>
</head>

<body>
<h1>Hotel Rooms</h1>
<%GENML%>
</body>
</html>

The body of this web page contains just an <h1> heading ("Hotel Rooms") and a Reality data marker. As an example, this can be used as a template with the following GENML command, run from the ENGLISH-TUTORIAL account,

GENML ROOMS WITH ROOM-CODE "S" ROOM-CODE ROOM-TYPE RATE GUEST-NAME LEAVE-DATE
Template file name or <RETURN> for default:TEST
Template item name:Template1.htm
Output file name:TEST
Output item name:Page1.htm

The file TEST is a DIR-VIEW that references a directory exposed by a web server and Template1.htm is the template shown above. The result is HTML similar to the following in the item Page1.htm:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Reality">
<title>Hotel Rooms</title>
</head>

<body>
<h1>Hotel Rooms</h1>

<table>
  <tr>
    <th>ROOMS</th>
    <th>Room Code</th>
    <th>Room Type</th>
    <th>Rate</th>
    <th>Current Guest</th>
    <th>Leave Date</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>143</td>
    <td>S</td>
    <td>Single Occ.</td>
    <td>68.00</td>
    <td>Hennessey</td>
    <td>29/07/91</td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td>140</td>
    <td>S</td>
    <td>Single Occ.</td>
    <td>68.00</td>
    <td>Lynch</td>
    <td>20/07/91</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>179</td>
    <td>S</td>
    <td>Single Occ.</td>
    <td>72.00</td>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>122</td>
    <td>S</td>
    <td>Single Occ.</td>
    <td>64.00</td>
    <td>Anderson</td>
    <td>01/08/91</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>186</td>
    <td>S</td>
    <td>Single Occ.</td>
    <td>72.00</td>
    <td></td>
    <td></td>
  </tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

The headings in first row of the table are taken from attribute 3 (column heading text) of the specified data definition items. The subsequent rows contain the data extracted from the Reality file.

When displayed in a web browser, this appears similar to the following:

Simple example in web browser

If you want make the page more attractive, you can use a CSS style sheet to format both the generated table and any other text. For example, the following is the same template, but with a CSS style sheet to change its appearance:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Reality">
<title>Employees</title>
<style type="text/css">
body { 
  font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
  font-size: 10pt;
  margin-left: 0.4in;
  margin-right: 0.1in;
  background-color: bisque;
} 
h1 {
  margin-left: -0.3in;
  margin-top: 24pt;
  font-size: 14pt;
  color: maroon;
  background-color: transparent;
}
table {
  border: 0;
  border-spacing: 0;
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border-bottom: 1px solid firebrick;
  margin-bottom: 14pt;
}
th, td {
  font-size: 10pt;
  padding-left: 3px;
  padding-right: 3px;
  vertical-align: top;
}
th {
  background-color: firebrick;
  color: white;
  text-align: left;
}
td {
  line-height: 1.4em;
}
</style>
</head>

<body>
<h1>Employees</h1>
<%GENML%>
</body>
</html>

When used with the GENML command, the result, displayed in a web browser, would appear similar to the following:

Formatted example in web browser

Writing a Web Page Template

See Also