[ABE.pm] Am I brilliant or what?

[Faber J. Fedor]

I'm writing a bunch of reports in Perl.  Eventually, I'm going to have
to write a portal so the end-user can go in, select a report to run,
fill in the appropriate parameters, etc.  The portal will be written in
RoR.

My idea is to place an XML block of code in at the beginning of each
Perl script inside of the POD with that looks something like this:

<xml>
    <title>My Title</title>
    <programname>myProgram.pl</programname>
    <parameters>
        <parm>
            <screenname>Start Date</screenname>
            <cliname>--startdate=</cliname>
        </parm>
        <parm type="optional">
            <screenname>End Date</screenname>
            <cliname>--enddate=<cliname>
        </parm>

and so on. Whenever the client selects the report title from the drop
down list, RoR fetches the file, parses the DOM for the xml tidbits, and
generates a custom screen via XHTML.  The user fills everything in,
submits it and RoR <waves hands>executes the program</waves hands>.

What do you all think?  Am I brilliant or what? :-)

-- 
 
Regards,
 
Faber Fedor
President
Linux New Jersey, Inc.
908-320-0357
800-706-0701

http://www.linuxnj.com