Going interactive with TestTool

A command line tool for generating pages is good for producing many static pages. But, when developing and testing a complex dynamic site you need a interactive tool. TestTool is tailored for that task. TestTool can keep many templates opened and ready to be edited, while providing page generation and preview with a simple click.

The structure of TestTool

TestTool has many units:

Main.pas

Main form, include also most of code, provide menus, quick access (oops) buttons and areas for editing templates and generated code display.

Config.pas

Provide a interactive way to change ".ini" values.

Globals.pas

A common place for the global project symbols

Platform.pas

Platform dependent routines

About.pas

As usual.

In design-time the main form looks like that:

As in staticgen we have a IBDatabase, a IBTransaction, a PageBuilder, a PBTagInterpreter and a DBIbxTagInterpreter. But here we also have menus and some dialogs.

The main form have two large areas. The top one will hold pages, containing MemoEdits with templates to be viewed/edited. The bottom area will display the generated html code.

TestTool needs at last one template file loaded to work properly. The file present on the first tab is always used as the main template. You can open other templates (as many as you want) and create new ones. All the opened templates may be edited but when a generate is requested, all the involved templates must be saved. TestTool hallways uses the templates stored on disk for page generation.

Before starting generating and previewing pages, you may need to change some program configuration. Just 3 items are changeable via the config form:

A "Database Host & Path" must be informed whenever you use "db:" tags on your templates. It is passed as informed to the IBDatabase component, and therefore must comply with Interbase conventions:

• Host name or address
• A colon (:) meaning we will use TCP/IP
• The database path, from the server viewpoint

"Template Path" is optional and if not informed is assumed the first opened template path.

A "Preview Command" must be included to provide automatic previewing after page generation. The command supplied will be invoked with the full generated page path as the first (and only) parameter.