Topic: What language?

[Rob]

Background: We have a database that's used by our customers to monitor stuff, and by our employees to track stuff (goods in/out, that kind of thing).

At the moment they pretty much manipulate the database directly, but that is definitely not satisfactory (I've inherited this from someone else).

I've finally realised that it's time to bite the bullet and write a front end for it. The front end needs to be web-based, and I want some flashy stuff like drag and drop capability.

Problem: I'm an embedded programmer. I know some assembler and C. I know VB6 fairly well and VB.net a bit. I have no experience of web development, and no real knowledge of the current state of the art. I can handle the back end stuff - it's just firing off XML to the database API, but I have no idea what (or how) to code the front end stuff in.

Over to you guys .

[Mike]

Do you feel like starting a holy war?

Ok some important points about web development:

• The http protocol is stateless.  This is probably the biggest pain in the ass of web programming as a lot of things are done to get around it.
• You've got two different sides to program.  Server side, where you'll do the database stuff and decide what pages to serve.  And client side, where you can manipulate the data that the client sends to server.
• Client side there isn't a lot of choice:  HTML, CSS, and JS.  Structure, Look, and Manipulation.
• Server side there are a ton of choices.  More about this later
• Security is a bitch of a problem.

Ok about server side languages.  My preference is PHP but others will have theirs.  PHP's syntax is really close to C++ (which in turn is close to C) with some perl and a few other languages thrown in.
Java and python are other popular choices.

The first thing I would do is to look at the scale of the project.  If it is small you might just want to write it C and use the libraries to compile it to a CGI file and do it that way.  IIRC I used http://www.boutell.com/cgic/ before.  Check Cprog and I think I have some posts about it there.

[Rob]

Thanks Mike,

I may be completely off beam here, but I don't think I have to worry too much about server side programming - I think my DBMS and provider take care of that, as long as I can serve the XML requests to them.

I found this and liked the look of it.

http://mootools.net/demos/?demo=Drag.Drop

edit>> Actually, more like this

http://mootools.net/demos/?demo=Drag.Cart

Do you feel like starting a holy war?

Wasn't my intention, but I have time and popcorn!

[Rob]

Am I allowed to ask about ASP.net?

[Mike]

I tend to use jQuery over mootools but I've heard good things about mootools also.

Am I allowed to ask about ASP.net?

Never!!!   I don't know ASP.net and have only dealt with ASP in a very limited amount (which generally involved banging my head into a solid object).

[JaWiB]

Well I guess you could use VB.net if you wanted to go the ASP.net route. I used C# with ASP.net once upon a time, but all I remember is not being too fond of it.

[hans]

Pick any of the current MVC frameworks like rails, grails, codeigniter/kohana, or django or the likes. There are also a few micro frameworks like Sinatra and Limonade too that might fit the bill. And jquery is a good choice for the front end. You could keep it all in JS land and use node.js too but I haven't played with it much yet.

[Rob]

Well I guess you could use VB.net if you wanted to go the ASP.net route.

Yeah, that was kind of my thinking.

[Rob]

Pick any of the current MVC frameworks like rails, grails, codeigniter/kohana, or django or the likes. There are also a few micro frameworks like Sinatra and Limonade too that might fit the bill. And jquery is a good choice for the front end. You could keep it all in JS land and use node.js too but I haven't played with it much yet.

There's a few words in there that I need to Google... Ta TGM.

[ober]

I'd say PHP.  ASP.NET or VB.NET (hell, even C#) is really fucking awful and I've attempted to use all 3 (actually implemented an internal site in ASP.NET out of lack of other tools).

Another vote for jQuery here for the front end.

[hans]

I think I'd second ober, PHP is a good safe pick. Definitely check out the Limonade framework. I think it does just enough to help but doesn't require a huge learning curve. For small projects it works nicely.