Simpol Limited

As a first step, we can save our project from the first chapter as a new project. To do so, open the first project in the IDE and then select the Save Project As … item from the File menu.

Saving the project with a different name

Then give the new project the name learn02 and select the tutorial directory as the place to store it. This will create a new project called learn02 with a main source file called learn02.sma.

Now start modifying the source code. Add a cgicall cgi parameter inside the parentheses of the main() function. Then add the include statement at the top as shown below and press Ctrl+S to save the document. The result should look something like the following picture:

Adding an include statement

Note that the IDE has added a document as a child to the main document of the project but that the icon for the document has a red X through it. This is because at this point the project does not have any idea where to look for the include file. To fix this, let's open the Project Settings window again and switch to the Includes and libraries tab.

Adding an include path

Now click the Add button on the left side of the window and select the include directory that is directly below the root of the Simpol Professional installation directory. When you return, the window should look like the one below:

The include path has been added

After clicking on OK the icon that previously was marked with an X is now back to normal.

The icon now appears normally

Now double-click the included file and copy the constant value sHTML_HEADER to the clipboard so that you can paste it into the main program file. The constant value can be used as long as it has been defined prior to it's being used. Since the SIMPOL compiler is a single-pass compiler, that means that the file containing the constant needs to be included at the beginning of the program.

Opening the included file

At this point we need to add the code that outputs the HTML page to the browser. Generally the second parameter to the output() method of the cgicall type will be set to 1, since currently most protocols require single-byte characters. The first thing that needs to be output is the header (unless you are using cookies, then they have to be first). After that the normal HTML code is output.

Adding the code to output the header

Now complete the code as shown in the following picture. The final argument following the end function statement is the empty string. This is because if it is not set to the empty string, the string representation of the value .nul will also be returned at the end of the HTML page.

The complete program code for our second program