There is a new version of Bigtop (0.23) coming to a CPAN mirror near you.

Bigtop is a language for describing web applications and a framework for turning those descriptions into running applications. At present it only targets the Gantry web framework. But, it has a pluggable backend system, so new backends could target other frameworks.

There are two key new features.

First, you can now specify columns, their types, whether they are optional, and give literal default values during initial generation. This means that you can now write and run a pure CRUD application like this (assuming you have Gantry and sqlite): 

bigtop -n AddressBook \
'family(name,+phone)<-child(name,birth_date:date)'
cd AddressBook
./app.server
point browser to address printed by server

[download]
The family table has required name and optional phone columns. The child table has required name and birth_date columns. The later's SQL type is date.

You can expand that app with a new table: 

bigtop -a docs/addressbook.bigtop \
'gift(name,given:date,+occassion)->child'

[download]

Second, you can generate CRUD apps for postgres 8 databases like this: 

bigtop -n AddressBook -s Pg8Live \
'dbi:Pg:dbname=youraddressdb' user pass
cd AddressBook
./app.server -d Pg -n youraddressdb -u user -p pass
point browser to address printed by server

[download]

Adding support for other databases will not be hard, since -s takes a module name. Look for MySQLLive and SQLiteLive in future versions (those and other contributions welcome).

As always, bigtop works from a description file which you can edit. After editing, bigtop can regenerate the app (but it never touches your custom code, except to build initial stubs to hold it).

Phil

In reply to Bigtop web app generator version 0.23 by philcrow

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