The documentation on available classes and methods for IBM Personal Communications 3270 through OLE is available on IBM site.

Hope this can help someone, as I used it a lot to implement something equivalent to what Corion did.

No. Host::PCOM is a module I developed on the time and entirely for my employer. I don't feel it would be right to redistribute that code on my own, and I won't take it on me to involve the lawyers to get a release from my employer.

That being said, it's not really hard to encapsulate the OLE API, as IBM provides plenty of good documentation.

I don't feel it would be right to redistribute that code on my own, and I won't take it on me to involve the lawyers to get a release from my employer.

You might find "How to convince a client to release Perl code to CPAN?" helpful to get your employer to release the code... ;-)

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

The above code is only the package to launch the connection to the 3270 window, not to give any input to it. I recommend that you read the documentation that accompanies IBM Personal Communications to find out how to automate stuff within it. I won't post my complete code as much of it belongs to my employer I guess. You will then need to employ the methods to read what is on the screen and which fields are available for input. For example, I have the following subroutine in Host::PCom:

sub screen {
  my ($self) = @_;
  my ($cols,$rows) = ($self->cols,$self->rows);
  my ($line) = $self->eclps->GetTextRect(1,1,$rows,$cols);
  my @lines;
  while ( $line =~ s/(^.{1,$cols})//sm) {
    push @lines, $1;
  };
  s!\0! !g
    for @lines;

  # Mark fields as dirty
  $self->log("Fields marked dirty");
  $self->{fields} = undef;

  push @lines, $line if $line;
  @lines;
};
[download]

It returns the current screen (resp. a cached version of it) as a list of scalars which my programs then check. I also have two routines for getting and setting input fields:

sub get_set_field {
  my $self = shift;
  my $field = shift;

  my $result;
  if (defined wantarray) {
    $result = $field->GetText();
    $self->log("value is $result");
    carp( "get_set_field() called in void context without a value",2 )
+ unless @_;
  };
  if (@_) {
    $field->SetText(@_);
    $self->log("Setting field to @_");
  };

  $result;
};

sub field_by_index {
  my $self = shift;
  my $index = shift;

  my @fields = $self->fields;
  my $field = $fields[ $index ];

  $self->get_set_field($field,@_);
};
[download]

Hello, I have learned a ton about OLE from you guys but there is very little documentation on the internet about OLE as it pertains to PCOM so there arent may examples to study. Corion, yours is a great example but I have a few issues.

1. package Host::PCOM; #<-what is the signifigance of this?

2. my ($class,$connection_name) = @_; #<- changed this to $class = "pcsws" and $connection_name = "P"

3. my $hostname = 'WSConfig'; #<-changed this to $hostname = "MFrame1.ws"

So I can spawn the PCOM session successfully. But I get errors when I try to read the presentation space. I think the problem is that I dont know exactly what parameters to send to the screen sub for @_. I tried hard coding @_ to lots of different values, just guessing at it. Can you tell me what parameters you are passing to the sub. Error message below.....

Error message - "Can't locate object method "cols" via package "P" (perhaps you forgot to load "P"?) at C:\(path snipped)\MFtest.pl line 76."

4. my ($self) = "@_"; #<-What value is expected from @_?

Thanks in advance for your help.

So does this mean we need IBM Personal Communications in order for this to work? How much would this software cost?