Embedded web server
AssigneeAgranat Systems, Inc.
InventorsIan D. Agranat, Kenneth A. Giusti, Scott D. Lawrence
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An embedded graphical user interface employs a World-Wide-Web communications and display paradigm. The development environment includes an HTML compiler which recognizes and processes a number of unique extensions to HTML. The HTML compiler produces an output which is in the source code language of an application to which the graphical user interface applies. A corresponding run-time environment includes a server which serves the compiled HTML documents to a browser.
Claims10
A method for providing a graphical user interface having dynamic elements, comprising the steps of:
- defining elements of the graphical user interface in at least one text document written in a mark-up language;
- including in the document a string identified by prototype tags;
- serving the text document to a prototyping client which interprets the mark-up language but does not recognize and does not display the prototype tags, but does display the string;
- and
- compiling the text document into a content source, omitting the prototype tags and the string identified thereby.
A method for providing a graphical user interface having dynamic elements, comprising the steps of:
- defining elements of the graphical user interface in at least one text document written in a mark-up language;
- including at a location in the document a code tag containing a segment of application source code;
- including in the document a string identified by prototype tags;
- compiling the text document into a content source;
- decompiling the content source into a replica of the text document;
- serving the replica of the text document to a client which interprets the mark-up language;
- and
- when the location is encountered in the replica, serving to the client a character stream generated by executing the segment of application source code.
A software product recorded on a medium, the software product comprising a mark-up language compiler which can compile a mark-up language document into a data structure in a native application programming language, the compiler recognizing one or more code tags which designate included text as a segment of application source code to be saved in a file for compilation by a compiler of the native application programming language.
A method for providing a graphical user interface having displayed forms for entry of data, wherein the text document is viewed using a prototype client during development and is viewed using a user client during use, comprising the steps of:
- defining elements of the graphical user interface in at least one text document written in a mark-up language;
- naming in the document a data item requested of a user and used by an application written in a native application programming language and executed on a server;
- compiling the text document into a content source including a data structure definition in the native application programming language for the named data item;
- naming the data item within a tag understood in the mark-up language for viewing by both the prototype client and the user client;
- and
- including in the content source a definition of a function to provide a default value for the data item when the content source is served and a definition of a function to perform an application specific operation at the server when the data item is returned by the user client.
In a computer-based apparatus for developing a graphical user interface for an application, the apparatus including an editor which can manipulate a document written in a mark-up language and a viewer which can display a document written in the mark-up language, the apparatus further comprising:
- a mark-up language compiler which recognizes a code tag containing a source code fragment in a native application source code language, the code tag not otherwise part of the mark-up language, the compiler producing as an output a representation in the native application source code language of the document, including a copy of the source code fragment.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.