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Chipp: Hey Andre, does this Rockets stuff really work?
Andre: Follow me...

Interested in learning RevOnRockets?

For those of you who don't know, RevOnRockets™ is a set of libraries, and a workflow created by Andre Garzia for implementing Rev CGI quickly and easily on servers. It's free.

So, why would anyone want to use it? Well, before I get into the various uses for RevCGI, I'd like to tell why I'm so excited about it.

Here at Altuit, we use Hemingway (our Rev based Content Management System) to create lots of small to medium sized business websites. Many times, a customer has a requirement for visitors to access a small database, be it a catalog, or a 'find the nearest retailer to you' or even a custom guestbook. Some of these can be handled with inventive client-side javascript, other with PHP and a flatfile (text) database. But, many require I turn around in my seat and say, "Chris, Tag. You're it....we need to create a MySQL, SQLServer, Postgres server schema and database and access it using Rev." Of course, this isn't a problem as Chris is a world-class developer (he wrote altBrowser and altSQLite), who just happens to sit in the chair behind me in our 2 man office, and he knows Rev as well.

But, for smaller projects, I just want to be able to give Chris a break, and create the whole thing myself. Of course, I can always take time to learn all about MySQL, and database connectors, and the SQL language. I painfully have at times, but it is infrequent, and I find it difficult to stay sharp in languages like Python, VBscript, Javascript, and PHP when I haven't used them in months. So, I've decided to learn as much as I can about RevCGI, so I can program my own smallish databases as stacks and cgi scripts.

And it works. I've been at it for a couple of days now, and thanks to Andre and RevOnRockets, I have a simple web app working. And I've finally *grokked* the whole thing-- or at least a big chunk of it. So, what's it good for?

Well for starters, as I mentioned, you can create very efficient and quick databases which can be accessed from the web. Things like catalogs, store locators, feedback databases, are fairly straightforward and simple. Using some of Andre's libraries, you can easily send email, so you could create a software registration database stack, which gets called from PayPal after someone purchases your product, and it automatically emails the regcode. Using some of the built-in Linux commands, you can even create thumbnails from images, and create online picture databases. All using RevOnRockets.

Not to mention, if you don't have your own Chris to do the heavy lifting, you may just find Rev On Rockets can do some of *THAT* for you, too.

So-- What is RevOnRockets? Well if you've ever heard of Ruby on Rails-- IT'S NOT THAT! Ruby on Rails creates scaffolding for web applications. Rev On Rockets doesn't do all of that.

It turns out RevOnRockets is much simpler. In fact, at it's simplest, it's a collection of half-a-dozen libraries which you can choose to use-- or not to-- on a given project. And frankly, there are only 2 real libraries you'll use for most stuff-- one of them being an 'in-browser' debugger-. Sorta like Rev's debugger, but displays in your browser telling you which line is stuck. The other being a beefed-up version of Monte's and Rodney's libCGI.

I have to mention one other fantastic part of RevOnRockets, and tell you about this grand plan Andre and I have to help you learn about it.

The other really cool part of ROR (Rev On Rockets) is it comes with it's own webserver, which runs locally, and is ENTIRELY REV BASED. So, you can edit and debug your RevCGI right in Rev without even being connected to the Internet. This is an extreme ease-of-use workflow addition to the labored process of write code, upload, test in browser, then try and figure out why it didn't work-- which is the most DIFFICULT part of RevCGI. Andre's webserver has some very advanced debugging features as well, so it's much easier to 'get it right.'

To say it another way, Andre's really done quite well in integrating all of this, and those of you who know him, know he writes really good code.

And, with a few modifications to MagicCarpet, I've been able to streamline workflow outside of Andre's local webserver.

One of the issues with ROR, is it's not documented well-- and is a bit hard to pickup without a bit of handholding. In fact, I've spent hours on the phone and screensharing with Andre just to get caught up on all the neat stuff his libraries do. We've created several examples together, and after our sessions, I end up more and more impressed with ROR.

So, Andre and I created a tutorial series to help developers learn how to use ROR and RevCGI. There are of course some very good RevCGI beginner tutorials, but I'm hoping ours would go farther, and show a bit more advanced techniques...like putting file locking on a stack so that 2 people don't try to write to it at once. Or, uploading images and files via HTTP and not FTP using POST.

So, if you're interested, fill in the form submission on the left...which is of course Powered by RevOnRockets!