Have you seen “import script” option in Zoho Creator -> create application? Wondering what the heck is Deluge? Here is quick intro (too much to say though – will cover in subsequent blog posts)
Deluge is the online scripting environment to create sophisticated database driven applications. With few lines of deluge code you can create your own web application. Everything online!
50 lines of code worth a 500 lines of explanation 😉 Here it goes..
Simple 4 steps to try this deluge script
1. Login to Zoho Creator
2. Create Application
3. select, Import Script
4. Copy & Paste this code
Voila! your feedback app is ready. You can embed the feedback form on your website as well.
With Deluge, Zoho Creator goes beyond GUI based app building. Which means, users can use either use GUI to create web apps or write code in Deluge.
How Deluge works ?
Deluge doesn’t have any concrete syntax. The actual code (the above 50 lines) itself is stored in bunch of database tables. The code is parsed and stored in hundreds of tables. The stored code in database doesn’t remember any syntax. Hence, in future, it just makes us easy to generate the same code in any well known languages like Java or PHP. Create with Deluge syntax, view it in Java! – sounds cool, ah?
No compilation, all changes are instantaneous. Underneath, deluge is driven by a powerful relational data model. Let say, you would like to add “Do not Contact me” checkbox to the feedback form. You can simply add this code: Do_not_contact_me (type = checkbox) to the feedback form script. The live app will reflect the change immediately (the changed code is parsed & updated in database and the live app fetches app details from the same database). Also, if you do browser refresh to “Edit GUI” form builder, the changes would be reflected. Similarly, you play with GUI then visit script. You can see the GUI edits reflected in deluge code (classic round-trip engineering)
Fine. where you guys are heading on?
Well, we have been working on Deluge for past few years now, based on some fairly radical ideas on language design. We have recently integrated it in Zoho Creator to make online app creation extremely easy with sophisticated scripting. We have just made an humble start and striving hard towards our goal to make ZohoCreator/Deluge as “Visual Basic for the Web 2.0“
Hyther
very nice introduction.
very nice introduction.
It would be nice if I could do more with layout then just columns. Is it possible to format text with line break and table commands, like in java \n and \t.
It would be nice if I could do more with layout then just columns. Is it possible to format text with line break and table commands, like in java \n and \t.