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Creating Web Server Applications Using WebSnap
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WebSnap augments Web Broker with additional components, wizards, and views—making it easier to build Web server applications that deliver complex, data-driven Web pages. WebSnap's support for multiple modules and for server-side scripting makes development and maintenance easier for teams of developers and Web designers.

WebSnap allows HTML design experts on your team to make a more effective contribution to Web server development and maintenance. The final product of the WebSnap development process includes a series of scriptable HTML page templates. These pages can be changed using HTML editors that support embedded script tags, like Microsoft FrontPage, or even a simple text editor. Changes can be made to the templates as needed, even after the application is deployed. There is no need to modify the project source code at all, which saves valuable development time. Also, WebSnap's multiple module support can be used to partition your application into smaller pieces during the coding phases of your project. Developers can work more independently.

The dispatcher components automatically handle requests for page content, HTML form submissions, and requests for dynamic images. WebSnap components called adapters provide a means to define a scriptable interface to the business rules of your application. For example, the TDataSetAdapter object is used to make dataset components scriptable. You can use WebSnap producer components to quickly build complex, data-driven forms and tables, or to use XSL to generate a page. You can use the session component to keep track of end users. You can use the user list component to provide access to user names, passwords, and access rights.

The Web application wizard allows you to quickly build an application that is customized with the components that you will need. The Web page module wizard allows you to create a module that defines a new page in your application. Or use the Web data module wizard to create a container for components that are shared across your Web application.

When the Web Page module uses TAdapterPageProducer the page module views become available when this component is double-clicked . The page module views show the result of server-side scripting without running the application. You can view the generated HTML in text form using the HTML Result tab. The HTML Script tab shows the page with server-side scripting, which is used to generate HTML for the page.

The following topics explain how to use the WebSnap components to create a Web server application:

- Fundamental WebSnap components
- Creating Web Server Applications
- Server-side scripting in WebSnap
- Dispatching requests

Note: WebSnap is being deprecated in RAD Studio. Although WebSnap is still documented in the online help, the WebSnap product is no longer fully supported. As an alternative, you should begin using IntraWeb (VCL for the Web). IntraWeb is documented in this online help. For more documentation on VCL for the Web, go to http://www.atozed.com/intraweb/docs/.
See Also

Types of Web Server Applications

The Structure of a Web Broker Application

Using IntraWeb

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