Run BASIC

Run BASIC

Stable release	1.01 (November 2008)
Influenced by	Liberty BASIC
Website	http://www.runbasic.com

Run BASIC is a BASIC language-based web appserver, based on Liberty BASIC. Run BASIC v1.01 was released in Nov 2008 and developed by Shoptalk Systems.

Programming model

Run BASIC uses a desktop programming model. Web pages are not kept in individual files or dealt with as templates but are generated dynamically as determined by the programmer. Traditionalist procedural programmers can create applications using subroutines and functions. Application is state is managed automatically and transparently. Programmers can componentize their systems into objects and call methods on them. Any object can render itself into a web page as a way to have different parts of a web page managed in a modular way. Run BASIC is available for Windows 2K/XP/Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is available with both commercial and freeware licenses.

Run BASIC favors a widget-based approach where the programmer codes the UI without using HTML. High-level commands drive automatically generated HTML. Colors, fonts, backgrounds and layout can be adjusted using CSS. If needed HTML or Javascript can be injected into a page. Interactivity is similar to that of desktop applications, with callbacks tying user actions to program routines. The marshalling of a web request and dispatching of user actions to procedures is automatic.

Run BASIC can draw graphics and render them into web pages; fetch files from other web sites using GET and POST and use a built-in XML parser to extract data; and includes a database capability using the SQLite database engine.

Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox 2 and 3 and Safari 3.x. are supported for use with Run BASIC

Web server details

Run BASIC is not an add-on module like Perl or PHP is for Apache. The BASIC compiler and execution model is integrated tightly with its own HTTP server. Run BASIC can be proxied behind another web server (Apache for example) if needed. Session management is transparent to the programmer. When someone uses a web application they are given a session. If the user is then inactive long enough (this duration is customizable) the session will time out and memory will be reclaimed. The application programmer doesn't have to put session logic in his code.

See also

• Liberty BASIC (The Windows-based BASIC that Run BASIC is derived from)
• Just BASIC (a freeware version of Liberty BASIC)
• SQLite A popular database engine used by Run BASIC
• WebServ, a QuickBASIC HTTP server application

External links

• Run BASIC
• Run BASIC: Online programming at NetworkWorld