WINDOWS 7 / INTERVIEW: ALEX RESTREPO / REPORT WRITERS / RECTCONTROL Published by DesignWrite U.S. $16.99 NOV/DEC2009 ISSUE 8.1 TEACHING PROGRAMMING KAREL: THE RB ROBOT BY ANDY DENT GOING TO COLORADO: RB SUMMIT 2009 BY GEOFFREY A. RABE MAKING RB PLUGINS BY CHRISTIAN SCHMITZ 2%!,3ERVERISTHEIDEALDATABASEFOR2%!,BASICDEVELOPERSWHOWANTTOCONVERTASINGLEUSERDATABASETOA MULTI USERONE)TgSFAST HASASMALLFOOTPRINT ISHIGHLYRELIABLE ANDRUNSON7INDOWS -AC/38AND,INUX 4RY2%!,3ERVERTODAY a"ESTSUPPORT a4OTALLY#ONSISTENT a%ASY)NSTALLATION a3IMPLE0RICING a%ASY-IGRATION a#RYSTAL#LEAR,ICENSING $OYOUFEELTHENEEDFORSPEED &AST EASYINSTALLATION !TITgSCORE 2%!,3ERVERUSES31,ITE THEMOST -OSTDATABASESERVERSREQUIREMODIFYINGCONFIGFILES POPULARDATABASEENGINEINTHEWORLD7HENANEW ANDMESSINGWITHTHECOMMANDLINE.OT2%!, FASTERRELEASEOF31,ITEBECOMESAVAILABLE 2%!, 3ERVER*USTDOUBLE CLICKTHEINSTALLERANDYOURSERVER 3ERVERBENEFITS WILLBEREADYFORUSEINUNDERONEMINUTE 9OURDATAISSAFEANDSOUND &REETO$EVELOPERS 31,ITEISNEARLYINCORRUPTIBLEANDWEHAVENgTHADA 4HE2%!,3ERVER$EVELOPER%DITIONISCOMPLETELY REPORTOFACORRUPTEDDATABASE!ND JUSTINCASE FREEANDENABLESYOUTODEVELOPANAPPLICATIONBASED 2%!,3ERVERHASBOTHAJOURNALENGINEANDAUTO ON2%!,3ERVERWITHOUTPAYINGANYLICENSEFEES MATICBACKUPSYSTEM UNTILYOUDEPLOYYOURAPPLICATION WWWREALSOFTWARECOMDOWNLOAD NOV/DEC2009 ISSUE 8.1 2%!,3ERVERISTHEIDEALDATABASEFOR2%!,BASICDEVELOPERSWHOWANTTOCONVERTASINGLEUSERDATABASETOA MULTI USERONE)TgSFAST HASASMALLFOOTPRINT ISHIGHLYRELIABLE ANDRUNSON7INDOWS -AC/38AND,INUX THE MAGAZINE FOR REALBASIC® USERS 4RY2%!,3ERVERTODAY REALbasic Developer is not affiliated with REAL Software, Inc. a"ESTSUPPORT a4OTALLY#ONSISTENT FEATURES a%ASY)NSTALLATION a3IMPLE0RICING 13 RB Summit 2009 by Geoffrey A. Rabe RB Summit 2009 In September Geoffrey attended the RB Summit in Boulder, Colorado, and a%ASY-IGRATION 13 he provides us with his report. a#RYSTAL#LEAR,ICENSING 19 Interview: Meet Alex Restrepo by Marc Zeedar Alex is famous for creating the impressive CustomEditField—a text editor Interview control built entirely with REALbasic code out of a canvas. 19 23 Making RB Plugins by Christian Schmitz $OYOUFEELTHENEEDFORSPEED &AST EASYINSTALLATION Have you ever wondered how to make a plugin for REALbasic? Christian !TITgSCORE 2%!,3ERVERUSES31,ITE THEMOST -OSTDATABASESERVERSREQUIREMODIFYINGCONFIGFILES adapts his talk from the 2009 RB Summit and provides us with an overview POPULARDATABASEENGINEINTHEWORLD7HENANEW ANDMESSINGWITHTHECOMMANDLINE.OT2%!, of the process. FASTERRELEASEOF31,ITEBECOMESAVAILABLE 2%!, 3ERVER*USTDOUBLE CLICKTHEINSTALLERANDYOURSERVER RB Plugins 3ERVERBENEFITS WILLBEREADYFORUSEINUNDERONEMINUTE 23 30 Karel, the REALbasic Robot by Andy Dent Karel is a virtual robot that has been used for decades to teach 9OURDATAISSAFEANDSOUND &REETO$EVELOPERS programming. Andy created a version of Karel with REALbasic that uses 31,ITEISNEARLYINCORRUPTIBLEANDWEHAVENgTHADA 4HE2%!,3ERVER$EVELOPER%DITIONISCOMPLETELY RBScript to program the robot. REPORTOFACORRUPTEDDATABASE!ND JUSTINCASE FREEANDENABLESYOUTODEVELOPANAPPLICATIONBASED 2%!,3ERVERHASBOTHAJOURNALENGINEANDAUTO ON2%!,3ERVERWITHOUTPAYINGANYLICENSEFEES Karel Robot MATICBACKUPSYSTEM UNTILYOUDEPLOYYOURAPPLICATION 30 REALbasic Developer (ISSN 1540-3122) is the ultimate source for tutorials and advanced techniques for programming with the REALbasic language. REALbasic Developer is published bi-monthly (six times per year) by DesignWrite, PO Box 872, Lafayette, OR 97127. Subscription Rate: Annual subscriptions are $49.99 (order at http://www.rbdeveloper.com/subscribe/). Customer Service: For changes of address, go to <http://www.rbdeveloper.com/addresschange.shtml>. For other customer service issues, see WWWREALSOFTWARECOMDOWNLOAD <http://www.rbdeveloper.com/support.shtml>. Back Issues: Previous issues may be ordered at <http://www.rbdeveloper.com/orders.shtml>. Printed Issues: Issues printed in full color may be ordered at <http://rbd.magcloud.com/>. November/December 2009 | REALbasic Developer | www.rbdeveloper.com 3 THE MAGAZINE FOR REALBASIC® USERS COLUMNS 5 Source Code: A word from the Publisher Marc Zeedar Year Eight begins. 41 Beginner’s Corner: For those getting started Marc Zeedar Part 1 of learning about basic controls, beginning with RectControl, the parent of all other controls. 45 From Scratch: A project from start to finish Brad Rhine Starting a new project, ClipSaver. 48 BKeeney Briefs: The REALbasic developer’s life Bob Keeney Exploring database reporting tools. 51 Databases for REAL: Learn to use databases Paul Lefebvre How to use REALbasic’s new built-in reporting tool. NEWS, REVIEWS, ETC. ADVERTISER INDEX Hacker (comic) . 7 Association of REALbasic Professionals arbp.org. 55 REALbasic News . 8 ChartDirector Plugin monkeybreadsoftware.de . 32 Windows 7. 10 DynaPDF Plugin monkeybreadsoftware.de . 38 SQLite Migrator. 11 Eat Big While Eating Lean eatingbig.com . 55 Bento 3.0. 12 Monkeybread Software monkeybreadsoftware.de . 25 RBDArchive 1-7 rbdeveloper.com . 55 REALbasic Developer Magazine rbdeveloper.com . 56 REAL Software realsoftware.com . .2 4 November/December 2009 | REALbasic Developer | www.rbdeveloper.com Source Code Thoughts from the Publisher by Marc Zeedar [email protected] Year Eight Begins THIS issue marks the beginning arriving to me in a week or so and I’ll begin AT A GLANCE of a new year of REALbasic Developer shipping out orders in mid-November. magazine. I have no more insight into the The 338-page book contains the complete RBD#8100 future than you, but I’m hoping the new contents of Year Seven of the magazine year will bring some fun developments. (issues 7.1-7.6) in print form, so it makes About the Author: For instance, there are some interesting a great archive. When RBD publisher Marc technologies in the works in mobile applica- Zeedar was a kid he used to tions and I would love to see a way to create In This Issue create magazines just for fun. iPhone apps with REALbasic.... Did you miss the REALbasic conference Now he’s doing it for a living! in Colorado? From all reports, it was a Year 7 Printed Book Available success, though of course much smaller If you didn’t pre-order your RBD Archive than the much-missed REALWorld in Volume 7, you can still order it for a 25% Austin (hopefully that will be back once percent subscriber discount. The printed the economy gets better and more people books have been ordered and should be are able to attend). But in the meantime Geoffrey Rabe attended the Colorado summit and writes about what went on so you can live vicariously through his experiences. At the conference MonkeyBread Software’s Christian Schmitz gave a presen- tation on creating plugins for REALbasic and he was kind enough to condense his talk into an article for us. You unfortunately can’t use REALbasic itself to create plugins (that is a much-desired feature request), but if you’re curious about the process, this is an excellent overview. One of my favorite custom controls for REALbasic is Alex Restrepo’s CustomEditField, so I was delighted to interview him for this issue. Of course our main feature is on Andy Dent’s rbKarel program: it’s a REALbasic version of the classic Karel robot, which is designed for teaching programming. Students control the robot with a simple language (implemented via RBScript) and learn about logic. Definitely a fascinating project! In our columns, I begin a series on basic controls in REALbasic, while Paul and Bob write about database reporting, and Brad starts a new clipboard manager project in From Scratch. Figure 1: Volume 7 of RBD Archive is now available in printed book format. Enjoy! November/December 2009 | REALbasic Developer | www.rbdeveloper.com 5 REALLETTERS OPINION & FEEDBACK is published by DesignWrite, P.O. Box 872, Lafayette, OR 97127-0872 DRAGGING FILES TO OPEN you’ve apparently dragged into the IDE. and has no affiliation with REAL Software, Inc. Did I miss it [in your Beginner’s Corner I’m wondering what other kinds of goodies column in RBD 7.6 covering drag-and-drop] I can drag onto the IDE without causing the Publisher & Editor-in-Chief or did you not cover launching an app by world to slide into the nearest black hole. Marc Zeedar [email protected] dragging a file on top of it? I kept seeing And then, what can I do with them? Does how to accept drops onto controls once the this mean I can skip reading files for small Editorial Board app was launched. I guess, if the app will bits of information I often store in diction- Joe Strout [email protected] accept a dropped file on its icon, one would aries or lists? That would certainly simplify need to check if it were already open and coding, as your line of code illustrates. Erick Tejkowski [email protected] could accept a second (or more) file? Harris Paul Managing Editor It might be worth an article (or maybe Marc Zeedar [email protected] I hadn’t thought of explaining that, but it’s a sidebar) on the Random class. It didn’t easy. But it’s not obvious and should be originally exist as part of REALbasic—but News Editor explained, so here goes. First you go to the they added it and rnd now exists mostly Marc Zeedar [email protected] AcceptFileTypes property of your App and set for compatibility with old programs (and the file types your program will support. other BASICs). Reviews Editor Then, in your App’s event, OpenDocument Dave Mancuso [email protected] you’ll get passed a folderItem pointing to As for my use of the imported text file,Words , any dropped files (they’ll each drop one I should have mentioned