NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

DBOW allows a user to define a database table using a meta-language (quite similar to the SQL CREATE TABLE syntax). This source file can then be processed by DBOW to produce SQL for actually creating the table, a C include file with a structure definition, C functions for inserting, deleting, searching and updating the database, and housekeeping functions for maintaining the structure.

DBOW allows the user to manage the table definition in one source file, and automatically produces the code for directly manipulating the database.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

-h include-file

Specify the prototype file to generate. Normally this would be of the form foo.h which would specify that the C struct definition and function prototypes should be placed in a file called foo.h

-m

Output an intermediate M4 file rather than a final source file. DBOW uses M4 to produce the actual C, Perl and PHP source. DBOW will produce an M4 source file with the appropriate table definitions and will then invoke M4 along with the associated M4 template file (such as perl.m4) to produce the source. For debugging purposes, it is useful to see the M4 produced and manually execute it against the template.

-N

Do not emit line number synchronization marks.

-o output-file

Specify the output filename. The default is to strip the default DBOW file extension (.d) from the end of the input file and append the code-specific extension such as .sql, .c, .php etc.

-t type

Specifies the output filetype to produce. This can be one of mysql, c, c++, php, perl, etc.

-x

Turn on debugging. Only useful for debugging DBOW.

-v

Print the DBOW version and exit.

DBOW LANGUAGE DEFINITION

All DBOW commands are prefixed by a percent (%) character. The most important is the %table command. This is used to define a database table. It takes the form

%table foo {
	column-name class optional-qualifiers
	...
%}

This will create an SQL table called foo. Columns are specified in a comma-separated list starting with the name of the column and its class (see below) and any optional qualifiers.

The following is a list of the types of columns which can be used in DBOW:

tinyint
tinyint(size)
smallint
smallint(size)
mediumint
mediumint(size)
integer
integer(size)
bigint
bigint(size)
float
float(size,prec)
double
double(size,prec)
double precision
double precision(size,prec)
real
real(size,prec)
decimal
decimal(size)
decimal(size,prec)
numeric
numeric(size,prec)
date
time
datetime
timestamp
timestamp(size)
year
year(size)
char(size)
national char(size)
varchar(size)
national varchar(size)
tinyblob
tinytext
blob
text
mediumblob
mediumtext
longblob
longtext

Each of these can be followed by one or more of the following qualifiers:

unsigned
not null
primary key
unique
auto_increment

For more information on column definitions, refer to the SQL standard or to the documentation for MySQL. Note that unlike SQL, column names cannot use any of the above reserved words or any of the DBOW reserved words.

The %type statement allows the user to qualify certain statements based on the output type. For example,

%type C emit

means if we are producing C code, then execute the emit statement.

The %code statement allows us to insert code into the output file. This is handy for including copyright blocks, CVS tags or hand-crafted code.

For example, the following DBOW statements add an include statement into the output code if it is we are producing C source.

%type C code {
/*
 * Make sure we include the right .h files.
 */
#include <stdlib.h>
%}

The %proto statement allows us to insert code into the include file or into the output file during the prototype phase.

The %emit statement allows us to append code to the end of the output file. This is useful for including functions such as main() and the like so that the C output produced is completely self-contained.

The %insert <table> [name] statement tells DBOW to create an insert function in the output file. The table argument specifies the table name for the insert function and the optional name field specifies the name of the function.

The %delete <table> [name] statement tells DBOW to create a delete function in the output file. The arguments are similar to those for the insert statement.

The %search <table> <column> [name] statement tells DBOW to create a search function in the output file. The table argument specifies the table name for the search function, the column name specifies the name of the column to search against and the optional name field specifies the name of the function.

The %update <table> <column> [name] statement tells DBOW to create an update function in the output file. The remaining arguments are similar to those for the search statement.

The %dump <table> statement tells DBOW to produce a function in the output file which will display the contents of a given record.

The %function statement is used to create complex functions which could involve joins, sorted output, multiple search criteria, etc. It is still in development.

EXAMPLES

dbow -t c sample.d

This will produce the file sample.c with code to insert, delete, update and search the MySQL database table (or tables) specified in the source file.

To also produce an include file with the C struct and function prototypes, use the -h option. For example;

dbow -t c -h sample.h sample.d

will produce an include file as well as a source file.

To produce SQL for creating the actual table, use the command;

dbow -t mysql sample.d

which will produce a file called sample.sql.

The following is a sample DBOW source file:

#
# Put out a C-style comment block for all file types.
#
%proto {
/*
 * $Id: dbow.1,v 1.1 2004/06/25 14:57:23 dtynan Exp $
 */
%}
#
# Define the table.
#
%table user {
	user_id mediumint(7) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT primary key,
	name varchar(254),
	handle varchar(254) NOT NULL,
	password varchar(254) NOT NULL
%}
#
# Define non-standard functions...
#
%search user user_id
%search user handle
%type C dump user

FILES AND DIRECTORIES

${exec_prefix}/bin/dbow

${prefix}/share/dbow

${prefix}/lib

BUGS

AUTHOR

Dermot Tynan
E-mail: dtynan@kalopa.com
Website:  http://dbow.sf.net/

LICENSING