Graphical Frontends for shellscripts using HTML/JS/CSS
27/04/2012 - Version 2.1 released with some bugfixes and improvements on compatibility mode.
With BigBashView you will get:
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Create powerfull frontend using common known languages as HTML, Javascrit and Shell!
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Use the powerfull Chameleon to generate page templates! Chameleon has been extended to use your shell as language
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Demo for all functions available!
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Easy learn curve!
Head over to the [http://code.google.com/p/bigbashview/downloads downloads] section to get it, and to the [http://code.google.com/p/bigbashview/wiki/Documentation wiki] section to see the documentation
If you want to contact me, please drop me an e-mail thor27 AT gmail.com
Here you will find instructions on how to use BigBashView 2
BigBashView 2 is not installable, you just need to download and extract the package.
To use it, you need:
- python 2.7+ (http://www.python.org/) comes with Ubuntu
- WebPy (http://webpy.org/) package python-webpy on Ubuntu
- PyQT4 (http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/intro) package python-qt-4 on Ubuntu
- Optional: Chameleon 2.5+ (http://pagetemplates.org/) package python-chameleon on Ubuntu
to run BigBashView, you must execute the bigbashview.py script.
There are serveral command line arguments that can be used as following:
./bigbashview.py [-h|--help] [-s|--screen=widthxheight] [-v|--version] [-t|--toolkit=[gtk2|qt5|]] [-w|--window_state=[normal|maximized|fullscreen]] [-i|--icon image] [-c|--compatibility-mode] URLWhere URL is a URL or a server path as documented bellow
|| Option || Description ||
|| -h, --help || Show the list of available options and exit ||
|| -s,--screen=widthxheight || Change the screen size for a specific widthxheight ||
|| -v, --version || Show version number and exit ||
|| -t, --toolkit=[gtk2|qt5] || Chooses the graphical toolkit to use. QT4 is the default one, since BigBashView GTK2 UI is not complete ||
|| -w, --window_state=[normal|maximized|fullscreen] || Change how the window will show, it can be normal, maximized or fullscreen ||
|| -i, --icon=image || Change BigBashView 2 window icon ||
|| -c, --compatibility-mode || Enables BigBashView 1 compatibility mode ||
To create a hello world window, just call BigBashView as follows:
$ ./bigbashview.py 'execute$echo Hello World!'
To create a more fancy hello world, you coud try to create a script and call it, as follows:
$ vim hello.sh#!/bin/bash
echo "
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World at `BigBashView` 2</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello $USER!</h1>
<p>`date`</p>
</body>
</html>
"$chmod +x hello.sh
$./bigbashview.py 'execute$hello.sh'
As you saw above, to execute the hello.sh script, we used execute$
This syntax works like this:
command <options>$ <value>The available commands are:
|| Command || Description ||
|| execute || execute <value> in your shell environment, and returns to the page everything that was printed to stdout ||
|| content || returns the contents of the file at <value> ||
The available options are:
|| Option || Description ||
|| parse || Uses chameleon to parse the returned value ||
|| plain || Set the web header Content type to text/plain ||
|| background || only for execute command Executes the <value> in background ||
|| close || only for execute command Closes BigBashView after <value> execution ||
This same syntax can be used in URLs on links, images and everything on your webpage, just remember to put a / before to use it.
To get some examples on how to use server options, see the folder server_options inside the demos folder of your BigBashView package
After creating a form, set it on the action to send to server to execute the script. for example:
<form action="execute$./process_form.sh">in the process_form.sh you will get all post (or get) values in system variables named like:
p_fieldnameTo get an example on how to create a form, see the folder form inside the demos folder of your BigBashView package
Some html and javascript window manipulations will work on BigBashView windows.
|| on HTML/Javascript || behavior on BigBashView Window ||
|| html <title> tag on head || Change window title ||
|| html <link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF=""> tag on head || Change window icon ||
|| javascript window.close || Closes the window ||
|| javascript window.resizeTo || Resizes the window ||
|| javascript window.moveTo || Moves the window ||
To see those javascript and HMTL tips in action, see the folder javascript_html_tips inside the demos folder of your BigBashView package
As you can see [http://code.google.com/p/bigbashview/issues/detail?id=2 here], there are some issues related to javascript window.close when the window has navigated.
To workaround this, you can tell server to shutdown the application, calling the close option like this:
<a href="execute close$">Close the window</a>This option will only work with the execute command. Optionally you can, in your script, print "False" to stderr so the server will not close the window, like that:
<a href="execute close$echo False">This does not close the window</a>This way you can show a dialog confirmation before closing the window.
To get some examples on how to use this syntax, see the folder window_close inside the demos folder of your BigBashView package.
To enable the compatibility mode, you need to use the -c or --compatibility-mode argument option when starting the application.
In this mode BigBashView 2 will try to work similar to BigBashView 1.
There are significant differences:
In comptibility mode, the URLs will not contain commands, just the path for the file. BigBashView will try to guess what to do with the file according its extension.
|| Extension || BBV Action || || .sh,.sh.html,.sh.htm || Execute the file and return the result as HTML || || .run || Execute the file in background || || .htm, .html || Open the file and return its content as HTML || || .txt || Open the file and return its content as TXT ||
To get some examples on how to use compatibility mode, see the folder compatibility_mode inside the demos folder of your BigBashView package.
In BigBashView you can use [http://pagetemplates.org Chameleon] to parse your page templates.
To do that, you just need to use parse in the options of your command, for example:
./bigbashview.py 'content parse$./page_template.pt'So page_template.pt will be parsed with Chameleon.
Chameleon syntax has been extended to support sh: option, so you can use shell script to return values. But to set output type you need to send, in the first line of stderr, the type of the output.
Available output types are: int, float, bool, python, array, array_int, array_float, array_bool, str
For more information about how to use Chameleon, you can find it here: http://pagetemplates.org/docs/latest/#introduction
And to learn more about how to use Chameleon on BigBashView, see the folder parser inside the demos folder of your BigBashView package.