* A selection of useful tools for Web Applications building
Today I have a selection of useful tools for Web Applications building. These are tools that I discovered while trying to build a Web site that was integrated with e-commerce services.
Today I have a selection of useful tools for Web Applications building. These are tools that I discovered while trying to build a Web site that was integrated with e-commerce services (see this week’s Gearhead).
My first collection of tools come from JafSoft Limited. This company publishes extremely useful utilities for text and HTML manipulation. The product line includes:
* Detagger, an HTML to Text converter and markup remover (Windows $29.95)AscToHTM, a text to HTML converter (Windows $30, OpenVMS free)AscToPDF, a text to PDF converter (Windows $40)AscToRTF, a text to RTF converter (Windows $59)AscToTab, a text to table (HTML or RTF) converter (Windows and OpenVMS free)
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Detagger was the reason that I discovered JafSoft. I was looking for a tool to extract data from a set of HTML-formatted e-mail messages into a comma separated variable (CSV) file. What I have are warehouse orders that are formatted similarly to invoices, one per order. What I need are the orders batched in specific CSV formats to be sent once per day. More on my trails with this problem in future Gearhead columns.
Along with the extract feature Detagger can also “convert HTML pages to good looking plain text (.txt) with headings, lists, and tables all nicely laid out / build a list of all hyperlink URLs in the document / convert HTML e-mail to a smaller, safer ASCII text format for archiving / prepare Web pages for insertion into a database, either as simple text, or as CSV data” and selectively remove HTML markup to optimize pages, remove inline CSS, and assist in migrating documents to CSS or XHTML.
So far Detagger is looking like a very promising solution to my problems.
Another freeware tool from JafSoft is AddLinx, which will find text in a file that is in URL format and convert it to be an active link – very useful where you need to regularly convert purely text reports that contain URLs into HTML documents. This tool is actually a simpler version of AscToHTM.
My final tool is from BigNoseBird.Com, and it is a free script: Birdcast.cgi. Birdcast is a piece of code that allows site visitors to recommend whatever you are offering to their friends.
Written in Perl and compatible with Windows and Linux, Birdcast does more than just send messages using SMTP via Sockets or Sendmail, it also allows “for an unlimited number of target recipients per page / returns the reader to the calling page when they are done / [protects] against off-site abuse” and includes an e-mail address and page capture log.
Also, check out the rest of BigNoseBird’s free scripts – there’s lots of very useful code there.
