Open Source Starter Guide for IBM i Developers

by Pete Helgren

Overview

This book provides a friendly, practical introduction to open source development options for programmers who build applications to run on IBM i computers. The author dispenses guidance to help developers get into open source in a strategic way—for example, helping them to assess the tools and platforms based on criteria such as their business needs, capabilities of the open source technologies, and career development considerations. Readers will take away a clear understanding of open source on IBM i platforms and tools, how these tools fit in with IBM i app development, and the next steps they must take in order to start developing with open source technologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583474952
Publisher:	MC Press, LLC
Publication date:	06/15/2017
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Pete Helgren is Programmer/Team Lead at Bible Study Fellowship International. Pete is an experienced programmer in the ILE RPG, PHP, Java, Ruby/Rails, C++, and C# languages with over 25 years of experience. He is currently Executive Vice President on the COMMON Board of Directors and actively blogs at petesworkshop.com.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments iii

Preface ix

1 IBM i and Open Source 1

Why Open Source on IBM i? 2

It's All About the Community 2

2 The PASE Environment 5

PASE and ILE 6

Installing PASE 8

PASE Applications 8

Using PASE 10

3 The Integrated Language Environment (ILE) 13

ILE's Origins 13

Modularity and Binding 14

The Benefits of ILE's Integration 15

4 The Beast That Is XMLSERVICE 17

Installation 18

Next Steps 19

XMLSERVICE Examples 22

First Step: Prepare the Apache Server 22

Second Step: Serve the Web Pages 25

5 i Object! 33

Classes 34

Encapsulation 35

Inheritance 36

Interfaces 37

Polymorphism 37

Have Some Class 38

6 Ruby and IBM i 39

Installation 42

IDEs and irb 42

Language Basics 48

Variables 48

Scope 49

Built-in Functions 52

Containers 53

Hashes 57

Program Structure in Ruby 59

Modules 59

Control Flow in Ruby 64

Using Case 70

A Brief Aside into Error Handling 71

File, I/O, and System Operations 72

A Brief Aside into I/O 73

Files 74

System Commands 79

The Ruby Toolkit 80

Alternatives 85

Using JRuby with ActiveXML Service and ActiveRecord 90

Something New 97

7 Rails and Ruby 99

Getting Started with Rails 99

Building a Rails Application 101

Rails and MVC 105

Structure of a Rails Project 107

Database Access in Rails 108

Accessing Resources with Routes 109

Summing It Up 110

8 PHP on IBM i 111

Where PHP Lives on IBM i 112

Installation 113

Running Scripts 114

Programming Basics 115

Variables 116

Operators 118

Iteration 119

Strings 120

Accessing System Resources 122

Files 122

Running System Commands 123

Database Access 124

Accessing IBM i Commands and Programs 127

Simple Commands 127

Calling Programs and Procedures 133

PHP in the Web World 138

9 Python 145

Installation 146

Programming in Python 147

Numbers 148

Strings 148

Lists 148

Tuples 149

Dictionary 151

Functions 152

Modules 154

Classes in Python 159

File Access in Python 161

System Access 163

DB2 Access 164

Accessing RPG 165

Feel the Power 168

10 Node.js on IBM i 169

Jiving with JavaScript 170

Classes and Objects 177

Arrays and Hashes 181

Functions 186

Node.js 190

Vexing Versions 192

System Access 203

DB2 Database Access 204

11 Apache and Tomcat on IBM i 213

Apache 214

Tomcat 218

12 The IBM i Open Source Garden 221

User Groups 222

Virtual Communities 223

Notable "Solos" 223

Index 225