Have been investigating alternative method to query a sqlite3 database using tclsh84 ...

 

Initially, I have installed on my PC(s) - tcl/tk(8.4.12.0). Also, have installed the

tclsqlite3 dll. I have multiple (simple) sqlite3 databases which I maintain on my PC(s)

and one on the USB stick. The premise was not to rewrite code in PHP (not a PHP guru)

and to utilize and modify existing tcl code to query several simple sqlite3 databases...

I was not prepared to download more extensions/update PHP etc. at this time.

 

Here is synopsis of this investigation (after various iterations):

 

1. Created a searchit.html file with a form (action=post) to pass information to searchit.php:

note: pass the database name/table/field to query and the search string.

 

2. With searchit.php I utilized the $_POST[""] (PHP array?) to make the variables that I wanted to

pass to the tclsh84 (tcl shell).

ie. $searchstring =$_POST["searchstring"]; etc.

 

Built and printed initial HTML code (headers etc.)

 

I then made a call to "tclsh84" and passed (script name: searchit.tcl) and variables to

query a database:

ie. $output = exec("tclsh84 searchit.tcl $database $table $entry $searchstring");

 

3. tclsh84 opens the script (searchit.tcl) and reads in the variables - loads tclsqlite3 and performs

the query (as coded in searchit.tcl script). This builds a variable that I called "page" to return to

searchit.php.

note: variable "page" is 1 string (containing results with HTML code in order to build a table as

well as highlight the search string(color red) in textual results etc. )

 

4. The searchit.php script then prints the information received ($output) from tclsh84

ie. print $output;

 

The searchit.php script then prints out final HTML code and new html page produced.

 

Lessons learned:

1. PHP - likes 1 string (with no breaks/newlines) returned from calls

and remember those ";'s" in PHP.

2. I thought this approach would bog down; but Uniform Server proved to be pretty

quick. I am impressed with speed on this old PC.

3. Unfortunately this would limit sqlite3 queries to those systems with tcl/tk installed;

however, for my purposes this works well....

4. Considering using this same approach using Python......

 

Cheers!

wjk

Thanks