Bigtop::Docs::TentTut 0.14

Bigtop::Docs::TentTut is Perl module for tentmaker Tutorial (best viewed in html).

If you dont know what Bigtop is, you might want to start by reading Bigtop::Docs::About.

Bigtop is a language of simple structure, but with many keywords. In an effort to make it easier to use, I have written tentmaker, which amounts to a wizard for building web apps. Yet, tentmaker is not as simple as the wizards so frequently presented by desktop OSes, hence this document. (Further, tentmaker can be used repeatedly, even after an app has been built and deployed.)

Here I will walk you through using tentmaker to generate a bigtop file. Then I will show how to use bigtop to turn that into a web app. Then I will return to expand the example in a second iteration of feature additions. There are plenty of screen shots here, so it is best to view this document with a browser. If you are viewing it with perldoc, you may want to consult the screen shots with another program. You can find them in the docs directory of the Bigtop distribution and on the web at http://www.usegantry.org/images/tenttut.

The example app I will build here is a contact database. It will initially store names and phone numbers. In the second iteration I will expand it.