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8393 :: Possible with NimScript? Turn old forum DB into static HTML

• upholstered (orginal) [2021-09-03T23:02:34+02:00] view original

  Hi everyone,

  I am enjoying Nim so far. I do a lot of scripting and was wondering if a project like this might work, any input would be appreciated.

  I'd like to take an old (pre-2018) PunBB forum (PHP & MySQL) database, and restore access to the contents by generating static HTML. The upgrade path was broken long ago and the forum is basically dead for lack of any upgrade path.

  So, my thoughts:

  • Tools: NimScript and db_mysql
  • Input: PunBB MySQL database data
  • Output: Static HTML representation of old forum contents, for archival purposes

  No dynamic database functionality (CRUD, etc.) is needed in the HTML output.

  Possible? A reasonable project for NimScript?

  Thank you.

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• dom96 (orginal) [2021-09-03T23:28:48+02:00] view original

  Hello and welcome to the Nim community :)

  First question for you: why are you intending to use nimscript for this? For Nim it's no problem.

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• upholstered (orginal) [2021-09-03T23:38:52+02:00] view original

  Thank you for the kind welcome. :-)

  I am generally more comfortable with scripting and find the compilation process a bit of an extraneous step, but I'm open to others' thoughts on this. If for any reason Nim is more appropriate, I'd be fine with that...

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• PMunch (orginal) [2021-09-04T00:21:02+02:00] view original

  Nim is definitely better suited for this purpose as you're creating a program that does something very specific. NimScript is mostly used to write code that automatically generates more code, or for allowing embedded control facilities. Luckily for you however the difference between running NimScript and compiling and running a fully fledged Nim program is fairly slim:

  
  nim r myscript.nims
  nim c -r myprogram.nim
  Run

  And if you're doing anything but the most trivial task it will also likely be faster to compile and run.

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• alexeypetrushin (orginal) [2021-09-04T00:22:31+02:00] view original

  I'm also prefer scripting and never used Nim binaries, the nim r myprogram.nim works ok. Additionally you may add nim.cfg with outdir:.trash to avoid seeing binaries.

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• upholstered (orginal) [2021-09-04T01:54:04+02:00] view original

  Thanks for those helpful replies and the commands as well. I'll look forward to using Nim for this project. I'm excited to learn more about it.

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• PMunch (orginal) [2021-09-04T12:46:24+02:00] view original

  Or you could use something like nimcr which makes Nim feel and behave just like any other script.

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• Araq (orginal) [2021-09-04T13:55:49+02:00] view original

  @alexeypetrushin Extra points for showing warning[ProveField]:on, it's the way. :-)

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• upholstered (orginal) [2021-09-04T18:38:52+02:00] view original

  @PMunch that's a helpful resource, thank you.

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