Ad507

®
AD507 – Leveraging the Power of Object
Oriented Programming in LotusScript
Jens-B. Augustiny – LIGONET GmbH
Bill Buchan – HADSL

Agenda
Introductions
Why Object Orientated Programming
Basic OO techniques
An Object Orientated Project
Encapsulating Classes
Extending Classes
Summary
Questions and Answers

Introductions
Who are we ?
Jens-B. Augustiny, LIGONET GmbH
25 years IT experience, 12 with Lotus Notes
Dual PCLP v4, v5, v6, v7
Founder and CTO of a Business Partner – LIGONET – in Switzerland
Bill Buchan, HADSL
23 years IT experience, 12 with Lotus Notes
Dual PCLP in v3, v4, v5, v6, v7
Founder and CEO of a Business Partner – HADSL – in the UK
Who are you ?
A LotusScript developer
You wish to improve your code, write more efficiently, & write more robust code

Why Object Orientated Programming?
Object Orientated Programming:
Allows you to design higher-level objects.
Allows far more code-reuse.
Allows you to write less code.
And therefore leads to easier maintenance.
What does this presentation deliver ?
We aim to show a typical application, and how OO techniques help the design
process.
We show basic and more complex design techniques during the development of
the application.
And we show common questions and answers as the presentation unfolds.

Object Orientated Programming:
Conceptually
An object is a collection of properties (data) and methods (code) which
encapsulates a logical entity.
For instance, a Car is made up of objects –
4 instances of “wheel”, 1 instance of “engine”, etc.
This allows us to break our problem set into logical units – objects.
In LotusScript, we express this as a “class”.
Our consumer code then creates new instances of classes – objects – that we
then utilise.
Remember – NotesSession, NotesDocument – are all classes!

Public and Private:
An object has to have
some public methods (functions/subs).
may have public members (variables).
Internal code for the object need not be exposed
“Code Hiding” means not showing the consumer more than he needs to see.
Importantly – the consumer now codes to the public interface of that object.
NotesSession
CurrentDatabase
SendConsoleCommand()InternalVariable
InternalFunction()

How to design an Object Orientated Application
Decide which objects make sense in terms of the problem space.
Make the object represent logical entities within the application.
“Person”, “PersonCollection”, “Transaction”, etc are good examples.
Write these object names down on separate pieces of paper
Perform an application “walk through”
This will quickly show which objects need to perform particular operations, and
which objects interact with other objects.
This helps define the “public” interface to the Object.
Don’t worry as to how operations within objects are performed at this stage.
Note:
This is a very simplistic approach, and far more approaches exist. Remember,
OO programming is common in other environments.

OOP & LotusScript
To create a class in LotusScript, wrap code and data around “class”
definitions. Such as:
And consume it with:
Class Person
Private nnName as NotesName
Public strInternetAddress as String
Sub new(doc as NotesDocument)
Set nnName = doc.GetitemValue(“FullName”)(0)
me.strInternetAddress = doc.getItemValue(“InternetAddress”)(0)
End sub
Public function getName
If (me.nnName is nothing) then exit function
getName = nnName.Abbreviated
End function
End class
Dim P as new Person(doc)
Print “Person: “ + P.getName()

Why does that help ?
It helps us construct complex (and possibly interconnected) in-
memory data structures
It sites the code for that data structure alongside the data structure
Making maintenance easier
We can use these complex data structures to represent far more
complex algorithms.
We can architect solutions at a far higher level, using objects
(instances of these classes).
Classes can inherit from other classes, thus aiding code re-
use(dramatically).

Where does this help us ?
Complex code.
Large applications.
Applications that have or may change data structure frequently.
Groups of applications that share common data structures.

Examples:
Directory Comparison tools.
Its far faster to read multiple directories into memory and perform comparisons
between in-memory objects.
Workflow systems
Where you can “hide” the complexity of the workflow from other code.
Interfaces to External Systems
Where the Interface can be complex.
Or where you wish to support multiple interfaces.
Where you are attempting to perform complex relational
operations.

Customer Specification
Our Company – Cheese International – is going through a sensitive
“media event” after the leader of a (large, dangerous and heavily
armed) country almost choked to death on some “stinking bishop”.
We have therefore been tasked with writing a Notes database
which will read all on-line news sites looking for mention of our
company.
This database will then be replicated to all the people in our
Marketing department, who can then respond.
Today.
This sounds hard, right ?

High Level Architecture
This may be a little simpler than we thought.
All our targeted news sites allow people to use RSS:
Really Simple Syndication.
It’s a way of downloading a summary of their site by HTTP (the same protocol
that a web browser uses), in XML format.
So what we need to do is
1. construct a database with a list of RSS URL’s.
2. scan these URL’s.
3. Open up the RSS feed.
4. Download the XML.
5. Parse the XML.
6. Extract the news Items
7. Write them to documents.
8. Go down the pub.

Remember the golden rule:
We construct business
applications from pre-existing
components.
We do NOT construct new
technology if at all possible.

Design Considerations:
The only part that we cant do within LotusScript is the
Use Http to download XML
We could parse XML within LotusScript from version 6 onwards.
After extensive research (10 minutes on Google.com)
We find the MSXML v6 Software Development Kit.
It can download XML, parse it and uses the COM interface.
So we can use “CreateObject” within LotusScript to interface with it.
Its built into IE7 and Vista
But we don’t have that.
But you can install it on the client (and/or server)
Its platform specific – to windows.
In this case, so are we.

Pitfalls
You have to instantiate new Objects within COM, and make
absolutely sure that these are deallocated.
Classes can help with that
Classes Support Constuctors and Destructors
We’re keeping a complex relationship between Sites and their news
stories
Classes can help there too!

Implementation Design
Lets have a class for a site
It can allocate all our COM stuff and make sure its shut down
properly
It can then keep track of all News Items for that site.
It can write out new Notes Documents for new News items
Maintaining a unique reference for each story is actually easy, as each story will
have its own unique URL.

First Attempt at our Site Class
A first
attempt at
our “Site”
class could
be:
Class SiteClass
Private strSiteName as String
Private strURL as String
private msXml as Variant
sub new(doc as NotesDocument)
‘ get the site name and URL from the document
‘ Instantiate the COM objects
‘ Open up the Site and get the XML
‘ Parse the XML, and for each News Story,
‘ Do something…
end sub
sub delete()
set msXML = nothing
end sub
End class

First Attempt at our Site Class….
And we’d use this class by:
Dim sSession as new NotesSession
Dim dbThis as NotesDatabase
Set dbThis = sSession.currentDatabase
Dim vLookup as NotesView
Set vLookup = dbThis.getView(“Sites”)
Dim doc as NotesDocument
Set doc = vLookup.getFirstDocument
While not doc is nothing
dim S as new SiteClass(doc)
set doc = vLookup.getNextDocument(doc)
wend

Example:
Lets see how this works….
First Demonstration of our Application

Results:
We’re clearly getting the XML back from the site
We are not yet parsing the Stories out of the site XML information
What to do with the stories themselves ?
It’s a relational construct
One site can have zero or more stories
Classes to the rescue ?
But how ?

Encapsulating Classes
So far we now understand how to use a single class by itself.
How do we include - encapsulate - other classes within the first
class ?
Can we encapsulate a collection of other objects – instances of
classes within this class ?

Lists
Lists. A collection construct that’s been in LotusScript since
LotusScript was born.
It allows you to construct a memory construct where you have zero
or more items in a list, and each item is referenced by a lookup
value. Like an in-memory “view”.
How many people know how to use lists ?
Resources:
The View – December 2006 article.
http://www.billbuchan.com/web.nsf/htdocs/BBUN67JJCV.htm
Can Lists work with Classes ?
Of course!

A List of Classes.
In fact, we can have a list of classes. For instance:
Dim sSession as new NotesSession
Dim dbThis as NotesDatabase
Set dbThis = sSession.currentDatabase
Dim vLookup as NotesView
Set vLookup = dbThis.getView(“Sites”)
Dim doc as NotesDocument
Dim Sites list as SiteClass
Set doc = vLookup.getFirstDocument
While not doc is nothing
dim S as new SiteClass(doc)
Set Sites( S.getname() ) = S
set doc = vLookup.getNextDocument(doc)
wend

Lets define our Item Class
This class will hold each News Item:
Class ItemClass
Private strTitle as String
Private strLink as String
private strDescription as String
sub new(Story as Variant)
‘ populate this
‘ object from the variant
end sub
End class
Class SiteClass
…
Private Items List as ItemClass
…
End class

Lets see this in Action
Second Application Demonstration

Extending Classes
Classes can be extended from other classes, and inherit
code+properties.
This leads to code-reuse.
Example:
Class baseClass
…
Private Function log(msg as String)
…
end function
End class
Class SiteClass as BaseClass
….
sub new(doc as NotesDocument)
….
call me.log(“Started”)
….
end sub
End class

UserCreateRequestClassv6
UserCreateRequestClass
UserMoveRequestClass
UserRenameRequestClass
UserDeleteRequestClass
UserCreateUIClass
UserMoveUIClass
UserRenameUIClass
UserDeleteUIClass
Extending Classes…
When one class is extended from another class
It inherits all code and data from that original class
It can execute “private” methods and access private “members”
There is no limit to the level of inheritance
But don’t go mad
For instance:
FactoryClassRequestClassUIClass
BaseClass

Production Quality
How can we make this application more “production quality ? “
Adding a logging subsystem.
But we don’t want to make significant changes to the existing code
We can do this by creating a “BaseClass”, and have the other
classes inherit from that.
Our BaseClass can incorporate a common logging subsystem
And any other code we wish to use.

Site
BaseClass
BaseClass Specification
However, Since we shall have an object in memory for:
Each Site
Each story
Our Baseclass cannot create a new NotesAgentLog class for each
instance.
We need to only create ONE single instance of our NotesAgentLog class.
Site
BaseClass
SiteClass
BaseClass
Item
BaseClass
Item
BaseClass
Item
BaseClass
ItemClass
BaseClass
LogClass

Singleton
“Singleton” is a design pattern which ensures that ONLY one copy
of an object exists at one time:
Class baseClass
private log as variant
Sub new()
set log = getNewLog()
End sub
Private Function log(msg as String)
call log.writeMsg(msg)
end function
End class
Private globalLog as Variant
Public Function getNewLog() as variant
if (isEmpty(globalLog)) then
set globalLog = new logClass
end if
set getNewLog = globalLog
End function
Class logClass
public Function writeMsg(msg as String)
…
end function
End class

Lets incorporate BaseClass
Third Application Demonstration

Summary
Object Orientated Programming in LotusScript:
Is easy.
Allows far more code reuse.
Allows you to focus on the design.
It’s a stepping stone to other Object Orientated Languages
Java, anyone ?
Java as a language is NOT DIFFICULT
Its the Object Orientated Part that traditional LotusScript programmers find
hard.

Some Resources
Notes Designer help: look for "class statement", "custom classes", "derived
classes" ... and more
LotusScript Programmer's Guide, Developer Works
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/notesua.nsf
Dynamic Loading
http://www.hadsl.com/hadslblog.nsf/d6plinks/RCAS-6VDQV4
Article "Creating Custom Classes in LS" by Johan Känngård
http://dev.kanngard.net/dev/home.nsf/ArticlesByTitle/LSClass.html
Teamstudio ScriptBrowser:
http://blogs.teamstudio.com
OpenDom Blog
http://opendom.blogspot.com/ - Alain H Romedenne

Related Sessions at Lotusphere 2007
BP301 Advanced Object Oriented Programming for LotusScript
Bill Buchan
AD506 Intermediate LotusScript
John Dillon
BP308 Leverage DXL and OOP to Build Powerful Tools
Mikkel Heisterberg
AD504 What's New in the IBM Lotus Domino Objects?
James Cooper

Questions and Answers
We are:
Jens-B Augustini – LIGONET Gmbh:
http://www.ligonet.ch - Augustiny.j@ligonet.ch
Bill Buchan – HADSL
http://www.hadsl.com - bill.buchan@hads.com
This was:
AD507 - Leveraging the Power of Object Oriented Programming in LotusScript
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