Lasso (programming language)

History

Lasso began in the mid-1990s when early web developers were attempting to build database-backed websites using Apple's FileMaker Pro. On the Mac platform, there were two solutions: Eric Bickford's WEB-FM, and Russell Owens' FileMaker CGI (ROFM), both built in AppleScript and requiring the use of FileMaker Pro calculation fields for formatting. (WEB-FM was subsequently rewritten in C).

In the Fall of 1995, independent developer Vince Bonfanti wrote a new CGI based on ROFM, using C/C++ for improved performance, and using the notion of HTML-based "templates" instead of relying on calculation fields. This proved very popular in the FileMaker community, and was brought to the attention of Bill Doerrfeld, owner of Blue World Communications Inc., a print and website development firm based out of Issaquah, Washington, who bought the source code.^[14]

At this time, Blue World experimented with improvements for the CGI in the Frontier scripting environment, which inspired the name "Lasso". Further need for improvement drove the creation of a C-based CGI which was later released as "Lasso 1.0". At this point Lasso only worked with FileMaker Pro 3.x and WebSTAR, and only ran on Apple Mac OS 8 and above.^[15]

Lasso's popularity grew most notably from reviews in print publications^{[16][discuss]} and Blue World's hosting of and participation in many email discussion lists, many of which specifically pertained to FileMaker Pro. Blue World also made frequent appearances and was known as a leading company at MacWorld conferences.^[17]

Following the release of the Lasso 1.2 lineup in January 1997, Blue World and the Bonfantis entered private talks with Claris, the software division of Apple Computer, and owner of FileMaker Pro. Claris eventually licensed the post-version-1.2 Lasso source code, and with the help of Vince and Paul Bonfanti released the FileMaker Web Companion as a component of FileMaker Pro 4.0. FileMaker Web Companion's language, CDML (Claris Dynamic Markup Language),^[18] differed from Lasso 1.2's LDML (Lasso Dynamic Markup Language), but was close enough as to offer an easy transition for developers looking to serve from FileMaker Pro through third-party servers^[19] and offered more compelling features.^[20]

Including the Lasso-like Web Companion in FileMaker 4.0 helped grow popularity for Lasso in the fast-growing Macintosh web development community. Blue World continued developing Lasso with Kyle Jessup becoming Lasso's lead programmer. Lasso 2.0 was released in July 1997, introducing some fundamental shifts in how Lasso could be used.^[21]

On February 26, 2002, Blue World released Lasso 5, a radical departure from the FileMaker-centric language to date. (There was never a Lasso 4 release; the version number skipped from 3 to 5.) Lasso 5 included, among many updates, a completely rewritten architecture (for OS X, Windows, Linux), and an embedded MySQL database.^[22] Though Lasso 5 still spoke to a FileMaker database (but not to a FileMaker Server), FileMaker as a data source remained relatively slow compared to an SQL engine, and was prohibitively more expensive. Since v2.0, Lasso was fully multithreaded, allowing many connections at once, but succumbed to FileMaker's latency or lag in certain operations, and there was no way to get around it reliably other than to make major changes to the data source.^[23]

Lasso 5 also added support for Apache HTTP Server natively under OS X, Windows, and Linux, joining Webstar 5, AppleShare IP (which was replaced by OS X Server), and iTools (from Tenon^[24]). (Mac OS 9, on which Lasso had been used for many years, was unsupported). This drove closer ties to a classic LAMP server architecture.^{[citation needed]}

Blue World Communications released a series of plug-ins for popular Web development packages from Macromedia and Adobe. Lasso Studio 1.5 for Dreamweaver was a runner up in MacWorld magazine's Editors' Choice Awards for Internet and Development^[25] in 2001, losing out to Adobe Dreamweaver 3. Lasso Studio for Dreamweaver 1.5^[26] was also reviewed favorably by MacWorld magazine earning 4 and a half mice. Later version of Lasso Studio supported both Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive including Lasso Studio 7 for Dreamweaver and GoLive^[27] on March 26, 2004.

With the release of FileMaker Server and FileMaker Server Advanced version 7 in 2004 FileMaker signaled a major change in their strategy for serving data to Web sites. They emphasized XML-XSLT, ODBC, and JDBC connectivity, but only through the more expensive FileMaker Server Advanced product.^[28] Blue World began to distance the Lasso language from FileMaker and Apple. In 2005, Lasso Pro received MySQL Network certification^[29] demonstrating the importance of the popular open source database to the future of Lasso.

On August 1 of 2004, Bill Doerrfeld officially sold the Lasso product line to OmniPilot Software, Inc. in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Lasso 7.0.3 was the last version of Lasso released by Blue World.^[30]

On October 25, 2004, OmniPilot officially announced the release of Lasso 8, a version including sandboxing for multiple sites on the same server and connectivity to many new datasources.^[31] This also included the first "free" version of Lasso limited to IP addresses.^[32] OmniPilot followed this release with a number of complementary products, including Lasso Studio 8 for Dreamweaver and GoLive^[33] on March 28, 2005, Lasso Studio for Eclipse, ChartFX integration and a number of free Lasso-based solutions.^[34]

In 2007, three OmniPilot employees, Kyle Jessup (the original developer of Lasso 1.0), Fletcher Sandbeck (an early employee of Blue World known for regular Tips and Tricks) and Kerry Adams (an employee of OmniPilot) created a new company, LassoSoft LLC, to purchase the intellectual property of Lasso from OmniPilot and continue development.^[35][36] Recognizing the need to be competitive against much more popular languages such as PHP and ASP, radical changes in architecture, syntax and structure were made and released as Lasso 9.0. Technical challenges caused by these changes, coupled with limited marketing resources, led to significant community decline as the company struggled to release documentation and support for the new language.^[37][38]

In December 2010, a new Canadian company was formed, LassoSoft Inc., which bought and invested heavily in the Lasso 9.0 language, marketing and documentation. Kyle Jessup agreed to stay on as both Lasso's Lead Developer and Benevolent Dictator for Life. Several releases (9.1 and 9.2) have released further developments in recent years.^[39]

Release history

Code examples

Hello World

Here are three ways to say "Hello world!" on a Lasso page.

<?lasso 'Hello World!' ?>

['Hello world!']

Hello world!

Square brackets are reserved in Lasso, so HTML entities must be used to show square brackets on Lasso pages for other purposes than marking Lasso tags. Alternatively, printing square brackets can be by Lasso or be disabled by including [no_square_brackets] at the file top.

Inlines

// Find all records in a table
inline(		
	-database='db_name', 
	-table='table_name', 
	-findall	
) => {
	// Iterate through and process each row
	rows => {	
		// Output each row to the current web request
		content_body += '<a href="' + column('url') + '">' + column('title') + '</a>'
	}	
}

Inlines are the basic Lasso tool for database actions. Database commands can be issued as above, in Lasso's db-independent metalanguage, in which case the same search code works for MySQL, FileMaker Pro or for any other database backend with which Lasso can connect.

If needed, a SQL statement can of course be embedded in the inline when using a database server that supports SQL:

 // Execute SQL statement
 inline(		
 	-database='db_name', 
 	-sql = 'SELECT * FROM table_name'	
 )...

In the above example, the dashes (-) before commands denote optional parameters. These can be specified in any order and generated dynamically; the last of any duplicate parameters take precedence. The inline command supports a large range of parameters^[59] allowing developers to interact with databases that they may not have intimate knowledge of.

Custom database connectors can be created which allows leveraging the abstracted nature of the inline command.

99 Bottles of Beer

The next procedural example prints out the lyrics for the song "99 Bottles of Beer".

// Define a couple of useful methods

	define br => '<br/>'
	define bottles(n::integer) => #n != 1 ? ' bottles' | ' bottle'

// Declare the local that will store the lyrics as a string

	local(out = '')

// Use Lasso query syntax to generate the lyric

	with n in 99 to 1 by -1 do {

		#out +=  #n + bottles(#n) + ' of beer on the wall, ' + br
		#out +=  #n + bottles(#n) + ' of beer; ' + br
		#n--
		#out += 'Take one down, pass it around, ' + br
		#out += #n + bottles(#n) + ' of beer on the wall. ' + (br * 2)
	}

// Output result

	#out

The next example uses an OOP approach to print out the lyrics when the object is represented as a string:

// Define type
define bottles_of_beer => type {

	// Define internal data 
	data private bottles = 99

	// Define private methods
	private br => '<br/>'
	private s => .bottles != 1 ? 's' | ''
	
	// Generate lyrics when object represented as a string
	public asstring => {

		local(out = '')
	
		// Use Lasso query syntax to generate the lyrics
	

		with n in 99 to 1 by -1 do {
			.bottles = #n
			#out +=  .bottles + ' bottle' + .s + ' of beer on the wall, ' + .br
			#out +=  .bottles + ' bottle' + .s + ' of beer; ' + .br
			.bottles--
			#out += 'Take one down, pass it around, ' + .br
			#out += .bottles + ' bottle' + .s + ' of beer on the wall. ' + (.br * 2) 
		}

		// Return result
		return #out
	}
}

bottles_of_beer

Development tools, environments

• LassoLab
• Lasso Studio for Eclipse
• Lasso language mode for Coda
• Lasso language module for BBEdit

References

External links

• Official website, LassoSoft
• Official website, LassoGuide
• LassoReference
• FileMaker
• ListSearch - LassoSoft's ListSearch Engine
• LassoTalk Archive on Nabble
• LassoTalk Archive on Google Groups
• ExecuChoice - PDF Tag Suite - PassThru - ShortString
• Knop - an open source web application framework for Lasso 8 and 9
• LassoFusebox - a Lasso port of the popular open source Fusebox web application framework, for Lasso 8 and 9
• LassoBin - A PasteBin for Lasso
• LassoForge - OpenSource Lasso Projects
• tagSwap - A public exchange for Lasso custom tags
• L-Debug - Debugging suite for Lasso 8 & Lasso 9
• This Wikipedia entry relies heavily on early announcements and many notable sources no longer available on the web.