North Atlanta Web Design » VBScript

VBScript String Methods in a Simple PHP Class

Jeff Gibeau — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:42:52 +0000

When some people start out in a new language, they are in it for the long haul. Other people sometimes just need to touch on it without getting into the details. PHP is one of those languages where you can do things in a quick and dirty way without getting into the details. I have written a simple class for the kind of person that just wants to get a few things done quickly that is familiar with VBScripting. The class is mainly a wrapper class that allows you to perform VBScript style methods on strings in PHP. For instance, you can use VBScript::Left($string, $length) instead of using PHP’s substr($string, 0, $length). Enjoy!

= 5)
			return strrpos($haystack, $needle, $startPosition);
		else
			return strrpos($haystack, $needle);
	}

	//Converts a specified string to lowercase.
	function LCase($string)
	{
		return strtolower($string);
	}

	//Returns a specified number of characters from the left side of a string.
	function Left($string, $length)
	{
		return substr($string, 0, $length);
	}

	//Returns the number of characters in a string.
	function Len($string)
	{
		return strlen($string);
	}

	//Removes spaces on the left side of a string.
	function LTrim($string)
	{
		return ltrim($string);
	}

	//Removes spaces on the right side of a string.
	function RTrim($string)
	{
		return rtrim($string);
	}

	//Removes spaces on both the left and the right side of a string.
	function Trim($string)
	{
		return trim($string);
	}

	//Returns a specified number of characters from a string.
	function Mid($string, $start, $length = "")
	{
		if(!empty($length))
			return substr($string, $start, $length);
		else
			return substr($string, $start);
	}

	//Replaces a specified part of a string with another string a specified
	//number of times.
	function Replace($haystack, $needle, $replaceWith, $start = -1, $count = -1)
	{
		$returnVal = $haystack;
		if($start != -1)
		{
			if($count != -1 && floatval(phpversion()) >= 5)
			{
				$returnVal = substr($haystack, 0, $start) . str_replace($needle, $replaceWith, substr($haystack, $start), $count);
			}
			else
			{
				$returnVal = substr($haystack, 0, $start) . str_replace($needle, $replaceWith, substr($haystack, $start));
			}
		}
		else
		{
			if($count != -1 && floatval(phpversion()) >= 5)
			{
				$returnVal = str_replace($needle, $replaceWith, $haystack, $count);
			}
			else
			{
				$returnVal = str_replace($needle, $replaceWith, $haystack);
			}
		}
		return $returnVal;
	}

	//Returns a specified number of characters from the right side of a string.
	function Right($string, $count)
	{
		return substr($string, ($count * -1));
	}

	//Returns a string that consists of a specified number of spaces.
	function Space($numSpaces)
	{
		$returnVal = '';
		for($i = 0; $i < $numSpaces; $i++)
			$returnVal .= ' ';
		return $returnVal;
	}

	//Compares two strings and returns a value that represents the result of
	//the comparison.
	function StrComp($string1, $string2)
	{
		return strcmp($string1, $string2);
	}

	//Returns a string that contains a repeating character of a specified length.
	function String($length, $character)
	{
		$returnVal = '';
		while(strlen($returnVal) < $length)
			$returnVal .= $character;
		return substr($returnVal, 0, $length);
	}

	//Reverses a string.
	function StrReverse($string)
	{
		return strrev($string);
	}

	//Converts a specified string to uppercase.
	function UCase($string)
	{
		return strtoupper($string);
	}
}
?>

Using this class


* { font-family:courier; }
span.answer { color:red; background:#eeeeee;border:1px solid #ccc; }

';
//VBString::InStr
echo 'VBString::InStr("'.$string1.'", "'.$string2.'") -> '. VBString::InStr($string1, $string2).''.$nl;

//VBString::InStrRev
echo 'VBString::InStrRev("'.$string1.'", "'.$string2.'") -> '. VBString::InStrRev($string1, $string2).''.$nl;

//VBString::LCase
echo 'VBString::LCase("'.$string1.'") -> "'. VBString::LCase($string1).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::Left
echo 'VBString::Left("'.$string1.'", 5) -> "'.VBString::Left($string1, 5).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::Len
echo 'VBString::Len("'.$string1.'") -> '.VBString::Len($string1).''.$nl;

//VBString::LTrim
echo 'VBString::LTrim("'.$string1.'") -> "'.VBString::LTrim($string1).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::RTrim
echo 'VBString::RTrim("'.$string1.'") -> "'.VBString::RTrim($string1).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::Trim
echo 'VBString::Trim("'.$string1.'") -> "'.VBString::Trim($string1).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::Mid
echo 'VBString::Mid("'.$string1.'", 5, 5) -> "'.VBString::Mid($string1, 5, 5).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::Replace
echo 'VBString::Replace("'.$string1.'", "'.$string2.'", "'.$string3.'", 5) -> "'.VBString::Replace($string1, $string2, $string3, 5).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::Right
echo 'VBString::Right("'.$string1.'", 5) -> "'.VBString::Right($string1, 5).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::Space
echo 'VBString::Space(10) -> "'.VBString::Space(10).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::StrComp
echo 'VBString::StrComp("'.$string1.'", "'.$string1.'") -> "'.VBString::StrComp($string1, $string1).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::String
echo 'VBString::String(10, "*") -> "'.VBString::String(10, "*").'"'.$nl;

//VBString::StrReverse
echo 'VBString::StrReverse("'.$string1.'") -> "'.VBString::StrReverse($string1).'"'.$nl;

//VBString::UCase
echo 'VBString::UCase("'.$string1.'") -> "'. VBString::UCase($string1).'"'.$nl;

echo '';
?>

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HTA Progress Bar using VBScript and JavaScript

Jeff Gibeau — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:53:30 +0000

I was informed after my last post that using HTA (HTML Applications) to display a progress bar in VBScript is much more efficient than using InternetExplorer.Application within a VBScript. Having never used HTA before, I immediately set out to learn a bit and see what I could come up with.

My initial thoughts are mixed, as you can not run and interact with an HTA from a VBScript file. This requires you to wrap your VBScript code in whatever HTML Application you are writing. This greatly limits re-usability, enough so that the increase in performance may not warrant using an HTA for a progress bar in most cases.

I would like to note that this is a first draft of this script, and I may update it in the future, if I deem HTML Applications the way to go. As for now, I am not convinced.



	HTA Progress Bar

Some potentially useful links dealing with HTA:

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Simple VBScript Progress Bar

Jeff Gibeau — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:26:17 +0000

Recently I had a need for a simple progress bar written in VBScript to let users know what was going on in a multi-step application. To my surprise, VBScript has nothing built in for a progress bar. After much searching, I was able to find this thread that linked to yet another thread with a simple progress bar done in HTML using InternetExplorer.Application. I have taken this code and modified it to show an actual progess bar, with percentages, that can be updated as desired. I’ve wrapped it up in a nice easy-to-use class for reusability. Enjoy!

Simple VBScript Progress Bar

VBScript Progress Bar Class:

Class ProgressBar
Private m_PercentComplete
Private m_CurrentStep
Private m_ProgressBar
Private m_Title
Private m_Text
Private m_StatusBarText

'Initialize defaults
Private Sub ProgessBar_Initialize
m_PercentComplete = 0
m_CurrentStep = 0
m_Title = "Progress"
m_Text = ""
End Sub

Public Function SetTitle(pTitle)
m_Title = pTitle
End Function

Public Function SetText(pText)
m_Text = pText
End Function

Public Function Update(percentComplete)
m_PercentComplete = percentComplete
UpdateProgressBar()
End Function

Public Function Show()
Set m_ProgressBar = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
'in code, the colon acts as a line feed
m_ProgressBar.navigate2 "about:blank" : m_ProgressBar.width = 315 : m_ProgressBar.height = 40 : m_ProgressBar.toolbar = false : m_ProgressBar.menubar = false : m_ProgressBar.statusbar = false : m_ProgressBar.visible = True
m_ProgressBar.document.write "0"
m_ProgressBar.document.write ""
m_ProgressBar.document.write ""
End Function

Public Function Close()
m_ProgressBar.quit
m_ProgressBar = Nothing
End Function

Private Function UpdateProgressBar()
If m_PercentComplete = 0 Then
m_StatusBarText = ""
End If
For n = m_CurrentStep to m_PercentComplete - 1
m_StatusBarText = m_StatusBarText & "|"
m_ProgressBar.Document.GetElementById("statusbar").InnerHtml = m_StatusBarText
m_ProgressBar.Document.title = n & "% Complete : " & m_Title
m_ProgressBar.Document.GetElementById("pc").InnerHtml = n & "% Complete : " & m_Title
wscript.sleep 10
Next
m_ProgressBar.Document.GetElementById("statusbar").InnerHtml = m_StatusBarText
m_ProgressBar.Document.title = m_PercentComplete & "% Complete : " & m_Title
m_ProgressBar.Document.GetElementById("pc").InnerHtml = m_PercentComplete & "% Complete : " & m_Title
m_ProgressBar.Document.GetElementById("text").InnerHtml = m_Text
m_CurrentStep = m_PercentComplete
End Function

End Class

Example of Usage:

'Declare progressbar and percentage complete
Dim pb
Dim percentComplete
'Setup the initial progress bar
Set pb = New ProgressBar
percentComplete = 0
pb.SetTitle("Step 1 of 5")
pb.SetText("Copying bin/Debug Folder")
pb.Show()

'Loop to update the percent complete of the progress bar
'Just add the pb.Update in your code to update the bar
'Text can be updated as well by pb.SetText
Do While percentComplete <= 100
wscript.sleep 500
pb.Update(percentComplete)
percentComplete = percentComplete + 10
Loop
wscript.sleep 3000

'This shows how you can use the code for multiple steps
'In a future iteration I will add a second bar to measure overall progress
percentComplete = 0
pb.SetTitle("Step 2 of 5")
pb.SetText("Copying bin/Release Folder")
pb.Update(percentComplete)
Do While percentComplete <= 100
wscript.sleep 500
pb.Update(percentComplete)
percentComplete = percentComplete + 10
Loop
pb.Close()
wscript.quit

In a future release, I may add another progress bar to keep track of the steps that are completed. Feel free to use and modify this code as you desire.

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