MIVAScript Beginner - Where do I start?

[Luke]

I have decided to take on MIVA script... I have never used it before, but I have experience with php, perl, javascript, some java, and of course HTML.

Where would be a good place to start? I have been searching the net for good documentation, but haven't found much. Thanks in advance!

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Pretty much the only documentation is what is available on MIVA's website (http://smallbusiness.miva.com/support/docs/api/).

[mvmarkus]

The problem is that there are only very few free/independent coders out there who are usually too busy to publish good examples that you could use to get started. If you want to get your feet wet by doing custom work for Merchant, you should get the source kit and take it from there. This is pretty much documented and it gives you at the same time the basics for writing Miva modules.

Scot Ranney used to have a few very nice examples of standalone Miva apps, but I don't know anymore if they are still online. Maybe you contact him directly, as far as I know he is still around here.

The vikingcoders (www.vikingcoders.com) maintain a list with examples (Adam, where is this???) as well as an archive of the old miva-mailing lists, then there is of course Ivo's website www.truxoft.com with excellent snippets and lots of invaluable general information about Miva and Empresa. This is a must-read. Learn it by heart!

Kent Muller has written a book about Mivascript, you can find it at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0966103211/002-6018450-1064044 . I haven't read it, so I can't say anything about it.

There is a google-group specifically for Mivacoding: http://groups.google.com/group/miva-script The group is currently very quiet, but I am sure if you have questions people will be very happy to help you out.

James Harrell, now the VP of Miva, released a few open-source applications and examples through his former company Copernicus LLC. The company was later bought by Miva Corp. His programs were fully working examples of how to extend Mivascript into new territories - notably integrating it with C/C++, creating custom tags and extending Empresa's system libraries. As far as I know these were pretty much the only working examples of this kind available with full source code.

There are more ressources out there, but alltogether this is fairly fragmented. One reason why you find so little about it is that Mivacoding is actually much more commercial than for example PHP, that there are far fewer programmers ( probably less than a hundred worldwide is my guess) out of which most directly or indirectly cater to some 50-70,000 Merchant users/installations.

Nevertheless, there is quite a bit of activity going on behind the scene, meaning directly between the coders. I am sure that if you are serious with Mivascript, it is just a question of time until you will establish direct offlist contacts.

Markus

[Keith Hunniford]

There is good news and bad news.

The good news is that the development tools you need are now free. The bad news is that although the core of the language and syntax is reasonably well documented under the MIVAScript docs area at MIVA.com, the most recent changes are not documented yet.

The biggest change is the ability to use SQL databases with MIVAScript, like MYSQL. There is no documenation available on the commands to open, close, create databases of this type.

Part of the problem is that the majority of people using MIVAScript are writing Modules, and for them, the MIVA Merchant API is the crucial information and I believe this is getting priority. While useful, because most of the database calls are performed by functions, this doesn't create the most useful reference for straight coding.

What I'm hoping happens is that appendix is added to the current doc that shows some very simple database examples and details the syntax of all the SQL related commands. This wouldn't take long and would make the current documentation pretty much complete.

If someone here has any useful unofficial docs or examples from back in the MM5 Beta days, could you let me know and I'll see if we can get permission to un-NDA it for public consumption.

My apologies for not trying to learn to code the new language while I was still working for MIVA because that would have put the developers frustration more in perspective and I could have been of more value to the coding community.. I live and learn.

Best

Keith

[Julie Wilber]

Api Docs (http://docs.smallbusiness.miva.com/en-US/merchant/api/api_docs.htm)

While these are in no way fully complete, we are releasing what we have available as it becomes available.

Thanks!