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VoltScript

  • in VoltScript
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LotusScript Classes Deep Dive Part Four

Before going onto that one more LotusScript function that is relevant to classes, there is another topic worth discussing with regard to classes. This is not functionality in LotusScript classes itself, but a design pattern which has been available ever since LotusScript began, but one which has become very commonly used in other languages as they have developed. It fits well after the discussion on using Static for creating builder classes, because the builder pattern in Java is where it's most widely used. The design pattern I'm referring to is a fluent interface.

LotusScript Classes Deep Dive Part Two

In the last part I covered the basics of what constitutes a Class in LotusScript / VoltScript. I also said that user-defined classes in LotusScript are often avoided because developers can interact with their data via the platform classes in lsxbe (Notes...) and lsxui (NotesUI...). When classes are used in proprietary applications they may typically be very straightforward - standalone classes with no inheritance. But there is much more possible, as Java developers will be aware of.

LotusScript Classes Deep Dive Part One

Classes have always been a part of LotusScript, an aspect used heavily in many open source projects. Recently I came across an OpenNTF project OpenDOM, which not only includes a number of sophisticated classes and design patterns in its design, but also in the UI covers a variety of projects that provide Object Oriented extensions for Domino. Unfortunately, the project seems to be one of many on OpenNTF that have become unsupported, and many of the projects it points to have either been lost or are unsupported. With so few people in the community covering these kinds of development topics in blogs or conference sessions, I wonder how much knowledge on more advanced topics has been lost. Indeed over the last few years I have also learned things about LotusScript that I did not know before, as I have had to create more sophisticated LotusScript / VoltScript functionality. So this blog series is intended to explicitly share some of that knowledge, specifically relating them to experience of other languages.

VoltScript - A Unique Opportunity (Paul Withers and Jason Roy Gary)

At Engage 2022 Volt MX Go was announced including features like Volt Formula, a JavaScript-based fusion of Notes formula syntax and Open Formula, and VoltScript, a derivative from LotusScript, and inspired by many modern implementations of BASIC, which will run in Foundry, Volt MX Go's middleware layer. Already at Engage we demonstrated live running code of VoltScript with Try/Catch/Finally, an alternative declaration keyword "Def" for "Dim" and deprecation of GoSub; which let’s be honest is Satan’s spawn. These are the first changes to the core LotusScript language keywords in over 30 years. In addition, we showed live demos of code running triggered from Foundry as well as standalone VoltScript outside of HCL Notes or Domino, for the first time since the end of life of Lotus 1-2-3. We also showed a number of new extensions (LSXs / VSXs) that will obviously be required, as well as developer productivity tooling like unit testing, mocking and a POC of dependency management.