SpaceScript is a template-based language for publishing objects in the
Blocks Protocol Suite. In our last Rocket Science on
space.cgi, we introduced the general
paradigm of Retrieve-Evaluate-Publish for pulling results out of a
SpaceServer and into a variety of user interfaces. This Rocket Science,
on the SpaceScript language, focuses on the publish phase of the
process. (For a general introduction to the Blocks architecture, read
The Importance of Being EDGAR.)
In this tutorial, you'll learn how to submit queries to a SpaceServer,
then point to a template that has an example of how you want your
results formatted. The most obvious example of a template is an HTML
page, but this language also lets you point to sample e-mail messages and
other objects as publishing methods.
Feel free to try SpaceScript on EDGARspace, which is the SEC's EDGAR
database and associated metadata in XML. EDGARspace is our particular
implementation of how results of searches should be formatted. With
SpaceScript, you can build your own search results pages (and even have
them e-mailed to you).
Next month, we'll introduce yet more extensions to the Blocks
Architecture. Happy coding!
