Reference materials

📄️ Dictionary

This page is a dictionary. It defines the words we use to talk about Ampersand. You can click on the words to navigate to its defining page.

📄️ Meta syntax

This section is a reference for meta syntax, syntactical conventions, reserved words, etc.

📄️ Syntax of Ampersand

This page defines the syntax and semantics of the statements in the Ampersand language.

📄️ Terms

This page describes the notion of term. Its subpages provide several interpretations of terms, all of which are valid so you can use each interpretation at your own discretion.

An interface is a component of an information system that exposes functionality and data from a context, to let users or other information systems interact by creating, reading, updating, and deleting data.

📄️ Architecture of generated systems

This chapter is intended for programmers who wish to know more about the software Ampersand generates.

📄️ From rules to running code

This chapter follows a single ADL rule all the way to the artifact that enforces

📄️ Data-model pictures

Every time you generate documentation, Ampersand draws your model. It draws it three times over, at three levels of detail, because readers ask three different questions of a model and no single picture answers them all.

📄️ Preprocessor

Purpose

📄️ Importing data from Excel

The Spreadsheet Importer allows you to import data from a spreadsheet in .xlsx format into your prototype.

📄️ Command line functions

If you want to check your script, generate documentation, generate prototypes or use any other feature of Ampersand, you need to run the Ampersand compiler. This page tells you how.

📄️ Prototype Framework

The prototype framework provides the runtime environment for Ampersand applications.

📄️ OpenAPI Publication

This page explains, for contributors to the framework, how the prototype publishes the OpenAPI description of its REST API: which parts are generated by the compiler and which are fixed framework code, how the two stay consistent, and where the moving parts live. If you only want to use the description, read the guide Using the OpenAPI Description of Your Prototype instead.

📄️ BOX Template Architecture

Introduction

📄️ Built-in BOX Templates

The prototype framework ships four general-purpose BOX templates — TABLE,

📄️ Built-in VIEW Templates

A VIEW binds an HTML template to the leaves of an interface so that a value is

📄️ Frontend components

Ampersand generates a web interface from your script. The interface consists of components for input, display, and navigation. This document describes which components are available and how to use them in your Ampersand script.

📄️ Frontend Component Internals

This document describes the internal structure of the Angular components that render Ampersand interfaces. It is written for contributors who want to modify existing components, maintain the framework, or write new BOX templates.

📄️ PROPBUTTON Template

The PROPBUTTON template creates interactive buttons that modify boolean properties in Ampersand interfaces.

📄️ Full-text Search Module

The search module lets a user search across all stored data of a running prototype from the

📄️ Transactional Interfaces

An interface runs in one of two transaction modes. The mode decides when the user's

📄️ Cookies and Browser Storage

A generated prototype sets one cookie and keeps two small items in the browser's session storage. On the server it records the session of each visitor and logs the IP address of requests. This page lists all of it, with lifetime and purpose, for the organisation that deploys a prototype. Its privacy officer can copy the tables into the privacy statement, which European law requires: article 13 of the GDPR obliges the organisation to tell users which personal data it processes.

📄️ Deployment of RAP