Building the COBOL program

Using isCOBOL IDE

1.	Click on the File menu

2.	Choose New

3.	Choose isCOBOL EIS Project

4.	Give it the name "simple_COBOL_HTML"

Note - At the time this document is written Android devices don’t support Java classes whose major version number is greater than 51, so, if you’re working with JDK 1.8 or greater:

5.	Click on the Next button until you reach the page where you can set Compiler/Runtime options

6.	switch to the "J" page and fill the "-jo=" field as follows

"-source 1.7 -target 1.7"

7.	It’s also good practice to compile with the -whttp option in order to be advised if our program contains statements that are not supported in the Mobile environment. Switch to the “W” page and check the option "-whttp".

8.	Click on the Finish button to confirm settings and complete the project creation.

Note - you will be prompted to switch to the isCOBOL HTML perspective. This switch is suggested in order to have a better view of this kind of project.

9.	Right click on the source folder and choose New

10.	Choose Source File

11.	Give it the name "hello.cbl" and click on the Finish button.

12.	Put the COBOL code into the program and compile it

Without isCOBOL IDE

1.	Create an empty text file and give it the name “hello.cbl”

2.	Put the COBOL code into the file

3.	Open a command prompt and change to the directory where the file is

4.	It’s good practice to compile with the -whttp option in order to be advised if our program contains statements that are not supported in the Mobile environment.

Compile the program with the command:

iscc -whttp hello.cbl

Note - At the time this document is written Android devices don’t support Java classes whose major version number is greater than 51, so, if you’re working with JDK 1.8 or greater, use this command instead:

iscc -whttp -jo="-source 1.7 -target 1.7" hello.cbl

5.	HELLO.class will be created created; you need to include it in a jar to use it in the future steps. Use the following command:

jar -cvf cobol.jar HELLO.class

COBOL code

PROGRAM-ID. hello.        CONFIGURATION SECTION.        REPOSITORY.            class web-area as "com.iscobol.rts.HTTPHandler"            .          WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.         01 hello-buffer identified by "_comm_buffer".           03  filler identified by "_status".               05 response-status pic x(2).           03  filler identified by "_message".               05 response-message pic x any length.           03  filler identified by "hellotext".               05  xml-hellotext pic x any length.          LINKAGE SECTION.        01  lnk-area object reference web-area.                PROCEDURE DIVISION using lnk-area.               main-logic.            move "Operation successful" to response-message.            move "OK" to response-status.            move "Hello World from isCOBOL!" to xml-hellotext.            lnk-area:>displayXML (hello-buffer).            goback.

Note - The above code takes advantage of the HTTPHandler class (com.iscobol.rts.HTTPHandler) for communicating with the HTML user interface (explained later).