Power Bailer

Power Bailer is a web-based utility that can recieve a PowerBuilder datawindow file (.srd) and will parse it and output it as an HTML5/CSS3 document. Presently it works with freeform datawindows primarily. Most, but not all elements are converted: header, footer, groupings, buttons, columns, computes, ellipse, groupbox, line, rectangle, roundrectangles and text elements all convert to CSS/HTML. Some properties are limited, such as tooltips, which lose their styling and simple showup using the HTML title attribute, and background gradients are currently unsupported.

To use the tool, you begin within PowerBuilder. Within the System Tree you locate the DataWindow you want, right click it and select Export. Use the resulting dialoge to save the DataWindow as an srd file. Alternatively if you use Git, you can pull this same file from your ws_objects folder, which is in the same directory as your pbw file.

An example of an unconverted DataWindow, viewed within PowerBuilder

You login to Power Bailer and from the interface you select and upload the srd file. Upon submission Power Bailer will immediately parse and output the file (it takes seconds). The output will have a functional preview of the HTML generated, a functional and updatable syntax editor showing the generated HTML/CSS, and a report of dynamic settings that the developer will need to manually recreate in javascript or their language of choice.

An example of the code generated by Power Bailer A example rendered HTML/CSS of the code generated by Power Bailer

Contact us to request pricing and access at GetPowerBailer@gmail.com