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Monday, October 21, 2013PrintSubscribe
Miscellaneous Hot Fixes

Code On Time releases 8.0.1.0 introduces the following features and hot fixes:

  • Learn about new synchronization service and how to share Project Designer changes with other developers involved in your project. Use Team Foundation Service to implement version control of application source code.
     
  • SharePoint Factory apps will not raise exceptions when a Web Part is inserted in a live page of a SharePoint site.
     
  • New property Access allows the data controller views to be exposed on public pages. The default value of the property is “Private”. Anonymous users are not authorized to see data views placed by developers on publicly available application pages. Set "Access" property to "Public" to allow anonymous users to interact with the view.
     
  • Rich text input mode of data fields will not cause an exception in a mobile client.
     
  • Synchronized Project Designer change logs of legacy applications will be correctly merged after automatic refresh.
     
  • Property ApplicationServices.Version correctly treats application version as a string. The previous implementation may have resulted in a compilation error when generated on computers with some European locales.
     
  • Permalinks will not cause exceptions in the Mobile Client.
Sunday, October 20, 2013PrintSubscribe
Allowing Access to Data Controller Views on Public Pages

The client library of apps created with Code On Time allows only authenticated users to interact with data. If a user is not authenticated by the app then a request to retrieve data will be denied. There are scenarios when anonymous users must be allowed to interact with application data.

Let’s create a public Customer Sign Up Form in the Northwind sample to illustrate this situation.

Select the project on the start page of the app generator and activate Project Designer. Create a new page with the following properties:

Property Value
Name SignUpForm
Roles ?

Value “?” specified in Roles will allow anonymous users to access page with signing in.

Right-click Customers data controller on Controllers tab and choose Copy in the menu.

Copying data controller reference to the clipboard.

Switch back to Pages tab, right-click Sign Up Form and choose Paste in the context menu.

Pasting a data controller reference on page of an app.

A data view view1 in container c101 will be created under the page node Sign Up Form.

A data view on the page on app created with Code On Time app generator.

Configure the data view as follows.

Section Property Value
Startup Action Command Name New
Startup Action Command Argument createForm1

Click Generate on the Project Designer toolbar.

Annonymous users are not authorized to access application data by default in Code On Time apps in Mobile and Desktop client.

The exception at the top of the page indicates that the view createForm1 is private. The anonymous user is not authorized to access data.

If you click Login and sign in as user / user123%, then an empty New Customers form will be displayed.

If we want to allow anonymous users to create new customer records using createForm1, then the view must be configured for Public access. Also the standard actions of the data controller Customers need to be adjusted to work in a perpetual “new customers” loop. The user will be prompted to create a new customer after a successful entry of a new record instead of displaying a list of existing customers.

Select the view Sign Up Form / c101 / view1 (Customers) in Project Explorer.

A data controller view selected on page in Project Explorer of Code On Time app generator.

Change the Access property of the view.

Property Value
Access Public

Now configure the action state machine of the data controller.

Create a new action in action group Sign Up Form / c101 / view (Customers) / Actions / ag2 (Form) with these properties:

Property Value
Command Name New
Command Argument createForm1
When Last Command Name Insert
When HRef (Regex) SignUpForm

The action Sign Up Form / c101 / Actions / ag2 (Form) / a100 will be activated only when the page Sign Up Form is loaded in a web browser. The action will display createForm1 in New mode every time a new record is created.

Then select each of the actions ag2 (Form) / a8, ag6 (ActionBar) – New / a3, and  ag6 (ActionBar) – New / a4 shown in the picture to configure them to be inactive on the page SignUpForm.

Property Value
Whe HRef (Regex) false:SignUpForm

Data controller actions that must be deactivated when SignUpForm is displayed to the user.

Property When HRef (Regex) is a regular expression evaluated against the current URL loaded in the address bar of the browser. If there is match then the action is active and taken into consideration by the action state machine. Otherwise the action is considered to be inactive. Placing “false:” in front of the property value will make an action inactive if the regex following after “false:” is matched to address bar URL.

Browse the app without signing in and confirm that new customers can be entered on Sign Up Form by anonymous users.

Customer 'Sign Up Form' in action.

The form will remain in “New” mode after a new customer is created.

Log in to verify that the record is stored in the database.

Authenticated users can interact with a full list of customers in our sample.

Sunday, October 20, 2013PrintSubscribe
Overview of Application Lifecycle Management

It is a common practice to place the application source code under the control of an ALM (application lifecycle management) system.

Web apps with Universal Mobile/Desktop Client created with Code On Time are standard ASP.NET applications. The entire source code is included in each project. There are no black-box DLLs or hidden runtimes.

It is easy to place a web application created with Code On Time under source control of an ALM.

Application generator maintains XML log files to track revisions of the project design alongside the source code of an app. This allows working on the app in a disconnected mode. It also makes it easy to merge changes from multiple developers.

The designer log changes are incremental. If two developers have changed the application design, then the XML log files must be merged, followed by a Refresh of the application design.  

Code On Time offers a free cloud synchronization service that enables automatic exchange of designer changes between team members. The project synchronization software is also available for purchase for in-house hosting.

Microsoft Team Foundation Service (TFS) is a popular ALM system. It is easy to place a Code On Time app under source control with TFS.