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Tuesday, May 17, 2022Print Subscribe

Data Caching, RESTful API Engine, Visual Studio 2022

Code On Time release 8.9.24.0 introduces the performance enhancing Universal Data Caching and one of a kind RESTful API Engine. Visual Studio 2022 is supported in the Project Designer.

Universal Data Caching will give your applications a significant performance boost. Most databases have a few tables with the content that does not change frequently. Developers can define simple rules that will eliminate the queries to such tables. It takes only a few minutes to make your app run faster.

Specify the data controllers and and the output caching duration in the application configuration. Start reaping the benefits!

Level 3 RESTful API Engine is included now in every application built with Code On Time. The data controllers are automatically mirrored in the application API.

Developers can use the engine to create custom data-aware embedded pages that either blend in the Touch UI or have a completely custom presentation.
The engine supports OAuth 2.0 Authorization Flows suitable for the standalone web and mobile applications. Use any framework and technology to build a custom frontend with the Code On Time application in the backend.
External scripts and utilities can make direct calls into your application with the robust authentication based on authorization keys. Use tools like cUrl to make your application perform custom actions or change data.
Developers can limit the application UI to the specific user roles. For example, administrators can sign into the application and manage data while the users in other roles will only be able to sign in to confirm their identity during OAuth 2.0 Authorization.

The engine is introduced in the RESTful Workshop, the curated set of tutorials that will empower the reader to build the modern high performance software in a record time and at the fraction of the cost of other tools. Level 3 REST API is self-documented with the hypermedia embedded in the data.

RESTful API Engine makes it possible to build custom embedded pages and standalone web and mobile frontends using your application as a backend. External scripts and utilities can use your application to orchestrate the complex workflows.

Code On Time is making a big bet on the RESTful API Engine to deliver the new benefits to our customers:

Developers will be able to build apps serving as backends for devices that need to know the user identity and a way to read and write the user-specific data. The next release will support OAuth 2.0 Device Authorization Grant flow for the input-constrained devices. You may have experienced this flow when authorizing a medical device to access your health data or when allowing a smartwatch to use your music service. The same flow is authorizing a smart TV in a hotel room to access the video streaming service that you are paying for at home.
Cloud Identity has been on our roadmap for several years. Soon developers will be able to build a collection of apps with one of them serving as the Identity Provider while the others will become the Identity Consumers.
- Each application will have its own security system.
- Users will identify themselves by signing into the Identity Provider. This app may have the 2-Factor Authentication enabled or include an option to authenticate users with the third-party providers such as Google, Microsoft, or Facebook.
- An application will become the identity consumer at runtime when the administrator creates a Cloud Identity link with another application. Device Authorization Flow will authorize the establishment of the link when approved by the administrator of the intended Identity Provider.
- Identity Consumer application synchronizes its roles and custom OAuth 2.0 scopes with the Identity Provider database. This makes it possible to manage users of the entire application collection in one place.
- RESTful API Engine access tokens will be issued by the Identity Provider application. The same access token will authorize requests to any application in the collection. The token will inherit the permissions configured in the Identity Provider by the collection administrator.
Microservices Architecture becomes a reality with Code On Time even for the smallest of developer shops. Cloud Identity and access token portability across the collection of applications make it possible to create the frontend that will exchange data with multiple backend applications. Each backend provides a custom API, has its own performance characteristic, and can be deployed independently. This improves the stability of the frontend and its overall performance. Learn more in the Introduction to Microservices Architecture.
The upcoming built-in GraphQL processor will parse the queries and resolve them by executing the RESTful API Engine requests. GraphQL has emerged at Facebook as the query language for the complex collections of APIs. Their numerous apps needed small subsets of data from multiple sources, which required several requests fetching too much data. Graph QL server is the “fat client” that defines the supported query types. The server accepts the queries formulated as a graph and delegates the execution to the custom resolvers. The output of multiple resolvers is merged in the graph that matches the query.
The App Studio application is a part of each Code On Time installation. This local web app presently starts the product activation process by redirecting developers to the account management portal. App Studio will come with the RESTful API Engine enabled in the future releases. It will serve as the local project management portal that will replace the start page of the app generator, which will be relegated to the icon tray. It will also provide the backend to the v9 Live Project Designer. The code generator will be invoked in the command line mode by the RESTful API Engine of the App Studio in response to the developer activities in the Project Designer of live apps. This is the architectural departure from our original plan outlined in the Roadmap, but we are on the finishing line now to deliver the amazing development tools in the heads of developers.
Content Hub, our innovative publishing platform, creates the new content in our legacy public site. We have developed this platform for internal use. The hub agent monitors the shared drives in our corporate Google Drive and transforms the changed documents into the HTML-based Display Flow content published through the RESTful API to the account management portat. The portal feeds the content to the database of the legacy site. The following capabilities of the platform will become commercially available:
- Content Hub Agent will monitor Google Drive, Office 365, and network folders for the content in Microsoft Word Format. The agent is a multi-platform application. Changes are pushed to the hub-enabled application built with Code On Time.
- Content Hub Add-On for applications created with Code On Time will render the content imported by the hub agent as public pages, blog posts, documentation library, newsletters, helpdesk tickets, public forum posts, etc.
- Add-on will provide the interactive content editor based on Touch UI. It will customize the presentation style of the live “content hub” pages. It will create tickets and community posts from within the apps built with Code On Time in the same format that is used by the hub agent. It will invoke the RESTful API of the app to read and write the hub content.

The release 8.9.24.0 includes the following features and enhancements:

(Framework) Upgraded the framework to jQuery.3.6.0 and the latest version of the Material Icons.
(AppGen) Added support for VS2022.
(App Gen) Develop command in the project options will activate the most recent version of Visual Studio if the solution file format version is 12.00. This will ensure that VS2022 starts when both VS2022 and 2019 are installed on the same machine.
The enhanced Postal Address Verification silently resolves the postal addresses with Google Geocoding. The customers in the United States can achieve a perfect resolution of each address in the USPS-approved format.
(Touch UI) New tag form-max-(xs|sm|md) will make the contents of the form aligned in the middle of the page.
(Touch UI) Input field tagged as text-style-primary will display in the "primary" color.
(Touch UI) Modal popups will have the header when displayed in the content pages, which have their own header hidden.
(DAF) Client-side cookies are created with the SameSite=Strict attribute.
(Framework) Access control check is performed in the correct sequence for the standard membership controllers both for reading and writing of data.
(Touch UI) New css rules to enable hover over the fields with the Actions lookup to ensure correct display of icons in the buttons.
(Touch UI) Right-clicking on the logo will open the menu panel.
RESTful API Engine is included in the generated apps.
(Framework) New js/sys/restful.js provides a thin wrapper on top of Fetch API for the RESTful API Engine.
(Touch UI) A click on the empty part of the app toolbar or reading pane button bar will close an visible popup menu.
(Touch UI) Eliminated the redundant 3rd level child Data View fetching in the form views with multi-level master-detail. This significantly reduces the load time of forms with master-detail field relationships.
(Touch UI) Improved stability of inline editing in multi-level master detail forms. In some situations the aggressive selection of items in DataView fields would have caused the unnecessary attempts to fetch data and server-side exceptions.
Universal Data Caching improves the response time of the requests to read data in Touch UI.
(Touch UI) The focused universal inputs are redrawn whether or not they have a value. Previously only non-empty inputs were redrawn.
(Touch UI) Simplified parsing of the virtual page activator.
Integrated codemirror-5.65.2 for the upcoming Content Hub Add-On to allow display and editing of code samples.
(Touch UI) Refactored the code responsible for the "scrollable" state of the system tab bar. The visual presentation goes from flat to scrolled when the scrollable content is detected and the view does not have the horizontal scrolling (grid with horizontal scrolling).
(Touch UI) Removed redundant CSS class definition.
(Framework) New $app.urlArgs() method returns an object map of the page location URL parameters of the specified argument. The argument is either a string or a hypermedia object with the 'href' property. If the parameter is not specified, then the URl of the page in the browser is used for the parameter extraction.
(Touch UI) Account Access grant for OAuth 2.0 Authorization Flows is now supported by the framework,
(Offline Sync) Improved reporting of data downloading errors during sync.
(Framework) ASP.NET version headers and X-Powered-By headers are not returned by the apps in the HTTP response headers.
(Client Framework) Server-side errors raised when the data is retrieved from the server are displayed in the notifiction bar at the bottom of the screen. This helps detect data fetching errors that may remain invisible to the developers.
(ASPX) New method Invoke is implemented in DataControllerService to handle all incoming requests. It allows file uploading in the apps with the aspx page model.
(Map) Clearing of the geo map will result in the new tooltip assigned to it.
(Touch UI) Fixed the exception raised when the quick find filter is cleared.
(App Gen) Develop command in the project options will activate the most recent version of Visual Studio if the solution file format version is 12.00. This ensures that VS2022 starts when both VS2022 and VS2019 are installed on the same machine.
(Designer) Action property "whenKeySelected"is correctly persisted when set to "No" in the Project Designer.
(Site Content) CreatedDate and ModifiedDate fields are set to the DateTime.UtcNow.
(CMS) Renamed "Workflow Register" option to "Site Content (recommended)". This option is available in the database connection string settings.
(Reports) Class Library projects are provided with the correct ReportViewer references. Previously the leading and trailing spaces have caused errors when building projects.
(Reports) Included the reference to the Microsoft RDL Designer for VS 2022 in the custom reports. The reference is visible to the developers in VS if the designer is not installed.
(Code Gen) Simplified the syntax of !String.IsNullOrEmpty in the C# source code.
(Code Gen) Added support for IsNullOrWhiteSpace unary code generation expression.
(CodeGen) Value Inequality operators are produced as natural a != b and a<>b operators in C# and VB. Previously such operators were generated as !(a==b) and Not(a = b).
(Code Gen) C# code string constants are now presented with "string" + "string" breaks.
(Code Gen) C# code placed to the previous text line the symbols +|-|*|/|% that were previously wrapped to the next line.
(Codegen) C# code simplification of "params System.Object[]" to "params object[]".
(Framework) Numeric primary keys do not cause hidden exceptions when new BLOBs are uploaded with ODP.
(Framework) Method $app.actionInfo(path) returns the information about the action for the specified path in the format "groupId/actionId".
(Touch UI) Actions rendered as "Actons" field display simple confirmations and data controller confirmations.
(Touch UI) Remove the preloading instructions for the fonts. Added the version of the app to the font reference in the touch-theme.css.
(CodeGen) Class attribute definitions in C# will have "spaces" surrounding the "=" preceding the attribute parameter values.
(Touch UI) Right-clicking on the logo will open the menu panel.
(Touch UI) Click on the empty part of the app toolbar or reading pane button bar will close an visible popup menu.
(Touch UI) Eliminated the redundant 3rd level child Data View refresh in the form views with multi-level master-detail.
(Touch UI) Improved stability of inline editing in multi-level master detail forms.

Labels: Microservices, OAuth2, Release Notes, REST, RESTful

Monday, October 4, 2021Print Subscribe

2-Factor Authentication, "Actions" Lookup Style, Tap to Copy, Login Responses

Code On Time release 8.9.23.0 is introducing the enterprise-grade security feature that helps secure the user accounts. 2-Factor Authentication is opt-in by default. It can also be applied to all users accounts in the existing and new apps automatically. Another highlight of the release is the option to inject the actions directly into the flow of the data fields in the forms. Multiple enhancements and bug fixes are also included in this release.

2-Factor Authentication

The new feature will require the verification code to be entered after the valid combination of username and password was provided by the user during login. The verification code can be delivered by an authenticator app installed on the personal mobile device. Other options include an email, text message, or voice call. Developers may even choose to hide the password field in the login form if the 2-Factor Authentication setup mode is automatic.

The new multi-factor authentication enhances the protection of the user accounts. This feature was sponsored by Peter Marchal of Wonderland Office, Belgium.

“Actions” Lookup Style

The new lookup style “Actions” makes it easy to inject the actions in the flow of data fields of a form. Action buttons placed right next to the relevant data fields gain better context and improve the user experience. The visibility of the individual action is controlled by “When…” properties associated with the action. The visibility of the entire cluster of action buttons is controlled through the Visible When property of the data field that has its lookup style set to Actions and the Name set to match the Id of the corresponding action group.

Tap to Copy

The new tag text-action-copy will cause the “Copy” button displayed next to the data field value. Tapping or clicking on the button will cause the field value to be copied into the clipboard. See this feature in action in the screenshot above. The text is copied to the clipboard and also displayed in the notification at the bottom of the screen when the button is clicked.

Custom Login Responses

If the user login has failed, then the generic message “Your user name and password are not valid” is displayed by the apps. If the login was successful then the user is silently signed in. Sometimes a custom message or system response is desired.

Consider the following examples:

The user account is locked and it is preferable to let the user know what actions must be performed to recover the account.
Developers may need to inform the user about the number of remaining login attempts before the account is locked.
Multi-factor authentication must force the user to enter the verification code if the login was successful.

Learn about Custom Login Responses in Code On Time apps.

Releases Notes

The the following features, enhancements and bug fixes are included in the release:

(Classic UI) Removed the link that allowed downloading the import template.
(Touch UI) Fixed the incorrect reference to the API function in the import processor. This was causing the error with the long running imports when the status was updated.
(App Gen) Replaced the legacy community reference with my.codeontime.com.
(Virtual Keyboard) The keyboard is minimized when the window loses focus and re-activates when the focus is restored.
(Framework) Moved methods and classes from ApplicationServices.cs(vb) to ApplicationServices.Auth.cs(vb).
(Class Library Apps) Files touch-edit.js and touch-input.js are copied to the ~/app/js/daf folder of the apps with the class library to enable debugging in Unlimited Edition apps.
(Framework) Method $app.prettyText formats international names as "pretty" strings.
(Universal Input) List box/ Check Box List / Radio Button List with 1 item has a compact presentation.
(Input) Qr code does not show the tooltip if the field is tagged as input-qrcode-tooltip-hidden.
(TouchUI) Check Box List item state transition is twice faster.
(Touch UI) Survey actions support the position=before|after option. If the option is not specified then actions are inserted just before the Cancel button. Actions with "before" position are placed before the "Submit" button. Actions with the position "after" are placed after the Cancel button.
(Framework) Method dataView.data('survey') returns the context data or a "survey" dataview. Used in the Property Grid and 2FA forms.
(Touch UI) The first row in the form category without the header will have a slightly large top padding.
(Touch UI) Freezing of the column in the grid with aggregates will not cause the exception.
(Touch UI) Keys F2 and Arrow Down will focus the first row in the focused DataView field in the form.
(Framework) Transaction processor correctly parses the temporary UIDs and resolves negative primary keys into "old" values encoded as UID if the corresponding new value is also the UID.
(Framework) Method Commit resolves the temporary primary key presented as negative integer or as uid in the format 000000000000-0000-0000-0000-00000001 with the key value recorded in the last segment.
(ODP) Client-side temp GUID primary keys are generated in the following format: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000001. Only the last 12 digits are used to encode the temporary primary key, while the leading characters are set to 0. The server-side framework resolves such GUIDs with the physical database values.
(Model Builder) Data View fields created in the model builder will have the filter fields correctly matched to the corresponding field names. Previously the original column name was used instead. If the output field name based on the column was not spelled in the same way then there will be incorrect filtering at runtime.
(App Gen) The codedom compiler now supports << (left shift) and >> (right shift) operators in C# and VB.
(Touch UI) Tag merge-with-prevous will cause the row to render without a separator line at the top to allow creating a contiguous group of fields in the form layout.
(Surveys) Setting the "text" of the question to "false" will cause the label to be blank.
(Touch UI) Setting the Label or Header Text of a field to $blank will result in a blank label of the field.
(Touch UI) Removed legacy references to the class ui-group-theme-a and ui-panel-page-container-a.
(Framework) If the style of field items is set to Actions then the field is marked as "virtual".
(Universal Input) Tag input-qrcode-size-192x192 will also trigger a custom input creation. The only input implemented now is "qrcode".
(Surveys) Survey definitions support causesCalculate on the actions and htmlEncode on the questions.
(Framework) Server-side method PopulateStaticItems will correctly assign Controller and View of the request to the internal ViewPage instance to ensure correct population of Many-to-many field with the static values (Check Box List, Drop Down List basket, List Box basket) when the Context Fields property of the many-to-many field property is set to X=Y. (X is the name of the filter and Y is the name of the field that will provide the value for X).
(Virtual Keyboard) Event beforefocus.keypboard.app is triggered on the data input prior to the keyboard gaining the focus. The handler can assign the callback method to the e.context.change property through the "e" argument of the event handler to be notified about changes to the text in the keyboard input.
(Virtual Keyboard) The virtual keyboard API is loaded when [data-input] elements are detected on the page to reduce the initial JS payload of the page.
(Universal Input) New virtual keyboard "pin" is now included with the framework. Tag a field as kbd-pin to have the keyboard displayed on touch devices.
(Universal Input) Virtual keyboard will not shift focus to the next input on tab or enter key if the user interface is in transition to another page at the moment of closure.
Thank you Roberto Ivon for contributing the "es" localization files.

Labels: Release Notes

Friday, August 6, 2021Print Subscribe

Auto Highlight/Select, QR Codes, and Custom Input Enhancements

Release 8.9.22.0 introduces new features and multiple bug fixes. Now developers can configure their master-detail “data view” fields to always highlight or select the first record on any level of the dependencies. Any input field on the form can be enhanced with QR code representing its value. The ability to display QR codes is implemented with the help of the Custom Input Enhancements feature of the Universal Input.

Auto Highlight and Auto Select

Code On Time allows configuring the Auto Highlight or Auto Select of the first row in the dataview, which is performed when the page loads. These properties can be set up on the “data view” fields, which makes possible the cascade selection of the first row in the master-detail hierarchies in the forms. The framework resets the auto highlighting and selection to avoid the excessive loading of child data views when the master on higher level is changed.

Now you can force the application to always perform the automatic highlighting or selection. For example, the Order Management Dashboard from the Drag & Drop example can be enhanced with the tag auto-highlight-first-row-always applied to the OrderDetails “data view” field. This will result in the first detail to be always highlighted when a new order is selected.

Tags auto-highlight-first-row-once and auto-highlight-first-row-always are used to control the frequency of automatic highlighting.

Tags auto-select-first-row-once and auto-select-first-row-always are used to control the frequency of the automatic “Select” action applied to the first row/item in the data view. For example, the tag auto-select-first-row-always will cause the dashboard to display the first item of the OrderDetails data view in the form.

Please note that the automatic highlighting/select will not be performed if the new record was created or an existing record was changed. Only the simple refresh/synchronization will result in the highlight or select action.

QR Codes

The majority of the population has been forced to learn and use the QR codes in their daily lives in 2021. You can enhance any field in the form of your app to display a QR code representing the field value.

Try out this feature at https://demo.codeontime.com now! Select a supplier, press Edit and enter any value in the Home Page field. Press Ctrl+Enter on the keyboard or blur the field to see the QR code displayed right next to it.

Tag any data field in the form view as input-qrcode-128x128 and the QR code enhancement with the specified dimensions will be visible just below the field value.

Touch UI recognizes the following tags that will impact the QR Code presentation:

Tag input-qrcode-WxH (enables QR code enhancement)
Tag input-qrcode-color-light-HTML_COLOR - specifies the “light” color
Tag input-qrcode-color-dark-HTML_COLOR - specifies the “dark” color
Tag input-qrcode-correct-level-(L|M|Q|H) - specifies the correction level.
Tag input-qrcode-value-hidden - hides the field value and displays the QR code instead.

Custom Input Enhancements

Custom input enhancement can be activated on any data field with the help of the input-NAME tag. The framework will load the custom script from ~/app/js/daf/input-NAME.min.js or ~/app/js/daf/input-NAME.js. Next it will invoke the method $app.input.methods.NAME._init(field, value, text, placeholder) and pass to it the reference to the data field, its value, text, and the placeholder element positioned below the data field value. Tag input-NAME-WxH will assign the width and height specified in W and H to the placeholder.

Another related tag input-NAME-value-hidden will produce the hidden data value. Only the enhancement will remain visible.

The support for QR codes is implemented as an enhancement that can be activated on any data field by tagging the field as input-qrcode or input-qrcode-128x128. The QR code is visible if the field has the value. The parameter NAME referenced above is represented by qrcode. The implementation can be found at ~/app/js/daf/input-qrcode.js.

Release Details

The following features, bug fixes, and enhancements, are included in the release:

QR Code data input enhancement can be added to any data field with the tag input-qrcode-128x128 with the numbers representing the width and the height of the QR code in the form.
(Blob) Changes in the image will cause the app to fetch the child dataviews if the views suddenly become visible due to the change of the form layout in response to the image loading.
(Touch UI) Method $app.touch.summary('fetch') will cause the summary views to fetch data. This method is useful when the layout of the page is suddenly changed and previously invisible dataviews come into focus. If no scrolling has occurred then the data may remain "unfetched" and the fetching can be forced by calling this method.
(Touch UI) Custom Input Enhancements and QR Code enhancement are now included in the framework.
(Touch UI) Fixed the migration issues that caused exceptions in the "Search On Start" in summary views.
(Touch UI) Hiding of the simple or collapsible container without the visible content will not be performed if the container's visibility is controlled by the Visible When property of the category or if this container belongs to the tab page or wizard step.
(Touch UI) Notifications are not displayed during the page transition to avoid the effect of the shifting page that was visible upon certain conditions.
(Touch UI) Summary view synchronizes itself with the form placeholder instantly for a better user experience. Previously the visual synching was delayed if the page transitions were detected, which has caused a displaced presentation visible to the user for a short period of time.
(Framework) Tags auto-(highlight|select)-first-row-(once|always) allows performing auto select or highlight of the first row upon the review of the view data with an option for this to be performed once or always.
(Client Library) Method dataView.survey() correctly collects the files in the BLOB fields. This resolves the problem with import file uploading and multi-file upload.

Labels: QR codes, Release Notes