I am very new to using APIs so please excuse me. I am currently using a Python-Django App service from IBM cloud app services and the IBM Watson Discovery resouce. I have followed all the steps given here:
https://console.bluemix.net/docs/apps/tutorials/tutorial_web.html#before-you-begin
I have a machine that has docker and so the app got built successfully. However I am lost as to how I am supposed to get the front end ( which I am writing in bootstrap, javascript ) to connect to the backend and link the API.
EDIT
For example : I want my app to accept documents, feed them in Discovery, extract the keywords and sentiments and display them in the UI. How do I know what to access from the server side code and what to link where in the UI.
It is a very broad question but its a compulsory project I need to do and I am clueless. Pleaassee Help !
Before you try to integrate an API, you will need to be familiar with Python and Django. If that is not the case, then you really need to go through a series of tutorials.
Then before deploying to the cloud, you will be better off running your Django app locally on your laptop. Use pip to install the watson-developer-cloud pypi module and use the API documentation to build the python code in your Django application - https://www.ibm.com/watson/developercloud/discovery/api/v1/python.html?python#query
If none of this makes sense, then you need to brush up on your knowledge of Python, Pip, and Django.
When you have the app running on your machine, then you will be ready to package it up into either a docker image or cloud foundry container and deploy to the cloud.
Trying to use an API Connect generated app as the backend for my mobile project adding an OPENAPI_SPEC env variable as defined here:
https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/mobile/sdk_compute.html#definition
I can add the app as a compute instance in the Mobile Project UI but it can't generate the SDK, I guess it is because when published via APIC Editor to Bluemix the Loopback app isn't accessed directly but through the APIC gateway.
Any suggestion here?
I would presume that although you have an OPENAPI_SPEC environment variable, your Open API swagger doc isn't valid.
When you download the project, it will auto-generate an SDK corresponding with your backend's Open API document.
For instance, here is how you set the environment variable with an example relative path:
And here is a valid API doc that it's using (albeit not in the most elegant Open API compliant format yet but it works).
https://updatesdk.mybluemix.net/explorer/swagger.json
A good way to test the validity of your OPEN API swagger doc is using the new Bluemix SDK Gen CLI Plugin.
$ bx sdk validate
NAME:
validate - Determines if an OpenAPI specification is valid for SDK generation
USAGE:
bluemix sdk validate OPENAPI_DOC_LOCATION | APP_NAME
OPENAPI_DOC_LOCATION - is a raw OpenAPI specification (URL to spec or local file; json or yaml)
APP_NAME - is the name of an app running in your current space hosting
OpenAPI spec.
In addition, IBM provides a deployable BFF starter sample with an accompanying blog post which may be helpful.
I have created hybrid application with mobilefirst using ionic. I have included underscore.js library in my project. When I try to access methods of underscore, I get errors like underscore is not defined
If you mean that you have created an app using MobileFirst Studio - that is not the recommended path. The recommended path is to create a Cordova application using the MobileFirst CLI. You can then combine this with Ionic. This approach is more fool-proof.
You can follow these guides:
https://www.raymondcamden.com/2015/03/23/working-with-ibm-mobilefirst-and-the-ionic-framework/
https://mobilefirstplatform.ibmcloud.com/blog/2016/01/13/ionic-hybrid-mobile-app-using-mobilefirst-platform-7-1-cli/
Note that you did not mention the actual error you have received. Without this, the question is moot as there can be a number of possibilities. Please actually mention the error you got.
What is currently the "best" way to develop a back-end system in Azure Mobile Services?
Specifically, what tools are available? From what I've seen, most examples just go to the Management portal and manually add a few lines into the script window. This is worse than using just Notepad, and doesn't have any concept of version control...
Is there any way to make a project in VS 2012 that contains all the Node.js code that will run in the Azure Mobile service? Is there a way of fully running that code on a local development environment that mimics the Mobile Services?
I need to have server-side code with much more complexity than is shown in most of the Mobile Services samples or documentation that I've been able to find.
I have a web site, and a Win 8 Store App that need to authenticate against, and access relatively complex data structures from a back-end database. The solution being pushed right now all seem to include Mobile Services at the center of it, using simple REST against raw tables, but all the examples are too simple to be useful.
Can someone point me to a "real-life" sample of using Mobile Services, and a "mature" way of developing and testing such a system using the tools in Visual Studio?
Thanks.
Why you have no other option than the Management portal is really beyond me. It seems very awkward for a C#/.NET developer to go back to Notepad style programming with console.log() debugging.
What I would love to see is some Node.js entry points that you could connect to a regular C# assembly which could fulfill the request (as in ASP.NET MVC or Web API) having the full .NET Framework at your disposal.
What I could see as a possible architecture is to have:
ASP.NET MVC hosted on Azure
--- writes processed data with logic to --->
Azure SQL DB <--- reads from --- Azure Mobile Services ---- bridge to ---> Mobile devices
Or
Cloud Worker Role on Azure ---- crunching/processing ----> Azure SQL DB <---- reading/writing raw data ---- Azure Mobile Services ---- bridge to ---> Mobile devices
You can use the Mobile Services facility for mobile devices facilities, scheduling and push notifications with limited code and do most of the coding in a managed .NET environment.
The AMS (Azure Mobile Services) along with Azure has advanced dramatically since this post was written and the replied answers.
Some of this stuff still holds true. If you have a ton of node.js written not in the Azure cloud portal, you will want to copy and paste to the portal online, custom api calls section and even perhaps sql backend tables for CRUD operations.
The hope for C# developers is that it is NOW in preview mode in which YOU CAN skip node.js and build everything without node.js very shortly... Some bugs to work out, but in 6 months this will be fairly solid.
I had questions and issue and a guy named Carlos carlosfigueira was very helpful.
Azure Mobile Services - Getting more user information
Josh covers unit testing server-scripts here: http://www.thejoyofcode.com/Unit_testing_Mobile_Services_scripts_Day_7_.aspx
In this tutorial, he uses the Mocha testing framework for JS (id TDD mode) and walks through an example for testing an INSERT script that encrypts the value of a particular property (text) and a read script that decrypts it (value is encrypted at rest in SQL db).
You can also find aggregation of links and tutorials here.
I would suggest that you build this solution using Windows Azure Mobile solutions especially it supports the Node JS NPM right now, which means you can create the API you want on the Windows Azure using the Node JS NPM and can work with it using WAMS easily. have a look on the following link it will help you understand what I want to say more.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/06/14/windows-azure-major-updates-for-mobile-backend-development.aspx
For the Client I also suggest that you build it using SignalR which is designed for cases such yours where real time applications require a lot of transactions from the server side.
http://www.asp.net/signalr
you can also find more details about how you can integrate both of them in the following link: http://hhaggan.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/signalr-node-js/
I hope these help you, let me know if you need anything else.
For running locally, the mobile service has the same Kudu environment available in azure websites, so you can browse to https://your_service_name.scm.azure-mobile.net If you navigate to the Debug Console from the top nav, you can download everything running in the site/wwwroot folder.
You can run this nodejs project locally (On windows only if you require the SQL Server npm package). Your code is in App_Data/config/scripts. If you replace the downloaded content with your current local git working copy, you can develop and debug locally, and then push changes as usual.
Tools I use:
Eclipse with JS environment (or any nodejs IDE).
Git
Postman
Steps:
Enable source control to your azure mobile service.
Pull to your local and create a eclipse project with the source.
Make changes and push.
Test with POSTman
This procedure allows me to develop really fast and eclipse tell me the common JS errors. But it has obvious downside:
No debugging (I use console.log)
The project ended up with a lot of commits (its hard to use git for proper source control)
I just did a blog post on running Azure Mobile Services locally: http://www.mikelanzetta.com/2014/09/running-azure-mobile-services-locally/ - basically it interrogates the API and starts up express, and allows you to run mocha yourself locally. It's a bit cleaner than pulling down the full wwwroot from the scm link, and I found using my local runner as a git submodule made it easy to work with (and easy for me to use VSO for managing my tests).
Anyway, for actual development, I use the Git integration and WebStorm - it automatically figures out the tasks in my local Gruntfile and makes it easy to run and test. For once it's deployed, Postman is helpful.
I will try to make it simplify. I am using windows azure cloud to host our web services and databases. and these web services are accessible via URL: "https://server.mydomain.com"
now we made a few major changes to our model and hence web services as a whole. This breaks the API interface for older users. Now we want to deploy the latest version on URL: "https://server.mydomain.com/v2" so that old users can still access the older version.
I searched around SO and other resources but i couldnt find a definite answer how to deploy new version without messing up the old version.
Anything in right direction will be helpful.
In one of the projects I was working on, we built in a versioning scheme on top of our Web API. We used this tutorial to get started. I would recommend starting there.
Sorry for the generic answer, if you post some more specifics I will make some updates.
I'd suggest to deploy separate cloud service and use "v2.server.mydomain.com"