I really like the Ria Services approach, and I see Lightswitch as the next higher level of abstraction, but my scenario is this:
I need to be able to define a Lighswitch app without having to rely on the designer and tedious click-throughs. If I have access to the API that the designer uses, then I can automate application generation, I can parameterize it and apply custome logic for generating custom variations of the same application type, I can even wrap it within a DSL. As a programmer, I want to levarge Lightswitch for developing applications by meta-programming.
I'm a programmer. Whilest I can use the "Write Code" dropdown to insert code blocks into the Application, ApplicationDataService, EntityObject and ScreenObject classes, I would like the ability to define entites, screens, relationships and queries through code / markup / a DSL.
Obviously Lightswitch meta-programs this when I use the designer, but I would like to do it myself. What I would like to accomplish is to create a lightswitch app - without having to click through a tool or designer. In Lightswitch, the pieces are obviously there (the designer leverages them), but they are not exposed as a public API. being a plugin for visual studio, perhaps there is a VSIX API extension I can leverage for automating Lightswitch? Show me some code.
The LS team have not yet released any official API information. As you may know however, all of various data/query/screen definitions exist in the ApplicationDefinition.lsml file, located in the LS project's "Data" folder.
I would hope that API information will be made available once the RTM has been released.
Yann
Related
I want to build an web application(ASP.NET MVC 6) that can add modules/plugins without having to rewrite my source code.
Already read about MEF and Areas but are not helping much.
Someone who has overcome this problem that can help me?
Depends on which part of the web application you are targeting.
1.If it's in the request pipeline you would make a Middleware package.
2.It's it's in HTML you would make a TAG Helper package.
3.If it's an intrinsic functionality you would extend appropriate classes and throw them into a package. An example of this would be helpful extension methods or methods to add claims given a claims principal.
4.If you want to go even further you could create your own Visual Studio templates that you can use to pre-fill your options upon creation.
Hopefully someone can help me, I'm new to EPiServer and have been given a data migration task. We are using the latest version 8.5. I need to migrate content from a clients home grown CMS (that luckily is in a tree like structure) to EPiServer. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of information about this on the web - perhaps I just don't know the right thing to search for.
It looks like using the EPiServer.ServiceApi might be the route to go but again locating useful documentation is proving difficult.
I was thinking of setting up the client CMS in SQL Server and writing a simple console application to call the EPiServer.ServiceApi inserting the content. If anyone has any information on this or better still and example i would be very grateful.
Thanks,
Dan
If you are just importing content from another CMS I would write a scheduled job in EPiServer:
http://world.episerver.com/code/dannymurphy/Stoppable-Scheduled-Job-with-feedback/
That job then uses the standard IContentRepository to create content:
http://world.episerver.com/documentation/Items/Developers-Guide/EPiServer-CMS/8/Content/Persisting-IContent-instances/
That way you can run it whenever you want and have access to EPiServers complete API. Also you can see progress of the import through the job status.
In the job you can read the content as a file in any format you like or directly from the source CMS database or some xml or RSS feed perhaps.
I have moved content from PHP, Java and .NET CMS this way. In .NET you could even access the source CMS via WCF or SOAP if available.
The ServiceApi is relatively new and more focused on Commerce products and media assets rather than CMS page and block content so I wouldn't use that.
There is complete documentation below for the ServiceApi by the way, did you not find it?
http://world.episerver.com/documentation/Items/EPiServer-Service-API/
Regarding language management you can read more in the below links:
http://cjsharp.com/blog/2013/04/11/working-with-localization-and-language-branches-in-episerver-7-mvc/
http://tedgustaf.com/blog/2010/5/create-a-new-page-language-branch-programmatically-in-episerver/
Basically you have two options for multiple languages. If the content is just straight translations you should create nine different language versions (branches) of the same page. You can also have multiple sites in an EPiServer installation but that requires 9 separate licenses (and the associated costs).
I've done a lot of EpiServer content migration projects. The easiest way if it's possible is to export your current sites tree in Json and then import that into EpiServer. I've had to do it on a recent project and mixed with Json.net it's pretty easy.
If you want to go that route you can find all the code to do it here: EpiServer Content Migration With Json.Net/
or "How to decouple UI from business logic in Delphi?"
Each target platform has its own set of native firemonkey controls (Windows=VCL, MacOS=TMS mCL, Android=D.P.F, iOS=TMS iCL and D.P.F). The new FireUI (multi-device form designer) is a great solution for styled components, but not for native components because it still requires the same component on the master pane to support all platforms. As you cannot mix them on the same form, it completely breaks the whole idea with Delphi.
A lot of developers would say that Delphi is the broken approach, see "Why FireMonkey is so fundamentally wrong in every aspect". However, the premise for this question is NOT to argue against Delphi, but to get the best results out of what it does offer.
The conclusion is then that for each form in your application you have to make a separate form for each target platform. This leads to these questions:
Challenge 1: How to include different form files in your project depending on your target platform?
Solution 1: include all of them, i.e. MainForm_IOS.pas, MainForm_Android.pas, MainForm_Win, MainForm_OSX.pas, and then use compiler directives inside the files, so only the content of one of the files is active. Disadvantage: a large application can have many forms (we have around 40), so we are talking about a large number of included files.
Solution 2: Do not include them in the project, but instead just place them in seperate folders. Then you can add the matching folder to the search path for each target platform. Disadvantage: They will not show up in the Project Manager, so it will slow down the workflow every time you need to find a file.
Solution 3: Create a project for each target platform. Disadvantage: Every time you add new units or change common project settings you have to (remember to) apply it to all projects.
Update: As suggested in the Malcom Groves video, placing all the business logic in a package will remove the disadvantage from Solution 3. So I consider solution 3 as the best approach.
Challenge 2: How to connect the different device forms to the (same) business logic?
Possible solution: Create a "Helper" class that contains all the code you would normally have in the form unit.
Update: This "Helper class" is actually what the MVVM calls a ViewModel. What I need seem to be a MVVM framework that can support the databinding. I have made another question about that.
Any input and suggestions about best practice are welcome.
For challenge 1:
You can conditionally link in your FireMonkey form resources depending on the compile target:
{$R *.Windows.fmx MSWINDOWS}
{$R *.Macintosh.fmx _MACOS}
etc.
This is excatly what the XE7 Multiview designer does, but I see nothing against using this mechanism to link whole form files conditionally in to your executable. Of course you might also want to ifdef the corresponding units in your project file.
For challenge 2: Just use some form of Model View Controler logic. So your platform dependant forms will talk to a platform independant controler.
We are trying to make a document-managemnet / knowledge management portal using Plone 4. We would like a forms / structured data feature in our webapp with posibility of defining forms through the web, having workflows using these forms and being able to create reports from them (preferably in some format that facilitates simple and nice looking or skinnable printouts).
Any pointers to modules, documentation and/or literature would be great. Thanks.
Dexterity in combination with collections for reporting should get you what you need.
http://plone.org/products/dexterity
PloneFormGen is a good solution for through the web creation of standalone forms but as soon as you need your form to be workflowed, reviewed inside plone or later edited and updated then a "Content Type" is normally the most appropriate way to model this inside an CMS. Dexterity is the recommended way to build content types going forward. It has the ability to create and edit content types through the web.
For more indepth information of developing a Dexterity based solution see http://plone.org/products/dexterity/documentation/manual/developer-manual
Archetypes would be an alternative way to create content types.
Collections can be used for basic through the web reports. To make this work on the new fields in your content types you'd need to make the fields usable inside collections which I'll leave out of this explanation. For more advanced reports I'd suggest a simple BrowserView which lets you use any python you want to compose your report.
The add-on http://plone.org/products/uwosh.pfg.d2c product with PloneFormGen, is going to be the best fit for your situation.
uwosh.pfg.d2c creates content objects from your PloneFormGen form submissions. You can then use it with placeful workflows to give you a custom workflow on the submission.
If you'd rather not use placeful workflows, it also allows you to specify the content type it'll save the form to so you can have a different content type, with a different workflow on every form.
Dexterity would work too, but the TTW tool is not nearly where PloneFormGen is.
Simply: http://plone.org/products/ploneformgen
I'd like to develope simple set of controls to display many sort of data and be useful in normal silverlight application and can be used in ASP.NET MVC2 application. Right now i have no idea how to link those tehnologies, but this isn't my concern right now - i just heard it is possible and i'll find out how to do that...
Right now i'd like to know how can i use my Model's classes in such SIlverlight class library. I've generated POCO classes in EF4.0 for ASP.NET MVC2 application. Everything works great, but now i'd like to use some of those classes - create silverlight's controls, some ViewModel classes and fill my controls with data passed from my Model, used in ASP.MVC's app, through ViewModel.
Everything should be tested in any simple silverlight's app and at the end i'd like to be able use this class library in silverlight app and in ASP.MVC 2 website...
Silverlight it's own runtime and in general you cannot mix normal .NET assemblies and Silverlight assemblies.
However, one option is to share the source code by linking the same source file to two projects that compile to the different runtimes.
Another option is to use WCF RIA Services where Visual Studio will code generate your model classes in the Silverlight project and there are also options for sharing code between tiers. You will also get a service to operate on the objects from Silverlight. The service can be built on top of EF4.0 with very little code.
Finally, Silverlight 4 and .NET 4 are in some cases able to share assemblies if certain criteria are met. See Stack Overflow question named Silverlight 4 Assembly Sharing Problem.
What you need to do is use shared code.
you do this by adding an existing file to a project. In the add file dialog there is a arrow on the button that exposes the add as link option.
the point of this is that you cna have 2 projects which target the different CLR's but contain the same code and namespace references ... you can leverage these to have code that works on both versions of the CLR very simply.
Its really quite powerful. I have one set of tests that can target both versions.
Of course you are limited to the set of common functionality but that is implicitly part of your requirements anyway.
You cna even pass the objects over a service and have them deserialise nicley into the other CLR. Kinda suprising how well you can use the symetry
I am currently using this for aproject and am achieving what you want and after a few hours of playing with really suprisingly painless.
regards