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In this blog post you will learn how to build an Appery.io app that connects to Salesforce API. After a login into Salesforce, the app will display a list of Salesforce objects available in your account.

The complete app has the following components:

• App UI (client).
• Server Code for server-side logic to handle OAuth flow.
• Salesforce account and app to access the data in your account.

Let’s get started.

Salesforce App

The first step is to create a Salesforce app which will allow you to access your Salesforce account data.

A new app is created from the left-hand menu in your Salesforce account (Build > Create > Apps). There are a number of important values that you will be using later:

• Consumer Key.
• Selected OAuth Scopes.
• Consumer Secret.
• Callback URL.

Consumer Key and Consumer Secret are generated when you create a Salesforce app. The Callback URL is set by you (I will cover this later). For Selected OAuth Scopes, you can set it to Full access plus any specific scopes. Once you have tested your app, you can start removing scopes and leave only the once that the app requires.

Once you have the Salesforce app configured, next you need to create the app backend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Email newsletter sent in early November.

Platform News

We have been getting a lot of questions on iOS 10 support. We are in the process of upgrading to one of the latest Apache Cordova versions. This Cordova update will allow us to support iOS 10. We plan to have iOS 10 support by end of this year. Stay tuned.

4 Ways to Send a Push Notification Message

Sending Push Notification messages to users is a fundamental capability in an enterprise mobile app. The Appery.io platform comes with Push Notifications component out-of-the-box and allows quickly sending targeted messages to iOS and Android devices. There are 4 ways to send a Push Notification message:

• Push Notifications Console.
• Server Code Push Notifications API (server-side).
• Push Notification REST API.
• Customer Console.

Read the rest of the blog post to learn more.

How to Perform Basic Database Operations

CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) describes the basic database operations that most enterprise apps perform. This blog post explains how to perform these operations from Appery.io Server Code.

New Videos

We published new videos to help you learn how to build apps faster. Check them out.

• How to Build and Test a Complete Ionic App with an API Backend. This video shows how to build and test a complete Ionic app with an API backend.
• How to Create REST API Service to Upload Binary Data with API Express. This video shows how to create an API Express service to upload binary data to a cloud database.
• How to Setup Page Navigation In an Ionic App. This short video shows how to setup navigation in an Ionic app.
• How to Build an Ionic App to Save Form Data into a Database. In this video tutorial you will learn how to build an Ionic app that saves form (page) data into a database

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified when we publish new videos.

Sample Apps

Do you know that we have sample apps for SMS, email, camera, barcode scanner, and others? A sample app has a UI and a backend preconfigured so you can quickly run the app, show as an example or use it as a starting point. Check out the apps today.

Update to Library Version Used in Your Appery.io jQuery Mobile App

Please read this blog post to learn if you need to update the library version used in your jQuery Mobile app.

One of the core components in Appery.io platform is a cloud build service which builds a binary file (hybrid) for iOS or Android. Appery.io leverages Apache Cordova (PhoneGap) to create a binary file. Launching the build process is very simple. Right from inside the App builder, clicking the Export button you will see the option to create a binary file for iOS or Android.

Export menu.

Once Binary (.ipa) or Binary (.apk) is selected, the build process starts. The build process usually takes one minute. When the build is completed, the file is downloaded to your computer. From there you can publish the app to an app store, using the standard publishing process for each store.

Learn more about how to use Apache Cordova in Appery.io to build hybrid apps and use native APIs.

Happy coding.

Being able to send Push Notifications to users is one of the fundamental capability in an enterprise mobile app. Appery.io platform comes with Push Notifications component out-of-the-box and allows you quickly to send targeted messages to iOS and Android devices. In this blog post we will show the four ways to send a Push Notification message to a user:

1. Push Notifications Console.
2. Server Code Push Notifications API (server-side).
3. Push Notification REST API.
4. Customer Console.

Push Notifications Console

This first option is probably the simplest way to send a Push Notifications once you have installed an app on a device. Select device types, enter the message and send. The Push Notification message should arrive on the registered device instantly.

Sending a Push Notification from the console.

Read the rest of this entry »

Saving app data is one of the most basic functionality in any business or enterprise mobile app. A user is presented with a custom form (page). A user enters information and the information is saved into a cloud data storage. We created this video to show you how to do exactly that.

In this video tutorial, you will learn how to build an Ionic app that saves form (page) data into a database. The video tutorial shows:

1. Creating a database.
2. Creating server-side logic to save data into the database.
3. Building an Ionic app. The app uses the server-side script to save data into the database.
4. Testing the app.

Watch the video now:

Looking for more videos on how to build mobile apps? Check out our YouTube channel.

The Appery.io Backend Services consists of the following components:

• Database – for storing any app data.
• Server Code – for writing server-side app logic using JavaScript.
• API Express – integrating with external systems and APIs.
• Push Notifications – sending push messages to devices.
• Web Hosting – publishing and hosting mobile web apps.

In this post, we will show you how a Server Code script integrates with the Database.

One of the most common questions we get is how to work with the database, how to create, edit and delete data. This makes sense as virtually any mobile app needs to store data in a database and perform these basic operations. To access the database, we are going to use Server Code script. Server Code allows writing app logic using JavaScript which will be executed on the server. For example, a script can access the database, send a Push Notification message, sort data and invoke an external REST API. We will start with the most basic operation: how to read data from the database.

The database collection used in this post looks like this:

Database collection.

This can be data collected from a form inside an app – a form that collects information about the user.

Reading Data

Server Code script has out-of-the-box API to access the database to perform all the basic operations. The following script reads all objects from the above collection.

var dbApiKey = "fe7c124b-f7c5-4764-9274-173b56a97102";
var result = Collection.query(dbApiKey, "Data");
Apperyio.response.success(result, "application/json");

One line 2, the script retrieves all the data.

One line 3, the script response is set. A Server Code script is invoked as a REST API. The code on this line defines the API response.

A script can be quickly tested from the Run tab where you can see the JSON data:

Testing the script.

Reading data from a database collection is fast and simple. Next, we are going to save data into the database.

Read the rest of this entry »

This video shows how to build and test an Ionic SMS app using Nexmo API. The video tutorial first shows how to create a backend to invoke Nexmo API. Then the Ionic app is created which uses the backend. The app is then tested in the browser and on the device using the Appery.io Tester app. The video also shows how to build a binary file for Android and iOS.

Also, check out how to create an app backend with API Express and Nexmo SMS API.

We got some interesting stuff in October platform update, check out what’s new below.

More Secure with HTTPS

We switched to HTTPS to make everything more secure. If you are using any non-HTTPS API services a quick workaround is to invoke the API from the Appery.io Server Code or API Express.

Improved User Experience on Android During Auto-Update

This was a long requested feature from our community. When an Android device was checking and installing auto updates, the screen would simply go black which created a pretty bad user experience. We pushed a minor update which we believe will greatly improve the user experience. If an update is available you will see a short message explaining that the app is checking and installing updates.

Send Binary Data with API Express Service

It’s now fast and simple to work with binary data inside API Express service with the new binary option. For example, you can build an API Express service which uploads binary data to an external REST API service.

API Express binary data option.

Read the rest of this entry »

This video shows how to use the SQL and Script components to build a Login service. The SQL component runs a custom SQL query to check if a user exists in a database. The Script component adds custom logic to check what the SQL component returned and defines the response (user found or user not found).

Want to learn more how to connect to enterprise data source? Watch our API Express playlist.

Please read about upcoming changes here. It’s important to understand that invoking Salesforce APIs (or any APIs) is now perfomed using the Server Code or API Express. This update only impacts the App Builder (development time).