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Read our first post on moving app logic to the server.

The Appery.io Database provides storage for your mobile app data. You can store data such as users, orders, purchases, products or anything else. The Appery.io Database is a cloud NoSQL database and provides a very simple and elegant REST API to work with the database.

One of the most common cases for an enterprise mobile app is to create/save a new item/record and then redisplay the list in the app with the newly created item.

Accessing the database directly from the client is fine but requires two requests to the database.

1. A request to save the new item/record into the database.
2. Once the 1st request completes, on its success, a request to get the updated list to display in the app.

A better approach is to do both the create and list in a single request from the app. This is very simple to do from Appery.io Server Code script. The following script shows how to create a new record and then get the updated list:

var dbId = "cdaec951....d8";
var collectionName = "People"
 
var newName = request.get("name");
var newTitle = request.get("title");
 
// Save new object into the collection
Collection.createObject(dbId, collectionName, {
   "name": newName,
   "title": newTitle
});
 
// Retrieve updated data from the collection
var result = Collection.query(dbId, collectionName);
// Return the updated list (including the new object)
Apperyio.response.success(result, "application/json");

In this simple script you first create a new Person object (line 8) and then do another query to get the updated list of people (line 14). The script response returns the updated list of people. This script automatically has a REST API which is the invoked from the app.

What’s most important, there is only a single request from the app to the Server Code script. A single request is usually better than two requests. Also, you can add additional logic to the script without impacting the app. For example, you can send an email when a new person is added. Or, you can send  Push Notification when a new person is added. All this can be done without impacting the app. That’s nice.

If you want to learn more about Server Code, check out our YouTube channel Server Code playlist.

An Appery.io developer posted a question on the Appery.io Facebook page on how to write a Server Code script to query two different collections in the database. This post will show you how to do that.

In general, querying two database collections is better to do on the server-side than from the client. Doing it on the server is a lot faster and provides you with the option to update the search without impacting the client. Plus, you can add any logic when needed. Doing it from the client would require two REST API calls to the database.

Let’s jump into the example.

First, there are two collections in the Appery.io Database. They look like this:

ProductName collection:

ProductName collection.

This collection is simple. It has a name and a code.

This is the ProductData collection:

ProductData collection.

The code in this collection links the product name to the actual product (Android or iOS device).

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Updated: March 11, 2021

In this tutorial, you are going to build a Hello World app with Ionic 5 in Appery.io. This is how the app is going to look:

You should finish this tutorial in less than 5 minutes.

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Here is how to add REST API invocation with a simple drag and drop:

When building an Ionic/AngularJS app with the Appery.io App Builder you can add an HTML component to play back video files.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to do this.

To start, you need to create a new Ionic app.

1. Drag an HTML component to the page and click Edit to modify the code.
2. Add the following to the tag editor:

   <video controls="controls" width="640" height="340" name="Video Name" ></video>

   

   Edited HTML tag

3. Save it and switch to the SCOPE tab.
4. For the init() function, pass the following:

   $scope.makeAction();

5. Now, create a new function and name it makeAction and add the next code, replacing urlToVideo with the URL of the video you need to play:

   var vidURL = "urlToVideo";
   var myVideo = document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0];
   myVideo.src = vidURL;
   myVideo.load();
   myVideo.play();

Below is the example of playing back the video with URL = http://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/VfE_html5.mp4:

Sample video playback with embedded player

Note that some HTML video may be unavailable for playback.

Appery.io Server Code allows you to write any custom code using JavaScript that is executed on the server. For example, you can invoke any REST API, access the Appery.io Database and send Push Notification messages. The script is then invoked from the app (as REST API). Server Code allows you to write advanced app logic on the server and then elegantly invoke it from the app.

To simplify working with various Server Code APIs, we have created code snippets. A snippet is a short code sample that you insert into the script and it provides some functionality.Here is how to do it:

Check out our YouTube channel to learn how to use Server Code.

Validating user input is one of the most important requirements in a mobile app. The most common approach of form validation requires that you check the form fields before the form is submitted; this is to make sure that the required information is supplied. Today we will show you how you can validate the input fields in your app before submitting the information to the Appery.io Database.

In this example the app will have following simple design:

Form app design

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Let’s say you are building a mobile app where you enter an address and need to get back the location as latitude/longitude information. To do this in Appery.io Server Code is super simple. Here is a Server Code script that looks up an address and returns the latitude/longitude information for the location using the Google Geocoding API:

var address = request.get("address");
var url = "https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json";

var XHRResponse = XHR2.send("GET", url, {
   "parameters": {
      "address": address,
      "key": "AIzaSyAFQBtqmC.........."
   }
});

var responseInJson = JSON.parse(XHRResponse.body);

Apperyio.response.success(responseInJson.results[0].geometry.location, "application/json");

When you run this script, the result looks like this (using Boston as input):

{
"lng": -71.0588801,
"lat": 42.3600825
}

The script has an API which you can invoke from your app:

https://api.appery.io/rest/1/code/540cb503-f9a7-4dd1-8926-af959383e2b2/exec?address=Boston

Here is an example invoking the script directly from the browser:

Invoking Server Code script

With geolocation logic on the server, you can change the implementation — for example use a different API without making any changes to an app and impacting the users.

Want to learn more? Check out the large collection of videos we have on our YouTube channel.

“Can I build [insert type] app in Appery.io?” is probably one of the most common questions that we get. The answer is almost always yes, but I want to provide you with a more detailed answer.

Appery.io provides tooling to allow you to build and run hybrid mobile apps. You can build virtually any kind of app supported by the underlaying technology stack: HTML, JavaScript, CSS and Cordova (for native device access), plus REST APIs. The platform provides tools and a runtime to make it simpler and easier to build your app.

• App Builder – for building the app (client).
  • Apache Cordova is installed in every app and gives you access to device APIs such as the camera.
• Cloud Build – for packing the app for iOS or Android.
• Backend Services
  • Database – cloud database for storing any app data.
  • Push Notifications – for sending targeted Push Notification messages.
  • Server Code – for coding any server-side logic using JavaScript.
  • API Express – for integrating with external/enterprise systems.
• Appery.io Tester app – for fast testing of iOS and Android apps built in Appery.io without installing them directly on the device.

The platform provides you with the tooling and runtime services, which you would need to build a successful app. Having said this, the actual app logic still has to be coded or developed. For example, let’s say you want to send a Push Notification and email when a new users registers, and also record the activity into an external relational database. You can easily build this flow/logic in Appery.io.

• The app UI (pages, navigation) is built in the App Builder.
• The Database has built-in user management capability. This means you can register a new user and do a login/logout.
• When a new user is created, you can write a Server Code script to send a Push Notification message and use email API (such as SendGrid) to send an email notifying people about this event.
• Using API Express you can connect and expose a relational database via REST API. When a new user registers, you can invoke the API and record this event (registration) into an external relational database.
• Using the Appery.io Tester app you can quickly test the app on the device (without actually installing it) and test any native APIs.
• After the testing, you can build and package the app for iOS or Android with Cloud Build.

In general, Appery.io is a perfect fit for building and running business and enterprise mobile apps. Another way to look at our platform is that it is ideal for creating content or data-drive apps. You can also find the term form-based used sometimes. We don’t recommend to build apps that are heavy on graphics. This is not a Appery.io limitation, but a limitation of hybrid apps in general.

We hope this blot post clarifies what kind of apps you can build with Appery.io. We many videos on our YouTube channel to help you learn how to build apps to check out the channel.

Here is another blog post that talks about this topic: What Kind of Apps Can You Build with Appery.io?.

Our friends at Ionic Framework published a very nice tutorial on how to build an Ionic app with an external API. We figured it would be a good idea to show how to build the same app in Appery.io. In this 8-minute video tutorial you will learn:

1. How to build a simple Ionic (version 1).
2. How to create a mobile backend for the app.
3. How to invoke an external API.
4. How to test the app in the browser.

The final app shows a list of people loaded from an external API:

Ionic app

Want to learn more? Check out many other short videos on how to build mobile apps fat on our YouTube channel.