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Diving into mobile app development? Enhance your app’s capacity effortlessly by integrating it with a cloud database. In our new video guide, we take you through an easy-to-follow guide on setting this up using Appery.io, making your app more dynamic and robust.

Why Cloud Databases?

Cloud databases provide a scalable, secure, and efficient way to manage app data. Whether it’s Amazon RDS, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL, these platforms help you handle large volumes of data without compromising on performance. The best part? Appery.io supports various databases, opening a realm of possibilities for your applications.

Getting Started with Database Connection

First, log into the Appery.io App Builder. Go to the API Express tab and create a new database connection. This process is user-friendly and supports different database types. For instance, connecting to a PostgreSQL database is as straightforward as inputting credentials and testing the connection for viability.

Exposing Database Data via REST Service

Once your database is connected, the next step is to expose your data. This involves creating an API Express project that allows your app to communicate with the database via RESTful services. You’ll find this feature particularly useful as it forms the backbone for data interaction within your app.

Building and Testing Your Mobile App

The final step is the most exciting—building your mobile app. Appery.io simplifies this with features that accommodate both no-code and low-code development approaches. Start by creating a new app and dragging the necessary components like Lists or Buttons onto your app’s screens. Then, integrate the services you’ve created to fetch or input data into your cloud database.

Real-World Application: Dynamic Data Handling

To illustrate, imagine your app displays a list of data entries from a cloud PostgreSQL database. You can enhance this by adding functionalities like creating new data entries through the app. This not only makes your app interactive but also practical for real-world use. Testing these functions within Appery.io is straightforward and gives you a firsthand look at your app’s performance.

Conclusion: Embrace the Power of Integration

By integrating cloud databases into your mobile apps, you unlock new layers of functionality and efficiency. As demonstrated in our video guide, the process can be surprisingly simple yet incredibly impactful. Whether you want to improve an existing app or start a new project, cloud database integration is a gateway to more sophisticated and responsive app solutions.

Ready to enhance your mobile app? Dive into cloud database integration and watch your app’s potential unfold!

In today’s fast-paced digital era, the essence of mobile applications is not just in their functionality but in the seamless integration with dynamic data sources. API Express, an integral feature of Appery.io, a leading low-code app-building platform, simplifies this aspect by connecting your app with relational databases effortlessly. For a deeper dive, we’ve crafted a comprehensive video that walks you through every step of this transformative process.

Bringing API Express and Relational Databases Together

API Express acts as the bridge between your mobile app and a relational database. But what’s a relational database, you ask? Imagine a vast warehouse of tables filled with connected data. With API Express, accessing this warehouse becomes as simple as tapping a button on your app. Our video tutorial, available on Appery.io, showcases this with clarity and detail, ensuring you grasp every aspect of the process.

A Video Guide That Makes Integration Easy

Why sift through complicated documents when you can watch a step-by-step video? Our tutorial breaks down everything from setting up PostgreSQL on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to crafting data services within your app through API Express. Here’s a sneak peek at what the video covers:

1. Starting Your Database: Create and configure a PostgreSQL database on AWS. It’s the first step towards building a data-driven app.

2. Managing Data with Ease: Use pgAdmin to manage your database—creating tables, organizing data, and preparing everything for your app.

3. Seamless Connection via Appery.io: Step into the world of Appery.io and begin a new API Express project. This part of the video vividly shows how you can connect your database to your app without breaking a sweat.

4. Customizing Your Data Service: Our video tutorial goes beyond basics, teaching you how to design a data service that tailors your app to utilize database information efficiently.

5. Live Testing: The final step involves testing your setup within Appery.io, providing live feedback on how your app interacts with the database, all demonstrated in the video.

Why Watch the Video?

While this article outlines the steps, the video brings them to life. Visual learners will appreciate the detailed walkthrough, and even experienced developers might discover a tip or two. It emphasizes practical steps, visual cues, and expert advice to ensure your path from a database newbie to a mobile app developer is as smooth as possible.

Dive Deep with Our Video Tutorial

We invite you to watch our video on API Express and Appery.io. Whether you’re developing an app that captures user input, displays real-time data, or manages inventory, integrating with a relational database has never been easier. This video isn’t just a tutorial; it’s your gateway to mastering mobile app development.

Curious about building an app with this setup? Stay tuned. The next video will guide you through creating an app using the service we just crafted.

In this release, launching this weekend, we have a lot of good news for you about these topics:

• Toggle component
• Chart component
• Fonts
• Emails from Server Code
• Datetime component
• CurrentItem
• API Express backups

So, without further ado, let’s look at each in more detail.

Ionic 4 Toggle component added

We continue to improve the Ionic 4 framework in our platform. Now we have added a new component, Toggle. If you don’t know, toggles change the state of a single option. They can be switched on or off by pressing or swiping them. Please check:

Chart component updated

The Chart component has proved to be a useful and frequently used feature. We have finished beta testing, fixed some issues, and are now ready to fully roll it out for production.

Font handling improved

Feature to send emails from Server Code added

Now you can send emails using Server Code (our feature for writing app logic on the server using JavaScript). We are sure that this will be a very useful for our users and that they will appreciate it.

Datetime component improved

Now, using the Datetime component, the user can enter hours and minutes into the database without adding the TSC code.

CurrentItem options added

Developers can now update and delete currentItem from an array.

API Express project backup upgraded

Security providers will now be added when you export an API Express project.

Bug fixes

What update goes without fixing bugs? So yes, we fixed a large number of big and small bugs to make the platform better.

In the past, each hospital department was in charge of ordering and maintaining its own inventory. This approach was inefficient and costly. In more recent times, a centralized supply chain management approach based on numerous process automations has become more prominent. As a result, technology has started to play an even more prominent role in transport and inventory management as well as in supplier relations. Nowadays, hospitals tend to switch to a dedicated all-in-one inventory system.

Our client, a not-for-profit healthcare network that includes hospitals and other medical divisions, recently introduced an Appery.io-based modern inventory system that consists of Par Counting, Express Issue, and Package Tracking applications:

Par Counting

Making sure that items are always in stock is a critical task for a hospital warehouse. With this application, counting of stock items has become much easier. Scanning with a fast hardware barcode scanner, counting per cart, filtering, sorting and focusing on critical items, and offline automatic synchronization are a few key features in the application.

Express Issue

Express Issue automates issuing products from an inventory while simultaneously decrementing the count of processed inventory and charging the department requesting that product.

Package Tracking

Whether it’s a flower bouquet or a vendor track shipment, each package is supplied with an internal barcode to go through the different workflow stages to the addressee. Also, the tracking application allows fast debiting (via a fast barcode scanner and a portable printer), transparent routing, and digital signing on receiving.

Benefiting from Technology

Thanks to the Appery.io platform support for hybrid apps, these applications require next-to-no modifications to run on both iOS and Android devices as well as in Web browsers. This makes the development price tag much lower.

In addition, Appery.io API Express streamlined Vuetura-supported communication as well as cost-effectively integrating these applications with legacy back-end systems such as PeopleSoft, Active Directory, and other databases. Because of this, both operation and maintenance costs are projected to go down. Moreover, the Appery.io out-of-the box offline synchronization feature saved a lot in infrastructure upgrade cost.

Leading in Digital Transformation

As rising expenses threaten the viability of traditional healthcare distribution methods, this healthcare network continues to show the way in digital transformation with its focus on supply chain fundamentals.

Appery.io API Express make it fast and simple to connect to an enterprise data source and expose it via a REST API. With API Express you can quickly create an API for:

• A relational database
• A WSDL service (SOAP)
• An existing REST API

In this tutorial, I’m going to show how to expose an existing WSDL service as a REST API and then build a mobile app using the API.

Read the rest of this entry »

Appery.io API Express enables enterprises to easily and securely integrate apps with any back-end system. Recently, the Appery team has published two guides on how to create databases with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud SQL and then use them with API Express. If you are new to API Express, start with this beginners tutorial. It shows you how to create services based on API Express models and perform CRUD operations.

Check the API Express documentation, and make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

Do you want to build apps fast? Start developing with our trial plan!

The Appery.io team is starting 2016 with new and exciting updates and improvements to the platform!

App Builder enhancements

The latest Appery.io update brings some cool features to the visual App Builder.

New Ionic components

Two new UI components for Ionic were just released: Card and Text.

The Card can be used to visually separate information on a page. It allows for more control and flexibility, and can even be animated. This new component is based on Google’s Card UI design.

The Text component can be used to conveniently place any custom text or AngularJS expression (wrapped with {{...}}) on the page.

The Ionic Button has obtained new property – Icon Only. It makes a button look like an icon. This property converts a button to an icon by changing Icon Style and Style properties, and ignoring the Text property.

It’s now possible to copy and clone components in the App Builder. To create a full copy of a UI component with all nested children, (including other components), click the clone icon on the top right of the component:

Cloning a component

Ionic page templates

When creating a new page in Ionic, you can choose a blank page or a page with ionContent. The blank page is a simple page without any extra components. Use it when you don’t need to make any special adjustments to the scroll or scrollbar settings. The page with ionContent is a multi-tool page with a ion-content directive and many settings provided by Ionic. Use it when you need to make flexible adjustments to page scroll behavior.

You can find more detailed templates description in our docs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Easily import any Cordova plugin

You can now easily add any 3rd party Cordova plugin to your app. This has been one of the most requested features. No more sources digging and long step-by-step guides. This is how quickly you can add any Cordova plugin to your app:

1. Go to the Github page of the plugin and download the latest stable version by clicking “Download ZIP”. It’s important to download the stable or Release version.
2. Go to Resources > Cordova pluginsand click Import Cordova plugin, then: Choose file, locate the downloaded file and click Import plug-in The plug-in will appear under Cordova plug-ins

And you are done — it’s that’s easy.

Quickly add any Cordova plugin

To manage all Cordova plugins for a particular app go to Project > App settings > Cordova plugins and you’ll set the list. On this page you will also see the Core Cordova plugins – these plugins are automatically available in your app. From this page you can easily manage the plugins. You can quickly enable or disable any plugin.

We think it’s a very nice capability that you will like. To learn more, please read the documentation for more details.

API Express enhancements

API Express allows quickly exposing a relational database via REST APIs. In this update we have added a number of important features.

New service builder components

The API Express Service Builder – a visual tool to build your custom services has a number of new components. These components simplify building your service logic.

Easily build custom services with new logic components

You can learn more about the new components here.

Comparison query operators 

A set of comparison query operators were added to Find operation to make your requests more effective. Here is the operators list:

• $eq – Matches values that are equal to a specified value.
• $gt – Matches values that are greater than a specified value.
• $gte – Matches values that are greater than or equal to a specified value.
• $lt – Matches values that are less than a specified value.
• $lte – Matches values that are less than or equal to a specified value.
• $ne – Matches all values that are not equal to a specified value.
• $in – Matches any of the values specified in an array.
• $nin – Matches none of the values specified in an array.

Learn how to use these operators in examples.

API Express project import & export

Now it’s possible to save your API Express project locally by backing it up.The project can be restored from the exported backup as well. It’s really simple, so you have to go to API Express > Settings and click “Export Backup” to save your API Express project locally. Click “From backup” when creating new API Express project and choose previously stored backup to create a project from the backup. A little bit more about these features is here.

Quickly add a REST API to a controller with drag and drop

A faster way to add a REST API to an AngularJS app

When building an AngularJS app, there are useful snippet called “Invoke service”. The code to execute a REST API service will be added to your scope function when clicking on it. All you have to do is change “service_name” to your actual service name:

Drag and drop a service into an AngularJS controller

We now made it even simpler to add a REST API to a function. Just drag and drop the needed service from Services folder (to the left of the screen, where project tree is located) to your function and you’re done! Even the service name will be automatically substituted:

Edit scheduled pushes for faster development

You can now easily edit scheduled pushes. This means you no longer need to delete a scheduled push in order to make a change. There are few ways in Appery.io to send a Push Notification:

1. By sending the REST request using the Push Notifications API.
2. By calling the appropriate methods in Server Code.
3. By using the web console.

All three methods support scheduling pushes. From now, Server Code and Push Notifications API’s were complemented with new methods to get the list of scheduled notifications and to remove them.

By using the web console you can achieve more functionality when editing scheduled pushes. You can remove them as well, but you can also change notifications content and lot of other options including push message, its sound and devices. Read the doc for details.

Push Notifications API changes

If you built an AngularJS app or jQuery Mobile app (library version 3.0), please make sure you are aware of these API changes:

New version of Appery.io Push Notification plugin has different way to read the message. The changes only concerns AngularJS apps and jQuery Mobile app with libraries version 3.0. If you ever wrote the event.notification.aps.alert code, you should replace it with new variant. So, find your code that looks like:

event.notification.aps.alert

And replace it with the next string:

event.detail.message

That’s all if your making the jQuery Mobile app, but for AngularJS one more step should done. Find PushRegisterDeviceImpl JavaScript file (under JavaScript folder) and replace the entire file with the code provided here.

Happy app building with better Appery.io!

Update fast without going through the app store

Wouldn’t it be awesome to update your app without having to resubmit it to app stores? Now you can! With the new Appery.io AutoUpdate feature, you’ll only have to submit your app to the app stores once. You’ll use EXPORT > Auto update to build a new bundle with updated resources. Apps installed on devices will automatically download the updated bundle, meaning users won’t need to do anything for the update.

However, there are some restrictions due to security policies:

• Only web-resources: HTML/JS/CSS resources could be updated with this feature;
• Cordova and Cordova plugins couldn’t be updated with this feature;

The updated release bundle is the same for all platforms, so all mobile devices (Android and iOS) are updated simultaneously. See the documentation for more about this feature.

New API Express capabilities

Quickly create services with new visual builder

API Express, which allows you to use external relational databases with Appery.io, was updated with powerful visual tools. Now it’s really easy to build complex algorithms by combining multiple queries into one endpoint.

Read the rest of this entry »

The new update has a lot of new features. These features include:

• Social login and LDAP sign-on for apps
• Offline capability in apps using the internal database or an external one
• New Bootstrap and Ionic components
• Outline page component view

Keep reading to learn more about what’s new in Appery.io.

Read the rest of this entry »