I'm creating a multi-platform app, mostly for web interface, mobile and a windows application. The app will manage user task lists and sync them to the server, but also store them locally for processing data faster.
My idea of architecture until now is:
Keeping most of the processing on client side, eventually syncing with the server.
Developing an API to provide and receive data that will be saved on the server (basically just a json wrapper web service)
The data flow:
user Authenticates -> Requests updated Json objects to the server -> populate client-side objects -> work with client-side objects -> send a json object back to the server -> server updates data.
Is this a good approach? I've never done this, can you guys give me some tips?
I think you are on the right track. The idea is to decouple the front-end from the back-end. The backend shall expose a set of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) functions as RESTful JSON web services. All your different flavours of UI (mobile, web, windows) can consume the same API.
I would recommend for the web front-end to take a look at AngularJS together with bootstrap.
Regarding the backend, you could implement it as a simple Java web application with Jersey/JAX-RS or alternatively, you could check Node.js + Express.
Related
I'm new to flutter and i really want to know, is there a way to connect to a database server (for instance mysql) in flutter rather using firebase. I'm working on a smart parking system project where i need to insert the latitude and longitude of the parking area which is free into the database which is created in server and retrieve it whenever user requests for it. It would be great if anyone gives solution for above mentioned problem (Flutter with database).
Since Flutter is just a UI Framework, topics such as persistence and databases may be out of scope or may depend on the use case.
Flutter UI's can persist data (application state) for short periods of time in a manner that is really only useful for the purposes of creating a good User Experience (is this button click? is it green? etc.)
For persisting more useful data outside of the application and on the actual device, you may want to consider the Shared Preferences Plugin for Flutter.
Wraps NSUserDefaults (on iOS) and SharedPreferences (on Android),
providing a persistent store for simple data. Data is persisted to
disk automatically and asynchronously.
Now, if you require persisting data in any centralized manner (e.g. RDMS, Firebase, or any data persistence service) your options are:
Persistence options that have a Flutter plugin (e.g. Firestore, Firebase)
Build your own service layer using HTTP, gRPC that talks to some backend service that provides access to a data store. You can do this with Express, Rails, CloudFunctions, etc.
As for connecting directly to a database such as MySQL, I don't see why you couldn't do that (maybe there is some technical limitation), but this would be a very bad idea in any practical situations as (unlike Firebase/Firestore) you won't be able to protect your data store once any client application has write access.
It sounds like you need a central read/write data store, so your best bet may be to host a server that provides access to a database while exposing an API to Flutter for which you can use dart:io to make requests.
Try using sqflite. It's a package you can include in your Flutter app that allows you to persist data to the local device. You will need to use the path_provider as well. Here is the link to the repository on Github https://github.com/tekartik/sqflite
We plan to use a MySQL database as the backend for our (Java or Ruby on Rails) based web application. After completing the web application, we want to port the application to iOS and Android.
We want to be able to run the application in "native" mode - that is, if a network connection is not available to the smart-phone, the system should be able to store the data locally, and sync with the backend when the network connection becomes available.
The best kind of framework for this kind of syncing is a library/framework such as Parse.com.
The question to which we want an answer is: is it possible to exchange data between the web application data stored in MySQL, and the Parse.com data which is stored in a proprietary format on the Parse servers?
Answer to your question: It is indeed possible, but syncing data is an advanced topic.
However, you also state that you want to access the parse data when offline. As I understand it, you want Parse to handle the offline state, and then sync to MySQL when connection is back up. Parse does not offer functionality to store data offline, other than caching requests. You probably need another service for your specific needs.
I might have misunderstood the use case. If so, my alternate understanding would be that ALL data for the smart phones will be handled by parse: both offline and online, with syncing. The answer is still: parse does not offer this kind of functionality.
I am newbie with CAS Server, I found it is a single sign on server between different application in terms of technology like php, .net & java. I explore it but even though there are some questions yet not clear. Before ask my doubt, I tell what am I trying to achieve?
I am using a gwt based application, Now for some of the features, development is in a php technology. It should get some session data from existing java application. another approach to customize CAS like integrate a web service layer for authorization, instead of using its existing like query to db.
The doubts are:
1) Can I share a session data between Java & php application using CAS?
2) is there any security issue while passing a data using CAS server?
Thanks in Advance.
Sharing session data accross application can be addressed by mechanisms not linked to CAS. Though, when authentication occurs in CAS server, user data are retrieved from various data sources and these user data can be pushed to client CAS applications through SAML validation and the appropriate configuration.
I am investigating using HTML5 for a new suite of mobile applications that our company will be writing.
I found this demo here,
http://phonegap.com/start#android
Which shows how to use eclipse to generate and run an android application which is written using HTML.
Just wondering whether there is any information around about writing an online / offline application? This application would collect data based on the user input, and that data would be sent off to a central server and put into our central SQL server database.
What mechanisms could be used to connect and send the data to the server for instance?
Another requirement would be that some data would have to be sent and cached on the device, data related to the tasks that the logged in user has to perform.
You can interact with your server by applying traditional javascript techniques, like ajax, or other cross-domain methods like jsonp, iframes, etc.
The HTML5 localStorage will help you saving data on the local device, it's very useful when your data can be expressed as strings. But if your app requires more powerful tool for local data management, you can make a phonegap plugin with native code for anything you want.
In case of Offline-mode save the data in Local Storage which is feature of HTML 5. Whenever the user in Online Sync the data with the server. In case the data to be stored locally is quite large then use PhoneGap that allows to store some big stuffs
[Ref.: http://docs.phonegap.com/en/2.7.0/cordova_storage_storage.md.html#Storage].
I am developing an education app for Kids.
The application is going to contain pictures, stories and video as well.
Including all above contents in the app will surely bloat it and hence i would like store all data on a server that will be accessed by my app.
I haven't used any remote databases (like MySQL or Oracle) with any other iOS app. In fact i am a newbie in developing such kind of apps. Can any one point me to a sample
Connecting to a remote mysql is really not recommended.
The security here is critical.
You should create a webservice and my advice to you is to make sure that the access to the webservice is restricted
The webservice can be your own "protocol" or any other well known protocol like SOAP
By your own I mean, json, csv .... or whatever.
Edit 1
The technology of your webservice should be dependent on many things.
If the system is small, and the code needs to be update very often, I would suggest to do it with PHP and some small(!) MVC framework like CI.
But if its a large system with needs of ACL (access control list) I will probably choose java with spring...
I suggest that : Do not connect to / use database directly from user application. It may causes serious security problems and your app should have native SQL drivers to connect db.
So, create a web service that receive queries from the application and response in XML, JSON or some other strings that easy to parse. This will be much easier than embed native APIs into your apps.