Can I make a customer self-service product selection tool for the web/AIR with just Flash/Actionscript 3 without having to use a separate database like SQLite?
Essentially, after selecting a general category, the client drags and drops the tag words relevant to their needs into an adjacent box and a list of products that correspond to those tags, from greatest to least, appears in the box next that.
I know that database driven apps are really on the rise but I am not clear if this situation really warrants it as I am just starting to learn (Lynda.com) and am coming from more of a content/design mentality.
Thank you and pardon my noobness.
A pure ActionScript 3 tool would work fine, but no matter which way you slice it you will have to store somehow which products map to which tags. Whether you do this via a database, a XML file or just compile it into your application will depend many things including:
How many products you have;
Will the application required an Internet connection;
How often will the database need to update.
and so on. Note also, that you will only be able to have a local SQLite database in AIR. When running in a web browser that API is not available (for Flash apps, anyway).
Related
We are developing a SaaS-application and currently facing the situation that different customers ask for different customizations. I have already googled and read a lot specifically about Multitenancy. I am also familiar with the Strategy Pattern.
But this still leaves me a bit confused about a good concept for an Angular 2+ application. Business logic is not gonna be the problem, as I can use Angular's dependency injection to load and use customized services for different customers. Also theming itself is not a problem, as we use Angular Material which has a nice theming engine build in. What does give me a headache are the templates itself. Of course I can use *ngIf and *ngSwitch within the HTML templates, but this is exactly the kind of code I want to avoid, because it will become horrifying once reaching 50+ customer versions.
Let's have a real life example. On a search-page all customers can search for objects and export single objects as a file download. One specific customer asks as to implement a mass export in a proprietary file format which needs a new button in the page, which obviously all the other customer should not see.
The three options I can think of for this scenario (and none of which I really like) are the following:
as mentioned before working in the template itself with *ngIf and/or *ngSwitch*
using the theming capabilities of Angular Material and working with css-only (display: none;)
maintaining multiple versions of the component (depending on the needs using component inheritance) and loading the correct version of the component depending on the user
All of them have obvious con's, just to name a few:
Nightmare to maintain once customer numbers grow and customizations become more frequent (think of a bigger component with 6 differentiations and 50 customers ...)
for now actually my favorite, but functionality not really disabled, just hidden (of course the back-end checks for permissions, but still more information is transferred to the users then necessary)
works well for the code-part of the components, but would mean to maintain massive amounts of duplicate template-code
I am sure we are not the first to tackle this issue. Am I overseeing any solution with less disadvantages? Are there any code patterns that I could apply here?
edit: after more discussion in our company we realized that there is another important point to this: some customers are hosted on their own servers, but most of them are being served from one central server. This means that the optional features have to detected and added at run-time, which implies some kind of awkwardness.
So our approach is to extend our existing licensing database to also contain the customer specific functionalities, which then obviously only that customer has a license for. Now the easy solution is to have a license endpoint and get all the licenses the customers has acquired, then every optional function can just sit in a simple single *ngIf. I appreciate that this is a simple and clean solution, but it offers the potential to find out some business facts about other customers of our company (by unobfuscating the code and finding additional endpoints etc.pp.). So probably combining this with server-side rendering would be the best solution I can think of right now.
Of course I don't have a clear cut solution that would totally fit your scenario, but here is an idea.
Divide your page into components that act as container regions.
For each customer create a customer configuration that would say
which atomic components goes in each region.
Create atomic components in which each component can be a single function isolated from the rest of the other components. Rely more on services to communicate between them. As an example for this atomic component is the button that create the new export in your example.
Create your page dynamically using ComponentFactory.
I have used the same approach before to customize a design toolbox based on a slide template (like powerpoint slides templates).
As for the options you mentioned, here are my 2 cents:
*ngIf and *ngSwitch, you can eliminate these if u create ur components dynamically and use granular or atomic components.
I don't think this would be a good approach in terms of architecture
and design. You are just manipulating the view css
If you use transclustion, this can minimize your code base if you
can group the components efficiently.
I hope this helps.
I am a beginner web developer and working on a school project. My apologies for asking this basic question.
I am trying to create an online shopping store. What I am trying to do is when the user clicks on the checkout button, the shopping cart page gets updated with that element.
I don't know how to accomplish that. I really appreciate if someone can point me to a tutorial or provides some tips.
Your question is really abstract, however you will have to find the right way to communicate with a database...it might be php/MySQL with laravel or some other framework or preferably C# asp.net with entity framework(that's what I will go with its not mandatory some people like php) Then you need to learn some lambda or sql depending on which approach you would like to take (php/C#). You will probably need to get some kind of grid control for the cart asp.net has default one personally I find it confusing and hard to work with( there are many controls that can be downloaded freely without charge for non commercial products search google) then you would need to fill that grid with the List of objects that you will get from your database. If you get that far alone the next steps would be easy you will probably need some javascript for ajax calls to a webservice or either your backend so you can submit the orders. For the right tutorial there is none actually since your question covers several topics regarding database modeling, data fetching, backend development and front end development. You can start by getting yourself some kind of server (look for mssql for asp.net) and MySQL for php, then you should look for some kind of database modeling tutorial basic tables relationships 1-1 1-* *-1, after that you would need to do your design (from the question I assume that you already have one downloaded). Then if you got down to this step you should google the way for the right way of communicating with your database from the backend of your website (I advise entity framework its clean and easy) you can generally bind the list of objects directly do the grid that would represent your cart (I say grid but you can give it data template to look like html, not to be confused with regular tables). If you really get here I see no reason to keep coding for a school project in most places you can use all this to bachelor degree exam and pass with straight A. But if you want more details look into these videos they explain quite well what you want to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s91pPLx_T3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYr0seXj7qA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkXk5gHjSs
I am not great at JavaScript but I think your page would need to update a cookie then read that value from said cookie. I hope that's a good place to start!
You might also find "Creating a Shopping Cart using only HTML/JavaScript" helpful.
I want to make an application for my dad to keep track of stock trading inventory.
He trades shares for himself and for his clients and would like to keep the records.
He uses windows.
I want to provide an html page where he will enter new information and this should go to a database.
I am thinking of using struts (and windows,tomcat) and mysql to make this application. I know some stuff from college days, but would look into the tutorials to setup things and program.
Does this selection of technology looks good enough or something more easier and equally good exist?
What are you trying to achieve here? There's a lot of work involved in this. Certainly if you want to do it just for fun / experience then there's a very strong case for either sticking with what you're comfortable with or using tools you'd like to gain experience in. But if the only objective is to provide a tool for managing the data, why not have a look at some of the open-source/commercial packages available.
There are some listed here
I'm a 80% ruby on rails developer, but still need to do some Access VBA work.
Some of them are very shit systems, been build ages ago , used by the big enterprise globally , so that most of the works are just enhance the old system.
The techniques are basically MS Access as front-end, linked-table which link to SQL server via ODBC as back end.
Now, I really think I need help , just want to know is there anybody can build the elegant VBA application follow the object-oriented patten?
Even better if you can show me a snippet of code to demonstrate how good it can be, thanks.
Well the first issue to keep in mind is that there’s no magical shortcut to learning MS access. Over the years I’ve learned a lot of development platforms ranging from mainframe systems, databae systems, all the way down to hand coded assembler on a PC. I written two payroll systems from scratch (with the revenue Canada formulas for taxes included in those systems). One system was from scratch written Pascal where I even wrote my own data engine.
Make no mistake, ms-access is a complex developmet system.
You can build gorgeous looking drop dead applications in access. take a look at these screen shots:
http://www.fairsoftware.com/screenshots.aspx
Note the cool ribbons in the above screen shots.
The problem is you can’t learn Unix in a day, and you can’t learn Oracle in a day. You also can’t learn MS access in a day. If those applications you been given to maintain are complex, then hiring a developer with 4-5 years of experience is what you need here. The idea that somehow you going to get up to speed in ms-access faster then say vb.net, or c# is really a false concept here.
In fact I would go so far as to say that you can Learn Oracle quicker than you can learn MS access. While the learning curve in MS access is not so steep, it is very long.
VB6 is a walk in the park compared to access. VB6 forms are dead simple, but the forms in access are very complex (we have about 3 times the number of events and properties for the given form). For example, in access we have two events that fire when an form loads (on-open, and on-load). VB6 forms (and even .net forms) only have one event. The on-open event has a cancel option. If you set cancel = true then the form will not load and will not be displayed.
Logically, this means that the form has two distinct events for two distinct purposes when you call the form. The on-open event will thus have code used for verification and testing of certain conditions of data (and allow you to cancel). If the on-open event is not canceled, then the on-load event then fires and the form loads.
Logically, at this point this means that code that sets up variables or initial values of controls on the form needs to be placed in the on-load event ( in fact Controls cannot be modified but only examined in the on open event). So there’s a very nice granularity and distinction between the two processes that occur in a typical form load. It’s also interesting to note that most products in the marketplace don’t have these two separate events.
As a developer, thus you place the appropriate code and use the correct event for a given purpose. It will take some experience in having used access to figure out which event to use for these things. You could ask if there’s a book that explains this problem, but that’s like asking is there a book that tells you when to use a combo box over that of a list box? I don’t think there is such a book.
The documentation for a combo box will explain what a combo box is, and how to use it. The same goes for the documentation access has for the on open event. You can read what on-open does, but then you as a developer will have to figure out when it’s appropriate to use that event. The same goes for when it’s appropriate use a combo box or that of a list box. At the end of the day, the only solution and how to know these issues is going to be your experience as a developer with the product.
I have an article that talks about using class objects in MS access, and when to use them here:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/WhyClass.html
If you’re looking for code samples from everything to forms to reports to using windows API, a great reference is here:
http://www.mvps.org/access/
You have my sympathy - Access VBA is not object-oriented in any sense like Ruby. You will have to change your mindset when tackling development in Access; such applications are almost always geared around the concept of data rows and sets rather than objects. The user interface is often bound to data rows and sets in a way that hides a lot of plumbing.
Having said that it is possible to build pefectly decent maintainable applications in Access with care and attention. Good luck.
One thing that just futzing around in Access won't teach you is how to create and use standalone class modules. These have some aspects of object orientation, but not a whole lot, but they can be extremely useful in making your code more manageable, as you can wrap a lot of operations in a standalone class module and then treat it as an object that can have multiple instances. You don't get inheritance and polymorphism and a lot of the other buzzwords that go with the OO gospel, but it's worth taking a look at what they can do if you've never used them extensively.
This article is old but make a great case for considering Access as part of the enterprises long-term application strategy.
http://www.fmsinc.com/MicrosoftAccess/Strategy/index.asp
Seth
Take a look at the Implements statement i.e. polymorphism via interfaces. That's about as OO as VBA gets.
http://www.huagati.com/dbmltools/
I've been using the Huagati DBML tools for a project for the past five months or so, and just the "Update Linq-to-SQL Diagram from Database" function is worth the registration price. I haven't run into any compatibility problems, but that's the only 3rd-party add-in for VS2008 that I'm using, so not sure about how it plays with ReSharper.
It still boggles my mind that Microsoft released the Linq-to-sql designer (for .dbml files) without an "update diagram" feature built into it, but the Huagati plug-in does that, plus some other niceties (you can specify how you want to 'prettify' your column-name/properties, so that all my Tablename_Id columns become TablenameID properties. I did have to add a couple lines to the list of fields marked "auto-generated" (by default, my bit columns that default to 0 or 1 weren't marked as auto-generated, even though they are). A nitpicky complaint is that you can't type in the box that has the list of auto-gen values (you can't hit 'enter' to create a new line - so you have to copy/paste from notepad).
Other than that very, very minor nitpick though, the DBML tools have saved me a ton of time. I also like the "compare" feature to see what's out of whack before I go and actually commit to changing my Linq classes (also useful for comparing the dev linq ORM classes to a production database, in case you forget to document changes to the dev DB as you go...)
So anyway - after more than 5 months, I give it a thumbs up.
Kirk
If you've moved to Entity Framework this is clearly a tool you should know about. I've been disappointed by the EF designer's "Update Model From Database..." feature and I'm blown away by the simplicity and power of Huagati's Model Comparer tool. The Model Comparer for EFv4 shows differences between the database, SSDL, and CSDL layers and allows individual differences from one layer to be synchronized with another or left in place. I've just watched the demo video and I'm highly impressed. I wouldn't be surprised to see this sort of tool included in the next version of Visual Studio. Unfortunately I can't give hands on feedback yet, just a heads-up.
If you send an email to support#huagati.com I can put you in touch with some existing users. (Assuming you want to ask other users about their experiences..?)
Or if you have any specific questions on how to use it, please be more specific.
Also, (in case you haven't visited it), the support forum is a good place to get hold of other users and to ask specific questions about the tool... You can of course also email any questions you may have to support#huagati.com
http://forum.huagati.com/forum1-huagati-dbmledmx-tools-support.aspx