Long running process with notifications

ASP.NET, CSS, PHP, Tutorials

In a web application, some long running tasks may time out and not finish. To avoid this kind of limitation we will show you how to run such tasks reliably and, at the same time provide progress status to the end user so they know the task is still running. In this article we’ll show you how to achieve this in PHPRunner and ASPRunner.NET.

A common task like this is batch sending email notifications. The key is to initiate a process like this from JavaScript sending the next batch of tasks to the server via AJAX.

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Tabbed elements in dashboards

ASP.NET, PHP, Tutorials

Dashboards excel at showcasing a multitude of valuable information on a single page. However, there are instances when a basic dashboard layout falls short in accommodating the desired volume of data on a single screen. In this article, we will demonstrate a method for amplifying information presentation through the use of a tabbed component. It’s important to note that this is not a built-in and we will need to write a bit of code.

Here is what we after:

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Yet another custom login page

ASP.NET, CSS, News, PHP, Tutorials

As many of you know, we recently launched a side project named PicTur. This is a website, built with the help of PHPRunner, that allows users build beautiful travel stories. Instead of letting you pictures collect dust you can create a travel story and share with the world. Take a look open an account and maybe create a story or two.

This website was built with the help of PHPRunner and was heavily customized. We will post series of articles talking about the most interesting parts of this project. Let us start by showing how pages like login, register and remind password were prettified. First, we found a good login template at Carrd, customized it a bit and imported CSS into PHPRunner.

This is the end result:

PicTur..app login page

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Generate PDF files using NodeJS and PDFMake

ASP.NET, PHP, Tutorials

In this article we will show you how to generate PDF invoices on the web server side. We use this approach to generate and email billing reminders to our customers.

1. Download NodeJS to the web server. For Windows choose 64-bit MSI installer.

2. Run and install keeping all default settings.

3. Inside your project create a new folder named pdfmake.

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Low-code and RPA automation

ASP.NET, News, Tutorials

By Jerry Adach, Director Enterprise Data and Automation, Central Maine Healthcare

ASPRunner.Net is, in my opinion, the best software on the market to build secure, role-based data driven workflows and complex reports and dashboards.

Over the years, we started to use more and more stored procedures to be called by custom buttons and table events. It seemed to be more efficient having SQL Server handle some of the heavy lifting and more complicated tasks.

Now we are using another platform to perform some heavy lifting and adding brand new capabilities.

Our talented Lead RPA Developer, Michael DiPoffi, wrote some custom class files that we could easily integrate into ASPRunner.Net. We can now call APIs that will initiate automated workflows, passing parameters from the app to the enterprise RPA (Robotic Process Automation) execution server via normal table events and custom buttons. The class files also retrieve responses from the server to ensure it was successfully executed. This is a game changer.

Since in my organization, Automation, Enterprise Data and App Development are all under one area of IT, this was inevitable.

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A Complete Guide to Sending Emails with a Web-based Application

ASP.NET, PHP, Tutorials

An old programmer’s saying, coined by Jamie Zawinski, says “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail”. Jokes aside, email was and still is an integral part of our lives, and every web application needs to send emails to its users. This guide will walk you through all the steps to ensure every single email-sending aspect is covered. This is going to be a long article and we plan to update it often. Here are the topics, that will be covered in this…Continue Reading “A Complete Guide to Sending Emails with a Web-based Application” →

How to create a beautiful dashboard theme

ASP.NET, News, PHP, Tutorials

People often ask us this: “I found a great-looking theme on the Internet, how do I import it into PHPRunner or ASPRunner.NET”. The problem is that all themes are implemented differently, there is no standard they follow and they cannot be “imported”. However, it is possible to make your project look exactly like any of those themes and this article will teach you how to do this.

For the inspiration, we will be using Material Dashboard Dark Edition theme by Creative Tim. Here is how it looks:

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How to scroll List page to the record that was edited

ASP.NET, PHP, Tutorials

When you have a long List page with dozens of records, editing or viewing a record on a separate can be cumbersome. After you edit or view a record, clicking ‘Back to List’ will display all the records from the top and you lost the position of the record you just edited. This simple technique will allow you to scroll the List page back to the original position and also it will highlight the record that was just edited or viewed. To implement this feature…Continue Reading “How to scroll List page to the record that was edited” →

Tracking visitors behaviour in your web application

ASP.NET, PHP, Tutorials

So you want to know how much time users spend on any specific page of your web application? This article explains how to log what pages your users visit and how much time they spend on each page. This kind of data can provide valuable insight into what forms of your application are too complicated and need to be split into several smaller forms. Or if they keep coming back to the welcome page this may mean your navigation inside the app can be improved.

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Using CSS grid for mobile screens – a complete tutorial

ASP.NET, PHP, Tutorials

Task – implement custom grid display in PHPRunner or ASPRunner.NET applications on mobile screens. The idea is to use the same HTML and achieve our goal using CSS only.

CSS Grid layout is nothing new and excellent tutorials are available on the web for those who want to learn more. In this article we will only cover all the relevant details to PHPRunner and ASPRunner.NET.

In this article, we will be using our Forum template as an example of using CSS Grid Layout.

Desktop version

Here is where we start. Just a regular desktop grid with all database fields occupying their own cell.

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