Master-details is a very useful feature but the details table may clutter the UI. We have seen projects where people have more than a dozen details tables and it would be useful if we can hide some that are not relevant to the current master table record.

Let us take a look at this completely artificial example. A typical setup with Orders table as a master and Order Details, Employees, and Customers as details. We would like to hide the Employees table tab when OrderID is more than 10300.

Continue Reading "Hiding details table tab on the fly"

Knowing where your web applications users location is a useful feature, that can help you provide a better service. For instance, you can show them results that are tailored to their location or display their location on the map or convert latitude/longitude to a street address. There is a handy Geolocation API in Javascript that can provide the user’s location, we just need to find the way to pass this data to the server-side and save it in session variables. We want to get this…Continue Reading “Using geolocation data in your web application”

In the current world situation, all countries track new and existing cases of COVID-19. Some countries provide an API to access the latest data. Here is an API provided by Hong Kong’s department of health. Today we will learn how to display this data in our own application. Applies to version 10.4 of PHPRunner, ASPRunner.NET and ASPRunnerPro.

Creating the REST View

1. Lets see how we can display data for March 2020. We added a filter for ‘As of date’ field to show data that contains ’03/2020′ in this field (they use UK date format). Click ‘Get result’ and we will see both API query string and the data it returns.

2. Now, lets take a look at the URL:

https://api.data.gov.hk/v2/filter?q=%7B%22resource%22%3A%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chp.gov.hk%2Ffiles%2Fmisc%2Flatest_situation_of_reported_cases_wuhan_eng.csv%22%2C%22section%22%3A1%2C%22format%22%3A%22json%22%2C%22filters%22%3A%5B%5B1%2C%22ct%22%2C%5B%2203%2F2020%22%5D%5D%5D%7D

We can paste it to the web browser and get the same results in JSON fomat. Now it is the time to create a REST connection. The https://api.data.gov.hk/v2/ part of the URL is the main connection URL.

Continue Reading "Working with third-party REST API"

Version 10.4 is here!

Trial version download links

This update is free of charge for those who purchased or upgraded less than one year ago. To find new version download links and registration keys proceed to the control panel and find it under ‘My purchases’. There will be a ‘Reg info’ link next to your latest purchase.

The two most important features in this update are our own REST API and also the consumption of data, provided by third-party APIs. Consumption of third party data turned out to be the most difficult task and took more time than we expected, hence the delay. On the plus side, we now able to work with any data, not just something that comes as a result of the SQL query. And this also helped us implement a few minor but frequently requested features like OR search or data filtering in charts.

Continue Reading "Version 10.4"

Autofill is a handy feature that allows quickly fill multiple fields after lookup wizard selection. However, it only works based on a single lookup wizard selection. In this article, we will show a more advanced example of implementing a custom Autofill based on two field selection.

field1 – first lookup wizard
field2 – second lookup wizard
field3 – field to be filled after field2 selection
table1 – lookup table where autofill data is coming from

Create a field event based on ‘editing’ for field2.

Continue Reading "Autofill based on two fields selection"

When we added a new record and returned back to the List page that new record may not be clearly visible on the page. Depending on what page we on, what sort or is applied, how many records are on the page – we may simply be on the wrong page. This can be useful when, for instance, you are transferring a large amount of data from paper to the database and this kind of visual indication can be helpful to keep track of the process.

In this article, we will show you a technique that does the following. After the new record is added we find out which page it belongs to, redirect the user to that page, highlight the record and also scroll the page if the record is below the fold.

Continue Reading "Making new record visible on the List page"

Tri-part events are a special code snippets that provide a convenient way of programming interactions between the browser and the webserver.

Why three parts?

Any web application consists of two parts – server and client. The client part runs in the browser on the computer of the web site visitor. This part takes care of all user interface interactions, such as buttons, input controls, blocks of text and images. Client-side code is written in Javascript in most cases.

Server part – this code runs on the webserver itself and has direct access to the database, can send emails, read and write files to the disk. In PHPRunner-created applications server code language is PHP, ASPRunner.NET uses C# or VB.NET, ASPRunnerPro uses Classic ASP.

Most real-life tasks though require a joint action of both client and server parts. For example, the user presses a button and wants something changed in the database, or an email being sent.
Tri-part events provide a relatively easy way to create such integrated code snippets.

They consist of three parts running one after another:

  • Client Before – this Javascript code is run immediately after user’s action such as pressing the button.
  • Server – this part runs on the server after the Client Before part has finished. You can only user server-side code here (PHP, C# or ASP).
  • Client After – back to the web browser, another Javascript code part.
Continue Reading "Tri-part events"

PHPRunner, ASPRunner.NET, ASPRunnerPro 10.3 is here! If you purchased the software less than twelve months ago you can logon to the control panel and find download links and registration keys under ‘My purchases’. There should be ‘Reg info’ link next to your latest purchase.

Customers who purchased more than twelve months ago can renew their maintenance using links below:

PHPRunner maintenance

ASPRunner.NET maintenance

ASPRunnerPro maintenance

Trial version download links:

https://xlinesoft.com/download

Here is what’s new in this update.

1. Separate permissions for additional pages

It will apply to both Static and Dynamic permissions

Continue Reading "Version 10.3 of PHPRunner, ASPRunner.NET and ASPRunnerPro"