TD MOBILE™

NoSQL Data Operations Product Version 2.0

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TD Mobile™: NoSQL Data Operations, Product Version 2.0

The software described in this book is furnished under a license agreement and may be used only in accordance with

the terms of the agreement.

Last updated: September 10, 2015.

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................................... 3

SQL CONNECTIONS ................................................................................................................................................................. 3

XML CONNECTIONS ................................................................................................................................................................ 5

CUSTOM CONNECTIONS ......................................................................................................................................................... 5

MONGO CONNECTIONS .......................................................................................................................................................... 6

SETTING UP OUR MONGO DATA CONNECTION ...................................................................................................................... 7

SETTING UP OUR DATA CLASS ................................................................................................................................................ 8

USING THE ADD DATA PAGE WIZARD ................................................................................................................................... 13

HOW DATA OPERATIONS WORK WITH BINDINGS................................................................................................................. 19

LIST PAGE .................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 DETAIL PAGE ................................................................................................................................................................................ 23 EDIT PAGE ................................................................................................................................................................................... 24

CUSTOMIZING THE WIZARD-GENERATED PAGES .................................................................................................................. 25

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Introduction

TD Mobile 1.2 allows to build data driven mobile enterprise apps without any coding involved at all. TD

Mobile will access your data and create “CRUD” (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations without the

developer needing to code anything. The developer just needs to tell TD Mobile what data source and

tables to use. TD Mobile is taking simplicity of app creation to the next level with both the new data

operations and the existing code-free data binding features.

Beginning with TD Mobile 1.1, we have the following new features:

Data Connections

Data Classes

Data Operations

Data Pages

First we’ll take a look at the different types of Data Connections that you can use, and then we’ll take a

trial run of all these features using the popular new NoSQL database Mongo, which now comes

packaged with TD Mobile.

SQL Connections

If you are connecting to a relational database like SqlServer, Oracle or GuptaTechnologies’ own SqlBase,

choose SQL for your Connection Type and then choose your database from the Provider Type

dropdown. For those three databases, all you’ll need to add is a Connection String to com- plete your

Data Connection.

If you need help with the connection string, in TD Mobile SAL Help (on the Ribbon Bar of TD Mobile,

select the Help tab and then press the SAL button, second from the left), there is a lot of great ad- vice

on how to build that: search for the function documentation for ‘SqlConnectDotNet’. The con- nection

string is a series of key=value pairs, where the keys are keywords dictated by your data provider and the

values are largely private to your company: server name, database name, user and password, etc. So

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you could seek help with the former from your data provider and with the latter from your network

admin or other colleagues. There’s also some great resources online, like: www.connectionstrings.com

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XML Connections

An XML Connection allows you to store and retrieve records from an XML file based database. The File

Path should be the path and name of the XML file to store your data in. If you select Auto Cre- ate File

the file will be created if it doesn’t already exist.

Custom Connections

A Custom Connection allows you to create your own data connection implementation. You would

have to write a .NET class that implements the IDataConnection interface. Specify the fully quali- fied

name of that class in Implementation Class, and the fully qualified name of the assembly con- taining

the class in Assembly Name. In the Configuration table, you can specify a list of name/value pairs that

will be passed to the class when connecting.

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Mongo Connections Let’s go step by step with a Mongo Connection and build a small sample of how to hook up all these

new features. If you want to get some hands-on experience and follow along, start TD Mobile and

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save your new app as MongoContacts.apx in its own folder. If you’re the lazy sort, you can find a

finished version of MongoContacts.apx in the Samples folder you installed with TD Mobile.

Setting up our Mongo Data Connection To add a Connection, select the Connections node within the Server Resources section of the Appli-

cation window and click the Add button in the Connections window:

A Connection named conn1 is created. Select the name and change it to connMongo:

-->

Double-click it to get into its Definition window:

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Mongo is the Connection Type we want. The Database Name, by default, is the name of the appli-

cation; typically you’d want to change that but it will work for our sample (if you happen to already have

a Mongo database with that name, make up your own new name). Mongo is very flexible and will open

an existing database or, if the one you specify doesn’t exist, will create it. For our sample, we want to

create a new database.

If you are using the version of Mongo that comes with TD Mobile, the default Host and Port set- tings

seen above will work fine; TD Mobile will start Mongo automatically. If you have your own version,

provide the appropriate information; also make sure your Mongo database is running be- fore you run

your TD Mobile app.

Setting Up our Data Class Adding a new Data Class is a little different, because the default type of Class is Functional. You want to

click the down arrow on the right side of the Add button and select Data Class:

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That will create a new Data Class with the default name ‘cls1’. Double-click it to get into the tree view

mode:

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Change the name of the Data Class from ‘cls1’ to ‘dcContact’. The Data Class will represent a data- base

table (called a “collection” in Mongo) and here, in the Instance Variables section, we will spec- ify the

fields we are going to be using from that collection within our app.

If the class name is not exactly the same as the collection or table name, whether pre-existing or how

we want to define it, we can map it appropriately. Let’s insert a Name Map with the Coding Assistant.

(If the Coding Assistant is not showing on your screen, look at Outline tab of the Ribbon Bar, and in the

Tools section click the Coding Assistant button.) With the Data Class selected in the Outline window,

double-click the Name Map option in the Coding Assistant:

Once that Name Map is inserted, let’s change the collection name from ‘dcContact’ to ‘Contact’:

Note: Mongo and many data sources are case-sensitive, be careful when naming collec- tions/tables

and fields/columns.

Now we will add our fields. With the Instance Variables node selected, choose Number from the

available data types listed by the Coding Assistant:

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Now name that Number “ID”:

Notice that when you select a Data Class variable, you have three options for what you can “Add Next

Level” (or insert under): Name Map, Identity Field and Auto Increment:

Name Map we’ve seen. Just like the Data Class name can be mapped, if different, to the ta-

ble/collection name, the Variable name can be mapped to a different column/field name. We’ll use the

same names for both, so we won’t need to map any of our variables.

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Identity Field must be specified for one field in your Data Class; it identifies a field as the “primary key”

or the unique identifier by which we can select or change data. The compiler will let you know if you

forget to specify one, or if you try to specify more than one.

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Auto Increment is an optional feature; if specified, TD Mobile will automatically increment an Iden- tity

Field when inserting new data.

Let’s specify our ID field as the Identity Field and also ask TD Mobile to automatically increment it on

our inserts:

As we added the first variable, likewise add the following Strings: “Name”, “Company”, “Phone”,

“Email”; and a Date/Time named “StartDate”. These will not be mapped, meaning they will have the

same name in the database. Here’s our complete Data Class:

Using the Add Data Page Wizard First let’s get rid of the default page ‘page1’. In the Pages collection, select page1 and click the Re-

move button:

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Then click the down arrow on the right side of the Add button and select “Data Page”. This will start

the wizard and bring up the Add Data Page window (which expands as you fill in data):

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In Select Class, choose our Data Class ‘dcContact’ from the dropdown. For

Page Type, we want the works: “List Page + Detail Page + Edit Page” For

Data Connection, choose our Data Connection ‘connMongo’.

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In the Data Page Fields (which will apply to both our Detail Page and our Edit Page), let’s de-select the

ID field because it’s our Identity Field which we won’t ever want to change and it’s Auto Incre- ment so

we don’t even need to specify it on inserts.

For the ListView Fields, let’s de-select all the fields except Name and Company; those two will suf- fice

for identifying our contacts from a list. Also change the ListView Rows from 2 to 1, as one row will be

plenty for our two fields.

Click the Go button. Magically, the wizard builds us three fully functioning, data-enabled web pag- es.

There’s only one thing you need to do before we can try them out: on the Ribbon Bar, select the

Project tab, and in the Pages section, specify the Default Page as ‘DccontactList’:

Go ahead and run the app. In the Project tab of the Ribbon Bar, in the Application section, click the Go

button. If all goes well, you should see, somewhat anticlimactically, a blank web page:

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But that is as expected because we have no data yet. We can make that better and will a little later on.

But let’s add some data first so we can see the interaction between our app and the mongo da- tabase.

Click the Add button to open the Edit page, and make up some data, for example:

And Save. Then we are navigated back to our List page and presto – we have a list of one:

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You can click on that list to go to the Detail page, and from the Detail page you can go to the Edit page

and make and save changes, and then navigate back to the list. Play with it if you want. Add another

contact. Then let’s look at how the wizard wired it all up:

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How Data Operations Work with Bindings

List Page Let’s take an in-depth look at our List page, named by the wizard ‘DccontactList’. First the wizard

declared a pair of Bindings which you can see in the Client section of the web page outline:

Defined as type dcContact (our Data Class), we have an array Binding which will populate our list, and a

single-instance Binding which will represent the item that the user selects from the list.

Then the wizard added a ListView control, named ‘listViewMain’ to the Phone Layout and specified its

List Source Bind and its Value Bind using those two Bindings:

Within the ListView is a Layout Grid with two text fields; the wizard set their Value Binds to the ap-

propriate field from the dcContact Data Class; for example, the Name field:

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On the server side, there is only this Data Operation:

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You could guess what this Data Operation is going to do by its name, ‘BrowsedcContact’, which is a

concatenation of Browse (that is, select some number of records/documents) and dcContact (our Data

Class). It will return an array of dcContact items.

When you look at the entire Data Operation, fully expanded, the thing that jumps out at you is:

there’s no code:

The wizard merely needed to specify the Connection, the Data Action of Browse, and the Data Class

Binding we just saw as the List Source Bind for our ListView control.

The optional Filters field is like a Where clause in traditional SQL. Say you modified the page and

added a data field and hooked it to a Binding named COMPANY; you could then let the user type in a

company and then only return contacts from that company with this filter:

And the Sort Options works as you would expect. This example would sort your list by Company name

and then by Contact name:

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The last step for the wizard was to specify an On Create event for the web page that will invoke this

data operation when the user navigates to this page:

The wizard also added an On Click event to the ListView, so that when the user selects a contact from

the list, it will navigate to the detail page, sending the ID of the selected contact:

Detail Page The Detail page has a Parameter named ‘ID” set up to receive that data:

It then uses that Parameter as the Identity Binding in its one Data Operation:

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Notice the Data Action of Read – that differs from Browse by selecting only one record/document. The

Data Class Binding, ‘DCCONTACT’ will be populated by the operation and will provide the Value Binds

for all the text fields on the page. We also see here that a Page Parameter is a type of Binding and ‘ID’ is

used to look up the contact selected back on the List page.

Edit Page The Edit Page has two purposes. If it is passed an ID into its Page Parameter, it presumes an edit of an

existing contact; if not it presumes we want to insert a new contact. It has three Data Opera-

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tions, with three different Data Actions : ‘GetdcContact’ does a Read that selects a contact if there is a

passed ID; ‘EditdcContact’ does an Edit if that contact info is changed and the Save button is clicked;

‘AdddcContact’ does an Add that inserts a new contact.

Again I have to note that there is not a line of code in these Data Operations:

Customizing the Wizard-generated Pages You can modify the pages however you like. Let’s add some niceties, and add one new Data Opera- tion

to delete a contact.

First let’s handle the case where there are no contacts to list and a blank page is presented to the user.

Drag-and-drop a Text field from the Controls section of the Ribbon Bar in Layout view, and set its

Caption, in the Properties window to: “Click the Add button to insert a contact”. Then set its Visibility

Bind to the array Binding that populates the ListView, and check the Inverse property; that way, if the

array is empty (its Boolean State is False) the text will be visible; if the array has items (its Boolean

State is then True) the text will not be visible.

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In the Detail and the Edit pages, the columns could be sized better. Select the Layout Grid on both of

those pages and set the Column Widths property by specifying a percentage of the total width for each

column:

On the Detail page, let’s swap in some Link controls for the Phone number and the Email address so the

user will be able to call or email the contact by clicking them. The Link control is the chain-link icon on

the Layout tab of the Ribbon Bar in the Control section:

After swapping the Text field for a Link, set the Link Type to Phone (or Email) and make sure to set the

Value Bind appropriately:

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On the Edit page, let’s add a Delete button and a Cancel button, and let’s put all three buttons in a

Navigation Bar in the page footer. First, with the page selected in Phone Layout, check the Footer

Visible setting in the Page section of the Properties window. Then drag-and-drop a Navigation Bar into

the footer. The Navigation Bar is in the Container section next to the Controls section:

Then drop the Save button already on the page into the Nav bar. Then drag-and-drop two new but-

tons from the Ribbon bar:

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You have to drop them in the right-most edge of the Nav bar. Your Nav bar should now look like this:

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Select the middle button and, in the Properties window, change its caption to “Delete” and its name to

“pbDelete”. Now we need to add a Data Operation that will Delete a contact. Switch to the Outline

view for the Edit page and, in the Server section, select the Operations node and, in the Coding

Assistant, select ‘Data Operation’:

Give our new Data Operation a name; select our Connection ‘connMongo’; change the Data Action to

‘Delete’; set the Data Class Binding to ‘DCCONTACT’; and the Identity Binding to ‘DCCONTACT.ID’, like

so:

That completes the Data Operation.

Now switch back to Phone Layout, and double-click the Delete button. TD Mobile inserts an On Click

event for you and brings you to it. Add a Confirm command with a question that will be pre- sented to

the user; if he or she answers ‘Yes’ then the indented lines beneath it will execute, and we will invoke

our new Data Operation, and then navigate back to the List page:

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Back in the Phone Layout, select the other new button in the Nav bar. Change its Caption to “Can- cel”

and its Name to “pbCancel”. Double-click on the button to insert an On Click event. Add a Navigate

command that will simply go to the previous page:

In the version of MongoContacts.apx in the Samples folder you installed with TD Mobile, if you’re

curious, you can see some other changes to the app: such as defaulting the StartDate to today for

inserts, formatting the dates, and making the Name field on the Edit page ‘required’, - but I think you

get the point. With the new Data Connections, Data Classes and Data Operations, and the amazing Data

Page Wizard, you can have a fully functional data-enabled app up and running in no time. And with just

a little tweaking you can fine-tune the design just the way you like it.

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