gmane.comp.lang.active4d.devel

Re: Active4D on 4D Client v12

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-24T16:26:54

Page 36, "Configuring 4D Client as a Web Server".

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Active4D on 4D Client v12

Jeremy Sims — 2012-05-24T15:39:39

Hi,

I am a current user of Active4D v4 on Windows 2004 and all is
well in this scenario!

I have a requirement to update the application to 4D Server V12
with 4D Client acting as a web server.

I have downloaded the latest v5 Active4D demo and plugin in order
to test the new configuration.
I have built the client app and can connect to the server.

When I browse to the IP of the Client I get the default 4D
WebServer page but not the default a4d page that I am expecting.

When I click Restart Server I get a console message "The library
"Active4D" cannot be found"
I have tried the Active4D folder in the application directory and
also in <shared 4D Directory>/com.aparajita/Active4D (I assume
this is C:\ProgramData\4D\com.aparajita\Active4D?)

Where is the client app looking for the Active4D folder?
Does anyone have any experience of configuring a4d to run on 4D
Client as web server?

Thanks in advance,
Jeremy.

Re: Delete an item from the session array

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-21T14:52:22

Actually, the new syntax is supported, it just wasn't in the list of commands. That will be fixed.

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Re: Delete an item from the session array

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-21T14:34:57

You are correct, I should be providing new command names as well as the legacy command names. Since I haven't done any programming within 4D itself in years, I didn't notice the change in names. My apologies.

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Re: Delete an item from the session array

Peter Gutbrod — 2012-05-21T06:51:38

Aparajita,
 

Hmm, my 4D V12 doesn't know a command DELETE ELEMENT. I assume it has been
replace by "delete from array" at some time. You won't find any reference to
DELETE ELEMENT in the 4D online manuals either.

Thus I wrongly assumed, it would be an A4D command.

Yes, you are right, that you clearly stated DELETE ELEMENT is a 4D command
and therefore has not to be documented in the A4D manual, but I'm right as
well, that DELETE ELEMENT command syntax is nowhere explained and you have
to find out the correct syntax by trial and error.

So one could argue, that legacy 4D commands, now only accessible from within
A4D should be documented in the A4D manual. ;-)

Pete

Re: Conceptional fusebox question - sent output of afuseaction to another page area

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-20T21:36:34

It depends on how your site is structured. For example, you may have a top level layout that provides the overall structure of the site. Then in a store circuit, you may have another nested layout that provides the structure of the store within the content area of the top level layout. But the nested layout is only useful if there is a significant amount of common content that is shared by all fuses in the circuit.

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Re: Delete an item from the session array

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-20T21:32:35

Command Reference chapter, "4D Commands" section, first paragraph:

"Following is a list of the 4D commands implemented by Active4D. Unless indicated by the formats noted below, they take the same parameters and work exactly as they do in 4D."

DELETE ELEMENT is in that list. Searching for "delete element" (with quotes) hits that list first, which is titled "4D Commands Supported by Active4D". I'm not sure how I can make it clearer.

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Re: Delete an item from the session array

Peter Gutbrod — 2012-05-20T16:59:56

To save Aparajita some typing ...

Got it, correct syntax is:

delete element ( session{"mylist"};35)

Btw. "delete element" is mentioned a few times in the A4D manual, but the
actual syntax is nowhere explained.

Pete

Delete an item from the session array

Peter Gutbrod — 2012-05-20T16:49:23

I want to delete a single item from the session array, i.e.
session{"mylist"}{35}

Tried with 

delete element ( session{"mylist"}{35})

But got 

An array was expected or the type of the array was not appropriate

To make it clear: I don't want to delete the whole "mylist" array but only
item 35

Any suggestions, how I can do this in a4d?

Pete

Re: Conceptional fusebox question - sent output of a fuseaction to another page area

Peter Gutbrod — 2012-05-20T16:42:14

Thanks Aparajita,


So this give me faith, I'm not on the completely wrong track. ;-)
 

Maybe my question should have been more precisely:

"I ask myself, where the real benefit is in nesting LAYOUTS."

In case your answer to this is still:

and the other circuit is a kind of plugin that the main page doesn't know
anything about.

I'd appreciate, if you could could give me a short example, what you mean
with this.

Otherwise, I'm interested in your answer to this (new) question.

On one hand there are no nested layouts in your demo and having searched the
list for "nested layouts" I found a statement from you from 2005:

actually use nested layouts to build a page, but rather include several display
fuses.

Is this still true? So I assume you don't use nested layouts in your apps.

On the other hand there is this chart "Fusebox flow of control" in the wiki,
where you explain in depth, how nested layouts work. Hmm, a lot of work for
something you do not recommend to use.

So what is your current statement about using nested layouts?

Pete

Re: Conceptional fusebox question - sent output of afuseaction to another page area

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-19T17:05:57

You can use 'include into(_request{"sidebar"})'.



Probably.



Yes.



It knows nothing other than the fuseaction to call and the attributes it expects. It's like calling a method and passing parameters.



I usually start with fusebox since I am usually the designer and the coder.

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Re: Conceptional fusebox question - sent output of afuseaction to another page area

Peter Gutbrod — 2012-05-19T11:54:28

Aparajita,

thank you very much. You answer is very helpful.


I've did it with "include into" and use a normal string variable, but IMHO this gives the same result as using save output(_request{"sidebar"})



Yes, I've already found, that this approach requires me to put this in every content circuit, which isn't quite elegant.


I was close to this with my second suggestion. My mental block was, that I tried to "run" the circuit from the layout with sendfuseaction or redirect, which both make things overly complicated. Simply including the files is an elegant solution. You call this cheating and pseudo-circuit as in puristic Fusebox design, you shouldn't include act_ or qry_ files into the layout file?

Would you suggest to use this approach for any dynamic content outside of the main area?
Let's say I'd spice up your bicycle online store (the screencast) with a categories popup in the left sidebar, build from a 4D database and a right sidebar holding two dynamic areas, a condensed view of the shopping cart and a related products list, dynamically created depending on the selection you make in the main area. Would you incorporate these parts with this pseudo-circuit mechanism within the layout file for left:sidebar and right_sidebar?




Hmm, I read this sentence about 20 times but still don't understand, what you exactly mean with this.
You refer to my question about benefit of nested circuits. "Other circuit" is the nested circuit, right? Aren't nested circuits always a kind of plugins as long as they create an output? And how can the main page (output of the parent circuit, or output of the root circuit ? ) know nothing about that nested circuit. Each circuit has to be registered in fbx_circuits to be accessible, so the fusebox application has to know about the nested circuit.


Finally, in the screencast you start with a static page from the designer, tear this apart into individual files and finally replace the static content with dynamic content. While the site in the screencast doesn't use Fusebox, would you use a similar approach to design this site in Fusebox, aka. design one or more static pages, put the individual parts (divs) into seperate Fusebox layout files, then substitute the static content with dynamically created content via dsp_ files?

Or do you design the layouts initially from scratch and rely on Fusebox to preview the output, while styling the site?

Pete

Re: Conceptional fusebox question - sent output of afuseaction to another page area

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-18T20:49:00

It's up to you. You are certainly free to put the sidebar output into a variable (I would actually suggest putting it in the _request collection) and then showing that in the sidebar with a simple 'write raw' command. You'll want to use 'write raw' if the output has already been created by 'write' commands. So it would be something like this:

save output(_request{"sidebar"})
write("foo")
write("bar")
// etc.
end save output

// in sidebar
write raw(_request{"sidebar"})

This is needlessly complex and requires you to put this in every content circuit, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Or instead of doing this, an easier (and perhaps better) way is to "cheat" and put the code to generate the sidebar in files that are included from the layout, this creating your own pseudo-circuit, like this:

// in layout
include("/sidebar/qry_sidebar.a4d")
include("/sidebar/dsp_sidebar.a4d")

Nesting a circuit is useful if you have a different layout in the other circuit and the other circuit is a kind of plugin that the main page doesn't know anything about.

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Re: Conceptional fusebox question - sent output of a fuseaction to another page area

Peter Gutbrod — 2012-05-18T19:21:41

Really quiet here. Everyone is having a break, before the V6 storm is
reaching us ? ;-)

Well spend some time to find a solution for my problem. It seems to be
easier than I first thought. You have to write the output, which shall be
displayed on another page area into a different Output buffer and issue a
write command, where you want the content to be displayed. That is
completely independent from where you generate that content, whether in a
nested circuit, a non-nested new circuit  or even inside an existing
circuit. It is like you pipe your output to temporary baskets and display
them where you like in the top level layouts.

That said, I ask myself, where the real benefit is in nesting circuit.
Initially I thought you use a nested circuit, if you want it's output being
placed inside the output of the parent circuit. But given the example above,
you can do the same by using separate output buffers an nesting them in the
layout files. Ok you have the nested execution of fbx-settings but on the
other hand this can makes things more complicate.

Just talking to myself, but comments are still welcome.

Pete

Re: ObjectTools question

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-18T19:16:06

ObjectTools questions should please go on the 4D Tech list.

Regards,

   Aparajita

ObjectTools question

Victor Siegle — 2012-05-18T18:37:30

Hi Aparajita,

I’m posting an ObjectTools question here because this forum is active. Please let me know if there is a better place for this question.

We are running ObjectTools 3.0r5 on 4D v12.3 Hotfix 4 and on 4D v13.0 Hotfix 1. In both versions of 4D, many, if not all, of our data files and our customers’ data files become spontaneously corrupted all the time. Sometimes it is difficult or impossible to repair them with MSC. Often the corrupted data files suffer spontaneous crashes during regular operations.

MSC reports that there are ‘orphan BLOBS’ in many tables, even in tables that don’t contain any BLOBs. We’re having a very hard time solving this problem.

We recently found that 4D stores BLOBs by default ‘in data file’, but that v13 has added an option to store BLOBs ‘in record’. 4D Tech Support says that this new option was not added because of a known problem with storing BLOBs ‘in data file’, but was just a feature request. Do you have any knowledge of problems with storing BLOBs in 4D?

Most of our BLOBs store ObjectTools information. Typical code to create a BLOB is:

$tempBlob:=x_OTNew (Current method name)
x_OTputArray ($tempBlob;"alLongText1";->alLongText1)
x_OTputArray ($tempBlob;"alLongText2";->alLongText2)
x_OTputArray ($tempBlob;"alLongText3";->alLongText3)
x_OTputArray ($tempBlob;"alLongText4";->alLongText4)
x_OTputArray ($tempBlob;"alLongText5";->alLongText5)
x_OTputArray ($tempBlob;"aLongInt1";->aLongInt1)

x_OTputLong ($tempBlob;"r_userTopics";r_userTopics)
x_OTputLong ($tempBlob;"r_systemTopics";r_systemTopics)

READ WRITE([Resources])
QUERY([Resources];[Resources]ID=shUser_getStaffID )
SET BLOB SIZE([Resources]Palette_Preferences;0)  // line of code added this week in case voodoo is affecting us
[Resources]Palette_Preferences:=OT ObjectToNewBLOB ($tempBlob)

All of the arrays and variables are valid.

Is there anything obvious we are doing wrong in ObjectTools?

Thanks for your help,

Victor

web browser client authentication

David Ringsmuth — 2012-05-17T16:52:51

Using openssl we have designed a system with our own self generated
Certificate Authority ("CA"), and our own generated and self-signed
client.crt and client.key.

The IE9 process of following the Certificate Authority path breaks when it
encounters our self generated CA which has no signer recognized in the web
client's certificate trust. 

I do not know how to overcome this issue. If you know of a way around the
web-browser negotiation process for accepting CA's, please help!

Our goal is to give the web client what it needs so that it will accept our
CA, and use the client cert we automatically generate for client web
authentication (using nginx in front of 4D).

The answer is probably "We must get our CA signed by a CA known to and
trusted by the web clients CA trust path."

If you know the answer to this a "yes I agree" or "no that is not right...",
or you can do it this way... is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
David Ringsmuth

Conceptional fusebox question - sent output of a fuseaction to another page area

Peter Gutbrod — 2012-05-17T13:12:45

I've studied the fusebox demo and I think, I've understood most of the
techniques. :-)

In the demo, all dynamically created content is displayed in the mainarea
section. That's easy to follow.

Now to my problem:

Let's take the demo app (vendors, ingredients, units db) and add some
"memorize this item" links to the list view. When clicked they shall display
the current selection in the mainarea (aka. mainarea doesn't change) but I
want the item referenced in the link to be added into a new "memorized_items
list area" within the sidebar, not the mainarea.

If I simply sent the link to a new circuit "memorized_items", the output
(the new list area) is displayed in the mainarea, replacing the current list
of vendors, ingredients, units.

Do I have to nest the memorized_items circuit within the i.e. ingredients
circuit? That would display the current list of ingredients in the mainarea.
But then how to move the output of the memorized_items circuit from the
mainarea to the sidebar. Probably not storing the output into
$fusebox{"layout"} but in a different variable that is output in
dsp_sidebars.a4d?

Or do have to call the memorized_items circuit from the dsp_sidebars.a4d
layout via sendFuseaction?


Generally speaking, how do I send the output of a fuseaction to a special
section of my page.

Probably it is still a general misunderstanding of the Fusebox concept on my
side. :-/

Thanks for any startup help.

Pete

Re: 4D Server Crash

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-17T01:54:15

I don't use Windows, so I have no idea about which version to use. Maybe someone else on the list can give some guidance. You should probably use the oldest one you can find, since only your oldest server (Windows 2003) is having the problem, and your newer one (Windows 2008) is not.

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org

Re: 4D Server Crash

Keith McIver — 2012-05-17T01:06:39

Hello Aparajita

It's 32 bit. I have stopped the crashing for a day by uninstalling Quicktime.
Our pictures don't display but at least it is working. What version of Quicktime should we use? I recall previously needing to stop at an older version, 7.1.6 I think.

Regards

Keith 
Keith McIver & Associates 
PO Box 32152 
Christchurch, New Zealand 
Ph +64 21 328489

On 17/05/2012, at 11:46 AM, Aparajita Fishman wrote:

Re: 4D Server Crash

Aparajita Fishman — 2012-05-16T23:46:24

32-bit or 64-bit?

Regards,

   Aparajita
   www.aparajitaworld.com

   "If you dare to fail, you are bound to succeed."
   - Sri Chinmoy   |   www.srichinmoy.org