Hi, I'm just getting going with EWB2 and am going through the manual.

I've got one main question at this point: does EWB2 let you interact with any cloud-based storage services?

I need to create a fairly simple app (mostly for proof-of-concept) that initially saves data to the device it's running on.

I'll be using a membership site to control access to the app so it can only be loaded and run by people who are logged-in as members. (Is this a good idea?)

I don't want to have to run a specific back-end DB right away, but I would like the ability to have data saved to a cloud-based datastore so if you're a registered member, you can access your data from any device you might be using to access the membership site -- phone, tablet, desktop.

So I'm curious if EWB2 can connect to any cloud-based storage services via APIs? Dropbox has one, and there are several others.

-David

<thetoolwiz> wrote:
> Hi, I'm just getting going with EWB2 and am going through the manual.
>
> I've got one main question at this point: does EWB2 let you interact with
> any cloud-based storage services?
>
> I need to create a fairly simple app (mostly for proof-of-concept) that
> initially saves data to the device it's running on.
>
> I'll be using a membership site to control access to the app so it can
> only be loaded and run by people who are logged-in as members. (Is this a good idea?)
>
> I don't want to have to run a specific back-end DB right away, but I
> would like the ability to have data saved to a cloud-based datastore so
> if you're a registered member, you can access your data from any device
> you might be using to access the membership site -- phone, tablet, desktop.
>
> So I'm curious if EWB2 can connect to any cloud-based storage services
> via APIs? Dropbox has one, and there are several others.
>

EWB generates JavaScript that runs in the browser. So you could use any
service that any browser can use. But I think you'd be best off using the
built-in database access facilities, either the supplied server, or PHP
(better version coming soon), to do the storage.

(Replies will be limited as the NNTP access to this system ends Monday. I
recommend looking back at previous replies on this topic for more options.)


--
Matthew Jones

Matthew,

<< (Replies will be limited as the NNTP access to this system ends Monday. I recommend looking back at previous replies on this topic for more options.) >>

Please don't speak for us.  He will *always* get a prompt reply here, directly from us, and this has nothing to do with whether we offer NNTP access or not.

Seriously, this has flipped over to the absurd, so just stop.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

David,

<< I've got one main question at this point: does EWB2 let you interact with any cloud-based storage services? >>

As Matthew indicated, yes, you can interface with any API that is offered up either as a straight HTTP API (REST, etc.) or through a JS API (Google Maps, etc.)  *How* you interface depends upon the type, but we can help you with that.

<< I'll be using a membership site to control access to the app so it can only be loaded and run by people who are logged-in as members. (Is this a good idea?) >>

What do you mean by a "membership site", exactly ?

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

On 2/19/2016 4:24 PM, thetoolwiz wrote:
> I've got one main question at this point: does EWB2 let you interact with any cloud-based storage services?
> I need to create a fairly simple app (mostly for proof-of-concept) that initially saves data to the device it's running on.

What does that mean exactly and what devices are you going to use
(mobile devices (android, iphone) or full PCs ?

EWB does support HTML5 local storage which is browser local storage
9http://www.elevatesoft.com/manual?action=topics&id=ewb2&section=using_local_storage)
- is this what you are looking for.


> I'll be using a membership site to control access to the app so it can only be loaded and run by people who are logged-in as members. (Is this a good idea?)

How do you know who members are and how do you plan to authenticate them
without some back-end service ?

You could require them to setup a cloud API (like dropbox) account and
then when they access your app enter login info and then your app would
authenticate with dropbox - bnot not sure again how you envision all of
this working.


> I don't want to have to run a specific back-end DB right away, but I would like the ability to have data saved to a cloud-based datastore so if you're a registered member, you can access your data from any device you might be using to access the membership site -- phone, tablet, desktop.

See previous point your app would basically simply act as a front-end to
the cloud api and maybe access some "hard coded" files on that cloud
storage (specific data).


> So I'm curious if EWB2 can connect to any cloud-based storage services via APIs? Dropbox has one, and there are several others.

Already answered by Tim


Raul

Raul wrote:

On 2/19/2016 4:24 PM, thetoolwiz wrote:
> I've got one main question at this point: does EWB2 let you interact with any cloud-based storage services?
> I need to create a fairly simple app (mostly for proof-of-concept) that initially saves data to the device it's running on.

What does that mean exactly and what devices are you going to use
(mobile devices (android, iphone) or full PCs ?


I meant what I said. I have no control over the devices people will be using. (This is not confined to some artificially imposed corporate IT footprint.) Statistically speaking, 60% of all internet traffic today is running on mobile devices, and it's supposed to hit 75% by 2018 or so.


EWB does support HTML5 local storage which is browser local storage
9http://www.elevatesoft.com/manual?action=topics&id=ewb2§ion=using_local_storage)
- is this what you are looking for.


Thanks, that's very helpful.


> I'll be using a membership site to control access to the app so it can only be loaded and run by people who are logged-in as members. (Is this a good idea?)

How do you know who members are and how do you plan to authenticate them
without some back-end service ?


Not my problem. They login to the site to gain access to restricted content. I'll post this on a page that's restricted.


You could require them to setup a cloud API (like dropbox) account and
then when they access your app enter login info and then your app would
authenticate with dropbox - bnot not sure again how you envision all of
this working.


Yeah, right. Not gonna work. How many apps and services do you have on your phone, tablet, or desktop that require you to first set up accounts with specific services in order to work? Personally, I'm repulsed when I see such requests. Even when they use a service I already have (eg., Dropbox). Most apps that offer persistence do it through their own storage invisibly, rather than requiring people to sign up for a specific service. That doesn't mean they've implemented it themselves! It could be through AWS, Dropbox, Box, or any number of other services.

I envision all of this working the same way it does for about 99% of all apps on the market that have data persistence as a built-in feature. I'm not sure what's confusing here.

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

David,

<< I've got one main question at this point: does EWB2 let you interact with any cloud-based storage services? >>

As Matthew indicated, yes, you can interface with any API that is offered up either as a straight HTTP API (REST, etc.) or through a JS API (Google Maps, etc.)  *How* you interface depends upon the type, but we can help you with that.

<< I'll be using a membership site to control access to the app so it can only be loaded and run by people who are logged-in as members. (Is this a good idea?) >>

What do you mean by a "membership site", exactly ?

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

----------------------

If I asked about reading or sending email, it's certainly reasonable to say, "hey, you can talk to any email server anywhere. just implement the POP3 and SMTP protocols based on the publicly available RFCs." In Delphi, there are dozens of components and classes that implement these protocols already so you don't have to reimplement those wheels again.

Cloud-based services are becoming ubiquitious these days, so I'm wondering if there's any effort being made to collect classes, components, or whatever, that encapsulate the logic needed to simplify such access?

Eg, in the Delphi world, TMS has a Cloud Pack, which is a bunch of classes that simplify your ability to interact with various services. Can things like this be used inside of EWB?

<<What do you mean by a "membership site", exactly ?>>

Uhhh ... a membership site. You register as a member to gain access to protected content. There can be several "levels" of membership (and content), some free and some paid. It's a hosted platform I've got access to.

I haven't looked closely yet, but I believe I can put variables into on-page content that are replaced with member-specific data, like their name, email, and other data that the site collects. So the code that loads the EWB js app could pick up member identification data and pass it to the app that way, similar to how it would be done in a command-line in a shell script.

-David

Tim Young [Elevate Software] <timothyjamesyoung@gmail.com> wrote:
> Matthew,
>
> << (Replies will be limited as the NNTP access to this system ends
> Monday. I recommend looking back at previous replies on this topic for more options.) >>
>
> Please don't speak for us.  He will *always* get a prompt reply here,
> directly from us, and this has nothing to do with whether we offer NNTP access or not.
>

I apologise. I wanted to indicate that I wouldn't be able to respond.
However with SSL all is back to great, so a good solution (even if it does
show the PCI issue to be stupid!). At no time do I nor did I intend to
speak for Elevate.

--
Matthew Jones

I don't use NNTP, so it's irrelevant to this discussion.

-David

thetoolwiz wrote:

> I envision all of this working the same way it does for about 99% of
> all apps on the market that have data persistence as a built-in
> feature. I'm not sure what's confusing here.

The way that things will normally work is that you have a server that
has a database or other storage, and an API that is using something
like REST or some other mechanism to send data back and forth to the
application running in the browser. Myself, I use the RemObjects SDK to
create an interface, but if you have an existing membership system,
then you would want it to link to that database for authentication, but
perhaps another system for the data storage. You could use something on
some other storage server, with some sort of authentication tokens, for
large data storage (I think that the likes of dropbox do this), but the
management of these files on storage is handled by the central server,
so they know which file belongs to whom.

The details of how you access these services come down to making HTTP
calls using GET/POST/PUT/DELETE against the server that they specify.

--

Matthew Jones