On 2/20/2016 1:53 PM, thetoolwiz wrote:
> 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.

If you (for now) want to store data on device then you must use local
storage. It's been getting better but for example mobile local storage
limits are still lowest of the browsers and there is high chance of it
getting wiped out depending on how user interacts with their browser/os.


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

Still a problem you need to solve - you will need to make the app aware
of the user if you have user specific settings/files etc.

> 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.

None since they implement authentication - which you have said you do
not want to do. At some point you need to authenticate and figure out
who the user is. When using services like dropbox you still need to
provide app key or other form or auth which ideally would be done by the
back end. This is Javascript so you cannot embed anything in the app
since it would be trivially accessible to anybody.


> 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.

Your approach is unclear based on questions. What you are proposing is
very easily doable based on EWB app with some minimal back end custom
web service support. If you plan to implement both then you're fine.

Raul

David,

<< 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? >>

There's only one issue here:  POP3 and SMTP are governed by RFC documents that explicitly state the standards that govern the behavior and usage of these protocols.  So far you haven't mentioned once what API you're trying to access, so all we can give you are vague answers to vague questions.  There are literally thousands of web APIs available today, most of them proprietary.

So, the short answer is no, you won't find many vendor-specific API implementations in EWB.  We really don't have time to implement anything other than the largest of the large.  Google Maps is one we've done, but it's an exception.

<< 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. >>

Again, without specifics, there's really no way I can tell you a) whether access is possible, and b) what would be involved.  I need to know *which* API you're trying to access in order to tell you what is involved in doing so.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

<<There's only one issue here:  POP3 and SMTP are governed by RFC documents that explicitly state the standards that govern the behavior and usage of these protocols.  So far you haven't mentioned once what API you're trying to access, so all we can give you are vague answers to vague questions.  There are literally thousands of web APIs available today, most of them proprietary.

So, the short answer is no, you won't find many vendor-specific API implementations in EWB.  We really don't have time to implement anything other than the largest of the large.  Google Maps is one we've done, but it's an exception.>>

As I mentioned, TMS has their Cloud pack that's got a couple of dozen APIs already wrapped in objects.

Is it possible to use them with EWB?

<<
<< 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. >>

Again, without specifics, there's really no way I can tell you a) whether access is possible, and b) what would be involved.  I need to know *which* API you're trying to access in order to tell you what is involved in doing so.
>>

I don't have any specifics, other than to assume at the moment that it's possible to pass contextual data from the web page into sub-pages (like the page that launches an EWB app) via what amount to environment variables. Like writing Unix scripts or DOS batch files.

The membership site I'm using has no direct API, although they do periodically implement interfaces to other sites to provide integration. Supposedly they work with Zapier as well.

How well does EWB play with Zapier? (or is that too general of a qustion, too?)

-David

Raul wrote:

<<Still a problem you need to solve - you will need to make the app aware
of the user if you have user specific settings/files etc.>>

again, I'm assuming for now that this works just like script programming and how you'd pass data into HTML pages through the URL.

Let me be a bit more blunt about it: how do you pass data into EWB "apps" from the web page they're "hosted" on? (Sorry, but I don't really know if there's any specific terminology I should be using here.)

I have a user who's already been authenticated -- they can't access the page with the EWB app on it otherwise.

So I'm thinking of passing in some kind of hash key that's unique for each user and easily computed in the page that hosts the EWB app script. This could be used as a key for any other database.

(The data I'm looking at saving is not of any particular value to anybody but the user. If it got stolen, I doubt anybody would care. Something along the lines of one record that logged each time you got your car washed. That is, not very frequent, not much data, and not particularly informative to anybody other than the car's owner.

-David

On 2/22/2016 7:23 PM, thetoolwiz wrote:
> again, I'm assuming for now that this works just like script programming and how you'd pass data into HTML pages through the URL.

EWB app is client-side javascript application (running inside client
browser) and as such does not directly have access to server side scripting.

> Let me be a bit more blunt about it: how do you pass data into EWB "apps" from the web page they're "hosted" on? (Sorry, but I don't really know if there's any specific terminology I should be using here.)

You can access the EWB app on server with a URL than contains the
parameters being passed in (i.e. after they login you redirect them to
appropriate URL and fill in the params in the URL string using the
server side scripting as needed ).

Better method IMHO is for the EWB app to launch and then just query your
webserver for this info (doing a HTTP request) - your back end scripting
can then simply respond to a single HTTP GET query and include as much
data as needed (including auth info, info specific to them etc ) - for
example in json format.

See
http://www.elevatesoft.com/manual?action=viewtopic&id=ewb2&topic=Executing_Request



> I have a user who's already been authenticated -- they can't access the page with the EWB app on it otherwise.
> So I'm thinking of passing in some kind of hash key that's unique for each user and easily computed in the page that hosts the EWB app script. This could be used as a key for any other database.
> (The data I'm looking at saving is not of any particular value to anybody but the user. If it got stolen, I doubt anybody would care. Something along the lines of one record that logged each time you got your car washed. That is, not very frequent, not much data, and not particularly informative to anybody other than the car's owner.

That should work fine - again i would simply have a server side script
host a "known" URL that returns any data you want and then EWB app when
loaded simply queries this and gets user-specific hash key.

Raul

On 2/22/2016 7:17 PM, thetoolwiz wrote:
> As I mentioned, TMS has their Cloud pack that's got a couple of dozen APIs already wrapped in objects.
> Is it possible to use them with EWB?

AFAIK TMS Cloudpack is for Windows apps (VCL/Firemonkey) - EWB is a
javascript app framework and runs inside a browser. It cannot use VCL or
any other non-Javascript components. it can use many javascript 3rd
party libraries.


> How well does EWB play with Zapier? (or is that too general of a qustion, too?)

I've never used Zapier before but assuming it's zapier.com then after a
quick look i guess it bit like IFTTT.

Looks to me Zapier would normally be talking with "server side"
apps/APIs. EWB is primarily a "client side" app that runs on client
browser so i'm not really sure how much value it would bring in this case.

Curious to see what others think here.

Raul

Raul wrote:

> You can access the EWB app on server with a URL than contains the
> parameters being passed in (i.e. after they login you redirect them
> to appropriate URL and fill in the params in the URL string using the
> server side scripting as needed ).
>
> Better method IMHO is for the EWB app to launch and then just query
> your webserver for this info (doing a HTTP request) - your back end
> scripting can then simply respond to a single HTTP GET query and
> include as much data as needed (including auth info, info specific to
> them etc ) - for example in json format.

I agree with most of this, but you would want some basic token of
authentication to make it less vulnerable to attack. If the membership
site has a link to the EWB application page, and uses
http://myserver.com/ewbapp.html?token=MyGUID then this can be generated
for the user on a daily basis, and then the EWB application can then
use that to authenticate against the back end server for the further
services. The key being that once used, it is no longer valid, and the
original page will show a new token. Once you get advanced, the EWB
application can also hide the ?token= part from the URL, to stop it
being bookmarked.

--

Matthew Jones

<< As I mentioned, TMS has their Cloud pack that's got a couple of dozen APIs already wrapped in objects.

Is it possible to use them with EWB? >>

Yes, you can use any Delphi code in a back-end EWB module, and normally you'll need to do so anyways in order to do authentication with 3rd party servers.

<< I don't have any specifics, other than to assume at the moment that it's possible to pass contextual data from the web page into sub-pages (like the page that launches an EWB app) via what amount to environment variables. Like writing Unix scripts or DOS batch files.>>

If you're referring to having web pages hosted within an iframe element in another web page, then this depends upon which page is being hosted in the iframe.  There are security restrictions on what you can or can't do with the contents of an iframe when the contents are not coming from the same origin as the outer page.  The iframe equivalent control in EWB is the TBrowser control.

<< How well does EWB play with Zapier? (or is that too general of a qustion, too?) >>

No, EWB does not support Zapier.

Also, if you can figure out a way to be respectful in your questions/comments, you'll be much more likely to get the answers that you're looking for.  Posting snide comments like you have is a sure-fire way to have your questions ignored.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

<<Also, if you can figure out a way to be respectful in your questions/comments, you'll be much more likely to get the answers that you're looking for.  Posting snide comments like you have is a sure-fire way to have your questions ignored.>>

Sorry about that. I see people in tech forums with very bad English who post quite vague dozen-word questions get tons of helpful replies; yet I try posting what I think are clear, detailed questions and end up with replies that are too often way off-base. It baffles me. I don't mean to come across this way, I just get quickly frustrated in my apparent inability to be clear enough to get succinct on-point replies. I guess I should try posting vague terse questions instead and see where they go.

Thanks for your patience.

(Please, let's not start a long discussion about how I communicate, ok?)

-David