AppMancer

Hi Christopher. The wiki is very new and I'll be writing a lot more into it over the weekend, but its my mum's birthday today, so I'm going to see her first :-)

The AMSoap library helps make it easy to make SOAP request. You create a new SoapRequest and give it a service end point, soap method and action (plus namespaces or any other parameters you need to add to make the request). The SoapRequest will format the Soap call and download the response. You specify the Xpath to the response data you want, and once the request has been fulfilled, you can call the getResponse() method to get an XmlNode* back.

Internally, the SoapRequest class makes a DownloadRequest and uses the DownloadManager to perform the download.

You can the use the XmlNode with XmlDataBinding and write the contents directly to the UI.

Wow Teddy - you've gone to town! I get quite excited when I see people try things like this. I'll try to address your questions in order.

1. Visual Studio. I've not really tried MoSync development in VS for about 3 years. I used to use it all the time, in the days before MoSync had a proper IDE. Integration with VS2005 was quite good, but I used their old build tool for all building. I've no idea if the debugger will work for instance, or indeed if VS supports all the C++ commands I've used. One springs to mind instantly, which is defining an array length from a variable like this:

void allocArray(int len)
{
  char a[len];
}

Which works fine with GCC, but I'm not sure if it is supported with MSC++.  I'm kind of with you, I love Visual Studio, but I made the break and jumped to Eclipse. There are still VS features I wish it supported.  Anyway, in theory you can configure MoSync to work with VS 2010, there is a guide somewhere.  If you can get MoSync projects building and debugging in it, then I think you may be able to use AppMancer with it as well, but watch out for examples like the one above.  I've certainly never tested AppMancer with a different compiler.

2.  XmlDataBinding.  Are you using AMXml?  I think you must be, but XmlDataBinding only working with AMXml XmlNode classes.  The XmlRepeater is a widget itself, so you have to add that XmlRepeater to the screen or the layout or whatever it is that you want to populate.  The second option is that the XPath implementation isn't a complete implementation.  Its a very pragmatic approach, and may not work with some complex XPaths or aggregate functions.  The other idea I've got is that your SOAP data may include a SOAP namespace,  If so, you may have to include the namespace name in the XPaths you want, like "/ns1:header/ns1:title" for instance.  Try a little debug with the XML you've got to test the XPath.  Something like:

lprintfn("I've got %d nodes", mySoap->selectNodes("/ns1:header/ns1:title").size());

And see how many nodes that XPath has selected.  If you need to, post some example data and I'll build a quick example of using XmlDataBinder with it.

On another note, XmlRepeater is about to change shortly.  Currently it is limited to creating a ListBox with a widget in each row.  I'm going to change this so that the XmlRepeater will add widgets to any other widget, which will give you a lot more flexibility.

3.  Binding other data.  Yeah, Vectors or SimpleList (or any AMCollections IEnumerable) would be cool, but I'm restricted by C++ here I think.  If anyone knows a way around this problem, I'd love to hear it, and I'll implement it into AppMancer.

The problem is this:  You can do it in C# (for instance) because the language and the CLR supports reflection.  I can take an object I've never seen before, and find what property and methods it supports.  I can then call those methods, or get those properties.  I don't need any knowledge of the object at build time.  ASAIK, C++ doesn't support this at all.  So I can do it with C# because I can have a process like this:

XmlDataBinder has a widget which wants data binding.  It isn't bound to an XPath, but the the 'name' property of an object.  Here is a SimpleList of objects.  I'll take the next one.  Do you have a property called name?  You do?  Cool, can I have the value, so I can set the setText property of the widget.  In C++, even if I can examine the object, I can't eval a call to unknownObject->getName().  The call the method has to resolve at compile time.

Using Lua may be the answer to this.  I'll try to speak to Micke about it.  Watch this space.

4.  Binding to inner text.  I think I need to see some example data for this. I've just checked the XmlRepeater source code, and it already tries to take the InnerText value of the node, which should work just like the .NET XmlNode.InnerText() method.

widget->setText(valueNode->getInnerText());

I think I need to see some data if you can share it.

Keep up the good work!  I'm adding a lot of documentation all the time to the wiki at https://appmancer.repositoryhosting.com/trac/appmancer_appmancer30/wiki

Morning,

This code below is based on HomeScreen.cpp from the Starter Application.  I think I've found the trouble with the repeater.

#include "HomeScreen.h"

/* We always want to include std.h, as it has a lot of global settings in it */
#include "../std.h"

/* There are some useful factory methods in UIHelper which make building widgets a bit easier */
#include "../UIHelper.h"

/* And we need access to the moblet if the user wants to quit */
#include <MAUtil/Moblet.h>
#include <AMUI/XMLRepeater.h>
#include <AMUI/Colours.h>
#include "../Utilities/XmlToData.h"
#include "MAHeaders.h"
/* This is the code for the constructor */
HomeScreen::HomeScreen()
{
	mTitle->setCaption("Topic List");

	/*define the center layout*/
	XMLRepeater* xmlRepeater = new XMLRepeater(0,0,100,100,NULL);
	xmlRepeater->setAllowResize(Widget::ALLOW_RESIZE_BOTH);

	//create template widget for forum topics' rows
	StackLayout* xmlRowLayout = new StackLayout(0,0,ScreenSize::width(),30,NULL,StackLayout::SL_HORIZONTAL);
	mLayout->add(xmlRepeater);

	Label* forumTitle = createLabel("Topic X");
	forumTitle->setHeight(30);
	forumTitle->setBackgroundColor(GREEN);
	forumTitle->setAllowResize(Widget::ALLOW_RESIZE_X_ONLY);
	forumTitle->setDataXPath("a:Name");
	xmlRowLayout->add(forumTitle);

	Button* showButton = createButton("Show");
	showButton->setAllowResize(Button::ALLOW_RESIZE_Y_ONLY);
	showButton->setWidth(60);
	xmlRowLayout->add(showButton);
	/**/

	xmlRepeater->addItemWidget(xmlRowLayout);

	XmlDocument* xml = XmlToData::toXml(XML);

	xmlRepeater->dataBind(xml->rootNode,"/s:Envelope/s:Body/GetTopicListResponse/GetTopicListResult/a:Topic");

	/* We don't want to add any other new widgets, so just show the soft keys at the bottom */
	addSoftKeys();
}

/* This is the code for the destructor.  This helps us delete widgets and other objects from
 * memory when we've finished. */
HomeScreen::~HomeScreen()
{
	/* Widgets will be destroyed in the BaseScreen destructor */
}

Specifically, the line

xmlRepeater->addItemWidget(xmlRowLayout);

Is required.  What you've got is 

xmlRepeater->add(xmlRowLayout);

Which will add the StackLayout to the repeater, but it won't be the item template.  

There are three types of widget you can add, the header, the item and the footer.  When data is bound, it clones the headers and processes the data first, adding it at the top of the list.  Then it clones the item widget for each item in the data.  Then finally it does the footer in the same way as the header.

Because the template was assigned with ->add() then it will be added to the XMLRepeater's ListBox, but not actually repeated. Is this clear?

XMLReader - I think that this must be a VS issue - I've never seen that error and I've just built this example this morning with no problems (no warnings, no errors).  I'll look into it.

Ah yeah, I've found it. How did this ever compile. I've never noticed a problem until now. Anyway I can see that there is a problem and I'm on it right now.

Thanks for this - its a good spot.

The problem was with making XmlReader and XmlWriter 'friends' of XmlNode, which was creating a circular dependency.

I've fixed it, and the patched code will go into AppMancer 3.0, which will be released at the same time as MoSync 3.0. I have included the patched source and compiled libraries for MoSync 2.7 below.

This is the test app, using your Xml from the SOAP call.

#include <MAUtil/Moblet.h>
#include <conprint.h>
#include "MAHeaders.h"
#include <AMXml/XmlReader.h>
#include <AMXml/XmlWriter.h>
#include <AMXml/XmlDocument.h>
using namespace AMXml;

#define LOG printf

/**
 * A Moblet is a high-level class that defines the
 * behaviour of a MoSync program.
 */
class MyMoblet : public Moblet
{
public:
	/**
	 * Initialize the application in the constructor.
	 */
	MyMoblet()
	{
		// Test the XML in the file Demo.xml

		// 1. Read the XML into a string.  The utility file XmlToData does this for us, but
		//    we'll do it here again to be clear.
		int len = maGetDataSize(XML);
		char xmlbuffer[len + 1];
		maReadData(XML, xmlbuffer, 0, len);
		xmlbuffer[len] = '\0'; //Null terminator
		LOG("XML Input:");
		LOG("xmlbuffer");

		// 2. Create an XML reader and parse the XML into it.
		XmlReader xr;
		XmlDocument* xml = xr.parseXML(xmlbuffer);

		LOG("Xml Parsed");
		LOG("RootNode '%s'", xml->rootNode->getName().c_str());

		// 3. Create an XML writer, and write the XML out again
		XmlWriter xw;
		String outputxml = xw.toFragment(xml->rootNode);

		LOG("Xml written");
		LOG(outputxml.c_str());

		printf("Press zero or back to exit\n");
	}

	/**
	 * Called when a key is pressed.
	 */
	void keyPressEvent(int keyCode, int nativeCode)
	{
		if (MAK_BACK == keyCode || MAK_0 == keyCode)
		{
			// Call close to exit the application.
			close();
		}

		// Print the key character.
		printf("You typed: %c\n", keyCode);
	}

	/**
	 * Called when a key is released.
	 */
	void keyReleaseEvent(int keyCode, int nativeCode)
	{
	}

	/**
	 * Called when the screen is touched.
	 */
	void pointerPressEvent(MAPoint2d point)
	{
		// Print the x and y coordinate.
		printf("You touched: %i %i\n", point.x, point.y);
	}
};

/**
 * Entry point of the program. The MAMain function
 * needs to be declared as extern "C".
 */
extern "C" int MAMain()
{
	Moblet::run(new MyMoblet());
	return 0;
}

To install the fix, replace the header files in include/AMXml with these versions, and replace AMXml.lib and AMXmlD.lib in lib/pipe with the ones in the zip file.

Hey Teddybee, remember this?

Have a look at this thread - :-) http://www.mosync.com/content/ui-data-binding

Hi,

I'd love to be able to do automatic serialization, deserialization of object like you can in C#. The problem comes back to lack of support for reflection in C++. I could produce an interface to let you build classes which will serialise, but it would add so much work onto what you have to do to build the class that I think it would be easier for you to write a new serialiser for each class. That's what I do anyway.

Buttons in ListBoxes behave in a slightly different way as the ListBox needs to capture the touch event rather than the Button. What would be a more typical scenario is that each entry in a ListBox is selectable. To find out which item has been selected, you need to implement ListBoxListener in a class, normally in a screen. This has a method itemSelected() which is called when the user picks an item from the list box. You can use this to determine which option has been selected and what to do. This code will work for NativeUI listboxes and AMUI listboxes, so you don't need to handle them differently.

This is some code I use for menu screens, which are essentially just a ListBox of options. Have a look at it and see how the item selection works.

The example is wrong, I'll fix it.

If you are using DualUI, do not assign parents in widget constructors. It is only there for MAUI compatibility, and it just won't work in NativeUI mode (its all to do with C++ constructor precedence). Its fine in non-native mode, and I might be able to do something in the future, but it means adding extra code to all the widgets (which is fine), but makes it harder for other people to implement new widgets (which is not fine). My advice is to always pass NULL in the parent parameter, and call mParent->add(mChild);

Thanks for spot!

Btw - did you see the new video - http://www.screencast.com/t/tLfb1z65UjXc

Hey,

Yes this will bind both NativeUI and non native widgets.

What do you mean by Tag properties?

I think I know what you mean about embedded events. It is possible to get them to report events to a central mechanism, but I'd want to make sure that it was done for the right reasons. Normally, I would create all the layouts in the same screen, so the screen can be the listener if it needs to be. What did you have in mind?

AppMancer 3 will be out when I've tested it with the release version of MoSync 3. I'm currently helping out with some documentation, and Windows Phone 7 support is just being finished off. It is really close now, maybe next week? I need to check DeclarativeUI for AM 3.0, and test ADO objects and their DataBinder.

OK, this issue is the ListBox (the XMLRepeater) not the layouts. ListBoxes on non-native UI have to respond to touch events, and disable the IsButton setting. I'll look at testing the selected widget, and if it is IsButton, calling the trigger method.

Are you using AMDownload (or even AMSOAP) for this? Writing is asynchronous. If the String goes out of scope, then the data will be destroyed before the writing has completed. AMDownload is the safe and easy way to send the data.

Hi, I'm making some changes then to AMSOAP for version 3.0.

AMXml doesn't *really* support namespaces, but they don't cause it generate errors or anything. When you set an XmlNode name like "<soap:username>", it will set the name property to 'soap:username', the prefix property to 'soap' and the localname property to 'username'.

XmlWriter only uses the name property when it is writing, which works if this is Xml you've read in from another source, but not so good when you're generating it.

I'm changing it so that if there is a prefix, XmlWriter will write out '<prefix:localname>' and if there isn't one, it will write '<name>'.  I'm also going to add a setPrefix or setNamespace method to XmlNode.  I prefer setPrefix because setNamespace infers things that XmlNode doesn't do.  So when you're serialising your object, you can use the proper name of the property, and supply a prefix for soap.

I've just tested the current XmlWriter with your XML. This is the XML it wrote:

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
 <s:Body>
  <AddComment xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
    <comment xmlns:a="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/Forum.WcfService.DataContracts" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
      <a:Content>ertertert rterterter</a:Content>
      <a:CreatedAt>0001-01-01T00:00:00</a:CreatedAt>
      <a:CreatedByName>admin</a:CreatedByName>
      <a:Id>0</a:Id>
      <a:Title>rgere rert</a:Title>
      <a:TopicId>4</a:TopicId>
    </comment>
  </AddComment>
 </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

So it really should work right now, if when you are serialising you add 'a:' to the beginning of the properties.

OK, I've done those changes. You can download new source for AMXml and AMSOAP from the repo at http://appmancer.repositoryhosting.com and build new libraries if you want.

That's cool. I really like the idea of passing a whole map of parameters in. I can imagine how that could make configuration easy for someone. I need to add the ability to add parameters to soap:header as well as soap:body as well, and then I think that it would be really powerful, but still very simple for simple soap calls.

requestComplete is always called so users know when their request is finished with and they can delete their SoapRequest object.

Cool, yeah, it is a collection of libraries built on top of MoSync, so if MoSync supports it, then AppMancer will also work.  I've not added Panorama in yet to the UI library.  If you come across features (particularly NativeUI features) you want, please let me know.  I'm trying to keep it up to date with the MoSync releases.