Great news, guys! Backendless 5 is now released and it’s time to show you some new features we’ve been working on.  In this article we will talk about how to integrate the Backendless Real-Time Database into your Angular application. Meanwhile, you can check out the previous version of our Angular app in this post. In case you haven’t read the post and don’t have that app  yet, please review the previous article, because we will use that application as a starting point for this tutorial. Or, if you just want to start working with the it right away, just download the source code from this GitHub commit.

Images displayed in your app often may be responsible for the bandwidth consumed by the device, which has a direct impact on the performance, battery level and the amount of memory which the app allocates. As a result, optimizing images can often bring noticeable performance improvements for your app: the fewer bytes it needs to download, the smaller impact is on the client’s bandwidth and the faster app will download and render content on the screen.

Let’s imagine you have an app where you store pictures to show them to your app’s users. But what happens if the resolution of these images is high and they are taking a lot of space? Download of these files is time-consuming and, as a result, it slows down your app making the user experience substandard.

A recommended approach is to create image thumbnails with lower resolutions relative to the original one. These thumbnails can be used to preview the image in the application.

The thumbnails can be generated using Backendless API Services (the Business Logic section). If you are not familiar with how to create your own API Service, please check the How to generate a QR code with Backendless API Service post, which describes the process of API service creation in greater detail.

In this article, we will focus on the task of generating thumbnail images with different resolutions.

With the release of version 5 of Backendless and introduction of the real-time capabilities the dynamics of the client-server integration will be changing. The real-time functionality should result in a significant reduction of the API calls an application makes. To further reflect the value associated with each pricing plan in Backendless Cloud, we introduced several changes:

1. All plans now have a limit for real-time connections:
   Free and Developer plans: 100 connections
   Cloud 9: 100,000 connections
   Cloud99: 500,000 connections
2. The API call/minute limit has changed to API call/month. The limit is reset monthly when the billing cycle renews. Keep in mind that “monthly” does not mean “from the first day of a month till the first day of the next month”. Instead, every app has its own billing cycle, which renews every month on the date when the app switched to the current billing plan.
3. The API/month limit cannot be increased for the Free and Developer plans, however, for the Cloud9 and Cloud99 plans any overages for the API calls above the limit are automatically processed for the rate of  $1.00/100,000 API calls for the Cloud9 plan and $0.80/100,000 API calls for the Cloud99 plan.
4. The price of the Developer plan has been increased to $15.00/month. For all customers who were on the Developer plan prior to Backendless 5 release, the change will apply in 2 months.

I am happy to report that Backendless version 5.0 has been released. The Backendless Cloud installation has been updated, all apps run on the new version now. The new release is a major milestone for Backendless as it significantly strengthens our position as a leader in the mobile application development space. The new release delivers the following functionality:

• Real-Time Database – changes in the database are pushed to the connected clients whenever new objects are created, updated or deleted. Multiple instances of the client application can stay up-to-date with the latest data with minimal client-server API traffic.
  Real-Time Database API Documentation: Android  iOS  JS
  
• Real-Time Messaging – the publish/subscribe system has been redesigned so that published messages are delivered to the subscribers in real-time. Previously the system used the polling approach. With the new implementation not only the messages are delivered significantly faster, the number of API calls to receive messages is reduced to zero.
  Real-Time Messaging Documentation: Android  iOS  JS
  
• Management of Counters and Cache – Atomic Counters and the data in Backendless Cache can now be managed in Backendless Console. You can now see a list of cache entries and counters, create new ones, modify or delete the data:
  
• API Documentation Generation – Backendless Console can now generate API docs in a variety of well-known formats for all Data Service API operations. Supported formats include:
  • OpenAPI/Swagger 2.0 (JSON and YAML)
  • Open API 3.0 (JSON and YAML)
  • RAML 1.0
  • WADL
  • API Blueprint 1A
  • Postman Collection

  To generate an API document:

  1. login to Backendless Console and switch to the Data screen.
  2. Select a data table and click the REST CONSOLE tab.
  3. Click the Generate API Docs link
  4. Select a format from the drop-down list and click the GENERATE button.
  5. Backendless generates the document and provides a download link:
     

Our roadmap for version 5 consists of some very exciting features. We are looking forward to bringing all this great functionality to you so you can continue building powerful apps while enjoying Backendless more than ever.

Suppose your app logs in a user. As a result, the app gets user-token  which uniquely identifies the user’s session with Backendless. If your app uses our SDK for Android, iOS, JS or .NET, the user-token  value is managed directly by our libraries. Specifically, it is added to every API call to maintain the session and tell the server about the user’s identity. There are situations when you need to get the user object when your app has only user-token. This could happen if you used persistent login in the application, which stores user-token on the device. The implementation does not save the user object, however, there is a way to retrieve the user based on the user-token value (assuming the token is still valid). In this article, I will show you how to do this.

The technique for retrieving the user object is creating an API service which accepts a  user-token in the header and retrieves the current user. I will use Codeless to create the API service because it has an intuitive interface and allows you to solve these tasks very quickly, just by building the algorithms instead of writing code:

Backendless Marketplace is a specialized store for backend functionality. Our vision for the marketplace is to make it a community driven store for algorithms and API services. We also use the Marketplace for various  Backendless”extenders” to help developers to increase the limits of the Backendless Cloud pricing plans. However, most importantly, the Marketplace can be used for sharing your API services with other developers.

By publishing your Cloud Code to the Marketplace, you can share your business logic components (e.g.: API services, event handlers and/or timers) with other Backendless developers. Once your Cloud Code is published, it becomes a Marketplace product and will be visible to all Backendless users (developers). In the upcoming releases, we’ll add a possibility to set a price for your products allowing you to charge a fee for every successful installation.

Today we will talk about the integration of Backendless into your AngularJS/TypeScript app. You will create a simple Address Book application where all the application data will be stored in the Backendless mobile backend. The main goal of this article is to provide step-by-step instructions and to show how to create an Angular application with Backendless mBaaS.

In this article, we will learn how to create QR codes with a custom Backendless API Service. For the sample code reviewed later in the article we will use Java and the ZXing library (https://github.com/zxing).

What is a QR code?

A QR code is a computer generated image with some information encoded in a graphical way. The information may include text, numbers, a URL – pretty much anything your app may need to represent in an encoded manner. What makes QR codes very useful is the encoded information can be then decoded by any device with a camera.

Below is an example of a QR code with the encoded link to Backendless Console: https://develop.backendless.com:

You can ‘read’ it with an iPhone (just use the standard camera app) or with an Android device if you install a QR Code reader app (check out Google Play, there is a ton of QR reading apps). Once the code is scanned, the encoded URL will be opened automatically in your web browser.

(For more details, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code)

This series of tutorials was prepared by:

Ega Wachid Radiegtya
An Entrepreneur & App Developer

You will learn how to make your own LinkedIn clone on Android, using React Native, React Navigation, Redux and Backendless.
The following tutorial series is exactly what you’re looking for if:

• You have a basic knowledge of React/Redux
• You’re looking to learn how to make apps in the most simple way
• You want to try using mobile backend for your apps

Technology stack:

• React
• Redux
• Backendless

What you will learn:

By following the instructions in these articles, you’ll get the knowledge and skills required to build simple Android apps using Backendless mBaaS for your business logic.

Summary:

Part 1: Introduction

You will learn about the tools required for the task and how to set up the development environment to proceed.

https://medium.com/@radiegtya/build-linkedoff-using-react-native-redux-and-backendless-part-1-introduction-9575221f35db

Part 2: RN Setup 

You will do your first steps to get some basic functions for your app.

https://medium.com/@radiegtya/build-linkedoff-using-react-native-redux-and-backendless-part-3-backendless-setup-eb9c8c60197e

Part 3: Backendless Setup

You will get familiar with Backendless and start building the server side logic for your app.

https://medium.com/@radiegtya/build-linkedoff-using-react-native-redux-and-backendless-part-3-backendless-setup-eb9c8c60197e

Part 4: RN+ Backendless; Building The App

You will finalize the visual part of your app and will get a functional Linkedin clone.

https://medium.com/@radiegtya/build-linkedoff-using-react-native-redux-and-backendless-part-4-rn-backendless-c0e5645c89b5

Backendless and Firebase, both being mobile BaaS platforms, are presenting different capabilities for mobile apps creation.

Here is a list of the Backendless features which either are not supported by Firebase or just exceed it in usability.

1. Backendless Pro (the standalone, self-hosted version of the product) can be installed on the developer’s computer, a private data center or a public cloud. No matter where it’s installed, the product has no functional limitations whatsoever
2. With Backendless you can fully customize permissions for users, and also configure permissions for custom user roles, which is not supported by Firebase
3. Backendless allows you to develop the server-side algorithms and business logic without actually writing any code using Codeless Programming
4. Firebase does not support native aggregate functions in database queries. With Backendless, you can calculate average, sum, min and max values for a collection of objects without retrieving objects from the server. It is also possible to find the object count for all the records in the database or a subset of records
   
   For example, the aggregate function sum allows you to calculate the mathematical sum for a set of objects. For instance, you can take the Movie table from the presented database.
   Just run the following query to get the amount of topBoxOffice of all movies:
   
   GET https://api.backendless.com/<appid>/<REST API key>/data/Movie?props=Sum(totalBoxOffice)

   1	GET https://api.backendless.com/<appid>/<REST API key>/data/Movie?props=Sum(totalBoxOffice)

   
   The output is an object with the sum property:
   
   [ { "sum": 14507795640, "___class": "Movie" } ]

   1 2 3 4 5 6

   [    {        "sum": 14507795640,        "___class": "Movie"    } ]

   
   Backendless also supports results grouping for a column. This column can either be found in the original or linked table. For example, the following query will display the sum of all the orders grouped by a country:
   
   GET https://api.backendless.com/<app id>/<REST API key>/data/Orders?props=Sum(orderAmount)&groupBy=relatedCountry.countryName

   1	GET https://api.backendless.com/<app id>/<REST API key>/data/Orders?props=Sum(orderAmount)&groupBy=relatedCountry.countryName

   
   The output for this request is a collection of objects, any of which contains the total amount of orders for a particular country:
   
   [  {    "sum": 1324231,    "countryName": "Italy",    "___class": "Orders"  },  {    "sum": 5675675,    "countryName": "France",    "___class": "Orders"  },  {    "sum": 2342234,    "countryName": "Ireland",    "___class": "Orders"  } ]

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

   [  {    "sum": 1324231,    "countryName": "Italy",    "___class": "Orders"  },  {    "sum": 5675675,    "countryName": "France",    "___class": "Orders"  },  {    "sum": 2342234,    "countryName": "Ireland",    "___class": "Orders"  } ]

   
   You can also add a filter to the grouped objects using the having condition. The following query will return only groups of countries with the total amount of orders > 10000 . The output for this request is a collection of objects, any of which contains the total amount of orders for a particular country:
   
   GET https://api.backendless.com/<app id>/<REST API key>/data/Orders?props=Sum(orderAmount)&groupBy=relatedCountry.countryName&having=Sum(orderAmount)>10000

   1	GET https://api.backendless.com/<app id>/<REST API key>/data/Orders?props=Sum(orderAmount)&groupBy=relatedCountry.countryName&having=Sum(orderAmount)>10000

5. Since Firebase uses JSON document as a database, it becomes extremely difficult (or in many cases impossible) to create relations between objects. Backendless makes it convenient to manage the relations (create, modify, delete) both via Console and with the API. In Firebase, you need to duplicate the data for each element, which causes synchronization problems for the identical objects that have one-to-many relations.

It is worthwhile to point out the following:

1. Backendless allows you to import data from Parse. Importing data from external databases will become available soon as well
2. Firebase, unlike Backendless, does not allow you to make complex queries on the server, only basic filtering is supported. For more details see: backendless.com/docs/rest/doc.html#data_search_with_subquery
3. The Backendless Console is way more convenient and has more functions, compared to the one in Firebase
4. Backendless support is beyond comparison. Here’s what real users have to say
5. Backendless version 5 launch happens soon! New features are described here