The Backendless Platform is built to run anywhere. We have had that vision right from the very first release of the product. Many of you are familiar with Backendless which we host in the cloud, however, exactly the same technology stack is also available as an on-premises solution, which we call Backendless Pro. With the release of version 5 of the product earlier this year, we tasked ourselves to rebuild how Backendless Pro is being distributed. Previously, it was available through a downloadable installer which led to difficulties in configuring and scaling the software. We decided to base the architecture on Docker where each component of the Backendless technology stack would be running as a separate Docker container. There are multiple benefits of this approach:
- Backendless can be distributed through DockerHub where we publish images for each components.
- Using Docker Compose we can define and run Backendless as a multi-container application.
- It is significantly easier to instrument and scale separate containers.
- Customers can easier upgrade their installations.
I am happy to report that the new Backendless Pro version 5 is now available. You are welcome to give it a try and run your own installation of Backendless Pro – the unlimited version of our platform(30 day eval licenses are automatically generated). You can find the instructions for installing and running the product on the GItHub page for Backendless Pro.
The following features are automatically included into the latest distribution:
- Real-time database
- Real-time publish/subscribe messaging
- Codeless business logic
- Build and manage API services with Java, JS or Codeless
- Push Notifications to Android and IOS
- Code generation
- User management + APIs
- File management + APIs
- Geolocation APIs
- Geofencing
Soon we will be publishing the updated documentation on Backendless Pro. Please contact us on the Backendless support forum or Slack have any questions.
This is Part 2 of a series of articles where you and I build a mobile app without any coding. The app we are working on is a ToDo app. In the previous post you did the following:
- Set up your Backendless (backend) account.
- Set up your Dropsource (frontend) account.
- Implemented (without any coding of course) application lifecycle.
- Implement the landing page for the mobile app.
In this part of the series, you will implement the following:
- The Login Page of the app.
- A page which lists all the to do tasks (the Listing page).
- Implement routing between the Login and the Listing pages.
By the end of this part of the development process, you will be able to run the application as shown in the animation below:
Let’s get started (or technically continue, since we started in the previous post).
In one of my previous articles, I showed how to develop a custom Alexa skill using an example of a Trip Planner app (How To Build A Dialogue Custom Alexa Skill Using JavaScript (Without Lambda). In this article I will show you a more complex example of the interaction between Alexa and the user. Today will build a “Guess My Number” game where Alexa (or technically the skill) thinks of a number and the user tries to guess it while the skills suggests whether it is lower or higher. Here’s a sample dialogue a user may have with Alexa once you implement the skill:
Did you know you can use the Backendless Code Generator, which is a part of Backendless Console, to easily generate a simple real-time chat application for iOS, Android and JavaScript? You get full source code and can see how to use Backendless APIs for sending text-based chat messages in real time. In this article I will describe how to modify the generated iOS application so you can send both pictures and text messages.
If you played or used Data Retrieval API in Backendless Cloud you may know that the server limits the number of objects retrieved from a table to 100 in a single call. For Managed Backendless and for Backendless Pro, this limit is configurable. In order to retrieve more than 100 objects, data paging is required. Paging greatly improves your application performance, but requires you to think how to architect your app in a certain way.
In this article I’ll describe how to get more than 100 objects, while using the minimum number of API calls, and do it without writing any code at all. Using this methodology, all that is needed to retrieve all objects from the database is a single call from the client application to the Backendless server.
Development of mobile applications generally requires two parts: the Backend and the Frontend. Of course, you could limit it only to the client-side, but if there is some data which must be stored on the server, there is no way to get around having a backend. In this series of articles, you will create a native mobile client-server application – a basic ToDo app. Backendless will take care of the backend, it gives you everything you might expecting from the server-side (user management, data persistence and scalability to name a few). And for the client side you will use the Dropsource service. In case if you are not familiar with this service, you can learn more about that from their website, but in short, it is an awesome service which lets you build native mobile apps without any coding. At the end of this series, your will have a native mobile application with the User Registration/Login screen, a screen with a listing of the ToDo items and a screen to create a new ToDo Item. Here’s a brief preview of the app along with real-time changes in the Backendless database:
Let’s go!
In this article, I will describe how to use the Backendless API to save multiple related records with one primary (parent) record in a table. All related records (children) will be stored in separate tables as a part of the same routine.
Examples of this type of requirement might be personnel records tied to a single identifier (such as an employee number), or transportation manifests tied to a single record locator.
Backendless Cloud Code officially supports Java, JavaScript and Codeless. Since Kotlin compiles to Java byte code, it is not an exception and can be used as well to build API Services, Event handlers and Timers. Check out an article by @vvsevolodovich describing how to configure your project so you can develop Cloud Code logic with Kotlin:
We just published a new product into our Marketplace which enables integration with Stripe. The product name is Stripe Integration Plugin and its purpose is to handle card payments submissions to Stripe. The plugin runs in Backendless business logic (Cloud Code) and uses your Stripe’s app signing and secret keys when communicating with Stripe. Below is a list of functions performed by the plugin:
- Submits charge transactions to Stripe from a secure server-side environment. This function is initiated by an API call into the plugin from your mobile/web app.
- Receives transaction information and returns it to the mobile/web app.
- Receives webhook calls from Stripe and stores information about your Stripe app events in the Backendless database.
- Sends out a real-time message when a webhook is received. This allows your mobile/web app to inform the customer that a transaction is complete.
For additional information, see the Stripe Integration Plugin documentation.
What does “mobile-to-web cross login with a QR code” mean ? It is one of the approaches for the two-factor authentication. Suppose that a user is already authenticated in your application (in my example it would be an android app) and the user wants to use it’s actual session to perform an automatic authentication in another application (in my case it’s a web app). There are several examples of popular apps which use this approach. For example, to login into a web session with WhatsАpp, you must login on your phone and then scan a QR code in the web interface.
