New release: Updated Pricing, mBaaS Code Generation, Server Code and GeoLocation improvements

We just pushed a new release to our production servers. The release includes multiple new features and a ton of improvements. Below is a summary of what went into the release. There will be a blog post with a video providing an in-depth review of each new feature:

• Pricing update– our free plannow includes more for the same great price of $0.00. Now you get:
  • 5 security roles (increased from 2);
  • 20 GB of file storage space (increased from 2GB);
  • 1M publish/subscribe messages (increased from 200,000)

  Additionally, we had to introduce a few new limits into the free plan: 200 data tables and 100,000 geopoints. Any overages for the data tables are available for $10/month per 100 extra tables. Additional geopoints are available for $5 per 100,000 geopoints per month. Keep in mind that the our free plan includes unlimited API calls and even with these limits you can build and grow a very sophisticated app with lots of users.

• mBaaS Code Generation– There are significant improvements in our code generator. If you are not familiar with the Backendless codegen, it is a system that creates client-side code (or a complete app) based on the assets in your backend. For example, it can create client-side classes representing your data tables in Objective-C, Java, JavaScript or ActionScript. The generated code can be used to interact with the persistent storage through strongly-typed classes and collections.The improvements in this release include code generation for JavaScript (chat messaging app, geo browser, login with Facebook or Twitter), completely rewritten code generation for iOS and Android. Be sure to check out this amazing feature available through Backendless Console – the feature is available through the Code Generation icon.

•  Server Code – The new server-code functionality lets you write business logic which can be injected into the API invocation chain. The code can run before or after the default Backendless service logic and can modify incoming arguments in the “before” handlers and/or modify return values in the “after” handlers.

• GeoLocation Management – The Geolocation screen in the Backendless Console has been rewritten from scratch. The new interface supports two types of data navigation – table-driven or map-driven. The former let’s you see the contents of geocategories and visualize the geo points on the map. The latter, lets you use the map to see what points are available in any given “viewport”. Additionally, we added a visualization mechanism for the “search in radius” function.

• “Remember me” option for logins –  We have updated iOS, Android and JavaScript SDKs with the functionality supporting the “remember me” option for the user logins. The new functionality lets you build apps where you can offer a way to store user’s login information and bypass the login screen for the subsequent application launches.

• SQL Improvement–  Most of our search APIs (user, data, geosearch) support the “where” clause, that is you can use the standard SQL-92 syntax to define the search queries. We have added support for the IN operator. Now a search query may look like this:

  var contactStorage = Backendless.Persistence.of( Contact );
  var query = {condition: "city IN ('Paris','London')"};
  var contactsFromParisOrLondon = contactStorage.find( query );