developing a html5 client with lightswitch

Pieter-Jan Drouillon

Developing a HTML5 Client with LightSwitch

Overview

Introduction

Visual Studio & LightSwitch

What about Drupal?

Conclusion

Introduction

Saw a LightSwitch presentation

Fast development of HTML5 Client

Search & Filter

Cool controls out of the box

VS & LightSwitch

VS: Microsoft IDE

LightSwitch

VS Extension

Silverlight, HTML5 or Sharepoint App

DataSource: SQL, Azure, OData

jQuery

What is this talk about?

Is lightswitch suitable for building a HTML5 Client for Drupal website?

Story of my quest

What data can LightSwitch consume?

Once upon a time...

Alternative 1: OData

Vendor independent - cool!

“OData is a standardized protocol for creating and consuming data APIs”

“providing a uniform way to expose, structure, query and manipulate data”

http://www.odata.org

OData Server module

Based on OData Producer Library for PHP

Exposes entities, properties and fields

Downside: sandbox project

read-only

DEMO - Settings

OData settings

Exposing entities

Properties

Foreign keys

What does it look like?

Blog Client

Add datasource

Define relationships if necessary

Generate Screens

Customize if necessary

DEMO - Basic Screen

Add Datasource

Add Overview Screen

Add Detail Screen

What’s up with that body ?

See the HTML code of body

Defined as text

VS suggests text controls

Custom controls to the rescue!

element

surrounding component

contentItem

the current item with all properties and values

DEMO - Custom Control

DEMO - Search

Add search for title

DEMO - Edit Data

Add Edit screen

OData: conclusion

Pro

Quite easy

Relationships already defined

Con

Limited to read operations

No filter/sort

Alternative: MySQL connector

OData limited (for now)

What if you need insert/edit?

MySQL Connector

Get access to MySQL database

DEMO - Basic Screens

Add MySQL Datasource

Define relationship - if possible :(

Add Overview Screen

Add Detail Screen

DEMO - Editing Content

Add/Edit screen

Command button

Edit some content

DEMO - Search

Search for title

“clean filter” button

MySQL: Conclusion

Pro

Not completely from scratch

Con

Define relationships

Inconsistent datatypes

Wrong datatypes

Indepth knowledge of tables required

Conclusion

LightSwitch & Drupal

It’s not impossible

OData Server

Direct DB access no-go

Resources

OData website

Visual Studio LightSwitch

Building a HTML Client in 5 minutes

LightSwitch “How do I” videos