How to block user using older version of my App? - apache-flex

I'm developing an application using flex/AIR and right now it changes all the time due to its beta condition.
What could be the best way to block all older versions activity and force the user to update the application?
Thanks.
Edit: This must be achieved without any server side language help (ie: php, java)

I think your best shot is to add an autoupdater to your app, and run it when starting your application. Check the Adobe AIR autoupdate framework. You can implement your logic (blocking the application, asking to update, closing it) after you have compared the versions if doesn't match.
This article might also be helpful: Adding autoupdate features to your air application in 3 easy steps (Actually it is a 2 Steps now).

You could create an entry method that checks the applications local version against the remote version number via a service you expose. If the local version does not match your newest version, don't allow the application to proceed. Instead, offer the download link, or automate the downloading/installation process based on your needs.

Related

Python QT on Azure

I'm using Python and QT (PySide) in a local application (which connect to a database on cloud Azure).
Now, my objective is moving this app on the web, in particular on Azure (I have an Azure subscription), simply transfering it on Azure, it's possible in some manner? I have not found examples on the web.
The important question is: is Python QT (app web) compatible with Azure?
Thanks
UPDATED ANSWER!
Yes, now you can. Well sort of. The mad mads at Digia have created something called "QT for Web Assembly" that can compile your whole app into something that runs embedded into a web page.
https://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/creator-setup-webassembly.html
You might have to rethink connecting directly to the database however, as thats simply not gonna fly with web-sockets (And honestly direct app to remote RDBMS has never been a smart move. Theres a LOT of things that can go wrong letting the internet connnect to your databaes). But you could at least keep the UI and rewrite the databaes layer to interogate something like a GraphQL (or whatever) front end to the data.
OLD ANSWER
I'm afraid your up for a nearly complete rewrite. QT is a desktop/mobile platform. It doesn't go anywhere near HTML/CSS except perhaps for displaying them in a webview component. Azure or AWS won't magically make it into a web application for you.
Your code as it stands needd to be rewritten in a web-first transactional manner. That is it takes a request, processes it, produces a result. To some extent websockets has changed this dynamic for a limited subset of use cases where interaction needs to be non transactional, and modern web app design hides much of the transactionality behind a web-services model, but 90% of web work is still very much transactional.
Database <---> Web server/Web app stack <--- Internet! --> Web browser
My suggestion is to pick up Django (or one of the other systems. If its just simple, Flask is another good alternative. Flask for simple apps, Django for the big stuff. Or use something else, you have choices here!, and start from scratch. Analyse your products function and start mapping out how to make this work as a database driven transactional system.
Theres no shortcuts here, I'm afraid.

Which are limits of Community version of the eZ Publish CMS?

I am currently looking for informations about eZ Publish Community version and its limits to develop a public portal.
Furthermore:
Can I use Oracle database? Should I prefer ezoracle to any Symfony extension?
Can I integrate an antivirus solution? If yes which one?
Can I use 2 different instances, one to write and export contents, and another one to import and update contents?
Which newsletter system do you suggest?
Is back-end IE8 and IE9 compatible?
Can I (de)activate contact forms on demand?
Can I integrate a more powerful anti-spam solution than visual CAPTCHA? (ex: reCAPTCHA)
Can the webmaster modify layout elements, such as logos, bannes, aso.
Thank you for your help!
Latest community version is using Doctrine DBAL (through new stack) which supports Oracle. But so far there is no information that someone tried it as the Doctrine support is quite new. ezoracle extension is a legacy extension which might be used but not if new stack is being utilised.
Anti-virus solutions are not something that makes sense to integrate with CMS-es. Those are either client software (CMS runs on web servers) or server side software which is installed on the web server and monitors uploaded files.
You probably describe a content staging kind of setup for which there is no out-of-the-box solution. But the CMS is quite flexible and some solution could be possible to develop.
Solid and integrated one is the cjw_newsletter, but its legacy based. There is nothing similar in the new stack, there might be some Symfony based bundles that could be integrated but would require some development effort. Depends on the integration needed. If not much integration is needed external services are an option
Legacy admin interface is, for the new editor UI which is under development at the moment I am not sure what will be the oldest IE supported. IE8 probably not, maybe just with graceful degradation.
If you mean legacy collected info based forms yes. You can hide the node of the forms for example. In new stack there are no similar implementation yet.
Yes, although it would probably require some web development knowledge. If you use legacy collected info forms you can try to install some of the existing legacy extension that deal with that (e.g. http://projects.ez.no/recaptcha) but to do it in new stack (Symfony based) you will probably need to dig deeper with Symfony Forms and custom controllers or find and integrate bundles that implement this
This depends on how the front-end is implemented. If done properly it should be possible, yes
For more detailed help feel free to use the community forum: http://share.ez.no/forums/ez-publish-5-platform

Is it possible to create web application using Qt?

How to create web application using Qt?
This depends on what you mean by "web application". If you mean an application that can show parts of a web page in its interface as rendered HTML, like a browser can...yes. Qt incorporates something called QtWebKit:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebkit-index.html
(Note: Back in the olden days it was Microsoft--I think--who first made an embeddable Internet Explorer control so that you could fetch a URL into the midst of some MFC or VB application and run a browser in the midst of your otherwise-form-based application. The event hooks for Microsoft's solution sucked, Qt's are much better.)
Anyway, this is great if you want people to install your application on their machine, where it fetches web data but takes advantages of native features to be richer than a browser could. But be careful because these days native apps have to be really outstanding to surpass the advantage of something that runs in a browser they already have.
HOWEVER If you are trying to use QtCore to push server-side content out and fulfill web requests, that'll be an uphill battle. You might find some related examples if you look hard enough:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100922075100/http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2006/12/20/whats-this-cgi/
Very few people use C++ (much less Qt) to generate web pages server-side. Yet there are still some doing it, even in pretty cool ways:
http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt
...regardless, QtCreator will be no help in that kind of pursuit.
The functionality you are asking for does not exist within Qt itself. However, there exists (at least) one third party library that allows some of the Qt code for a desktop app to be re-used to a certain extent for serving up a web app:
http://cutelyst.org/
However, this does not magically allow you to write a QML interface with QML Widgets and have a visual interface accessible via a web browser.
What do you mean by "web application"? Is it a desktop app with web features? If so, yes Qt in general is very good for that.
If you mean a kind of server that outputs HTML, then you should use something else because you would have to reinvent many wheels to make it work.
You'd require to run or embed web server. It would be more whise to turn to a Apache Web Server or Apache Tomcat based approach. Otherwhise you'd run somewhat against the odds.
Consider also using some HTTP server library like libonion or Wt. Wt is close in spirit to Qt. However, you won't use Qt itself. libonion is lower level (and you may want to use browser-side Web frameworks like e.g. JQuery or AngularJS with it).
If you already have some Web server, you could consider developing some FastCGI application in C++.
You surely need a good understanding of HTTP protocol and of HTML5 & AJAX.
Since this is 11 years old, I thought I'd come here to tell you that it does indeed seem possible now that qt supports webassembly. The newest version, 6.4 (newest version as of today jan 31 2023), now offers support for webassembly and their website has various examples of apps built with qt that run in the browser.
https://www.qt.io/qt-examples-for-webassembly

Advantages/Disadvantages of AIR vs Flex/Web

I'm tasked with writing an application for placing and connecting objects (sort of like a room planner where you can place furniture). I've made a demo using Flash Builder 4 and built it for AIR as a desktop app. Now the client wants the full app, but they and I am unsure whether to continue building it as an AIR app or transform it to a web application using Flex. I tried making a simple conversion of the AIR app to a web app, and most things worked but not all. The things that don't work seem to be simple bugs, though, not complete lack of capability.
The capabilities that I'm going to need (except for the modelling) are:
Printing of the finished image + a list of the furniture that has been placed
A way to save and retrieve finished plans
A way to export the list of furniture to Excel format
Handling a whole slew of data about the different objects
Only the printing has been implemented so far, and seems to work in the web app as well.
What advantages/disadvantages are there with the two approaches? Are any of the capabilities I need much worse (or even impossible) to implement in either approach?
Edit: Thanks all for your answers. From them, and my own research, I came up with the following:
Web app
Advantages
Accessible, no need for installing software
Easy to keep up to date
Disadvantages
Requires Flash 10 (for saving files)
Requires a web server to serve content
Sligthly longer development time (from where I am right now)
Requires an internet connection to work
Lots of data transport, may be slow on a slow network
Desktop AIR app
Advantages
Slightly faster development time (from where I am right now)
No web server necessary
Can be used while not connected to the internet
All data is local and faster to load
Disadvantages
Requires the Adobe AIR runtime + a separate installation of the program
Updates need to be distributed to all users and an admin needs to install them
There is no one straight answer for this one. A few points to consider:
If you want to use specific AIR features like offline usage, integration with the user's OS etc, you should use AIR (of course)
Flex applications are more easy to distribute and upgrade, because everyone uses the same swf instance from the server. When using a server backend with AIR, you should be aware of possible backwards compatibility issues when upgrading you application.
There are a lot of little differences, but in broad strokes, the only considerations you have to think about are:
Does it need to be on the Web?
Does it need file system access.
If (1) then use regular Flash. If (2) then use AIR.
The biggest disadvantage is related to the update model - you need to be a super user in order to update the air application - especially in enterprise the users of the AIR applications don't have rights to update it. If your application is running in the browser you do not have this issue.
Besides that, I do not see any disadvantage.
Check out flash 10 FileReference you can let users save results easily to their local file system. I've used it to create PDF's and let the user save that for printing.
For the PDF side I used Alive PDF.
protected function PrintCard(event:MouseEvent):void
{
//ShowHideBorders();
var printPDF:PDF = new PDF( Orientation.LANDSCAPE, Unit.MM, Size.LETTER );
printPDF.setDisplayMode( Display.FULL_WIDTH, Layout.SINGLE_PAGE );
printPDF.addPage();
printPDF.addImage(CardPanel);
var fileRef:FileReference = new FileReference();
fileRef.save(printPDF.save(Method.LOCAL), "card.pdf"); // Sends the file to the USER
//ShowHideBorders();
}

How to make two web sites appear as one - What features are important?

I am about to write a tender. The solution might be a PHP based CMS. Later I might want to integrate an ASP.NET framework and make it look like one site.
What features would make this relatively easy.
Would OpenId and similar make a difference?
In the PHP world Joomla is supposed to be more integrative than Druapal. What are the important differences here?
Are there spesific frameworks in ASP.NET, Python or Ruby that are more open to integration than others?
The most important thing is going to be putting as much of the look-and-feel in a format that can be shared by any platforms. That means you should develop a standard set of CSS files and (X)HTML files which can be imported (or directly presented) in any of those platform options. Think about it as writing a dynamic library that can be loaded by different programs.
Using OpenID for authentication, if all of your platform options support it, would be nice, but remember that each platform is going to require additional user metadata be stored for each user (preferences, last login, permissions/roles, etc) which you'll still have to wrangle between them. OpenID only solves the authentication problem, not the authorization or preferences problems.
Lastly, since there are so many options, I would stick to cross-platform solutions. That will leave you the most options going forward. There's no compelling advantage IMHO to using ASP.NET if there's a chance you may one day integrate with other systems or move to another system.
I think that most important thing is to choose the right server. The server needs to have adequate modules. Apache would be good choice as it supports all that you want, including mod_aspnet (which I didn't test, but many people say it works).
If you think asp.net integration is certanly going to come, I would choose Windows as OS as it will certanly be easier.
You could also install reverse proxy that would decide which server to render content based on request - if user request aspx page, proxy will connect to the IIS and windoze page, if it asks for php it can connect to other server. The problem with this approach is shared memory & state, which could be solved with carefull design to support this - like shared database holding all state information and model data....
OpenID doesn't make a difference - there are libs for any framework you choose.

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