Tool support
The tools listed in this section provide support for Web application development. For more information about using these tools, see OpenEdge Development: Progress Dynamics Basic Development .
Object Generator
The Object Generator tool generates Progress SmartDataObjects™, SmartDataBrowsers™, SmartDataViewers™, and SmartDataFields™.
Dynamic Property tool
The Container Builder and the Progress Dynamics AppBuilder use property sheets for managing attributes associated with static and dynamic objects. The Dynamic Property tool maintains these property sheets and provides the ability to define:
- Attribute values by Result Code at the object master and object instance levels.
- HtmlClass, StyleSheetFile, JavaScriptFile, and JavaScriptObject attribute values for a container.
- HtmlClass attribute values for any object type, object master, or object instance.
- HTML events for a dynamic viewer field.
The Dynamic Properties dialog box maintains container and object attribute instance values. As shown in Figure 1–1, it consists of a nonmodal window with a list of all the properties (attributes and events) that you can modify. If more than one object is selected, the dialog box displays only the properties that are common to all the objects. A change to a common property affects all the selected objects.
The values for each property appear in an updateable browser control. The browser control lists the property, its value, result code, and group. You can either type directly into the value, select from a combo box, or have a lookup button that spawns a dialog box and returns a string value.
A toggle box located next to each property indicates which properties have been overridden. Deselecting the toggle box deletes the assigned value for the property. The property and group columns can be sorted by clicking on the column label. Every supported widget type is stored in the Repository as an object class. Various APIs exist to retrieve and save those attributes associated with a widget type, and to assign attribute values.
Container Builder
The Container Builder is used to create and manage Repository object data for complex dynamic containers. It maintains information about all objects on the container, the pages they are on, how they are linked, and their layout on their respective pages.
Toolbar and Menu Designer
The Toolbar and Menu Designer tool defines application toolbars and menus. The User Interface Manager reads the toolbar and menu definitions from the Dynamics Repository using the Repository Manager getToolbarBandActions API. For Web applications, the User Interface Manager adds two additional toolbar buttons for the Filter and Find dialog boxes.
AppBuilder
The Progress Dynamics AppBuilder creates and maintains many static and dynamic objects. Of particular interest for the Dynamics Web applications is the ability to define HTML events for viewer field objects using the new property sheet.
Note: When working with Dynamic Viewers in the AppBuilder, you should implement non-SDO fields as SDO calculated fields. This is due to the tight integration of SDOs into the Progress Dynamics framework and the DHTML client. Manipulating SDO calculated fields is far easier than manipulating non-SDO fields.Web Test Page
The Web Test Page, shown in Figure 1–2, contains a number of tests and utilities for checking your Progress Dynamics Web setup and configuration. It also contains links to lists of static objects, dynamic objects, and static images.
You can access the Web Test Page from a Web browser. The page is the default.htm file that is in install_dir\tty\dynamics\ry\. (The URL shown in Figure 1–2 shows dynamics100 as a virtual directory that points to install_dir\tty\dynamics\ry\.)