News
Nicolas Brachfogel

Latest news about 4D on Silicon

Since Apple’s first announcement about Silicon, we’ve been keeping you informed through a series of blog posts and this post is no different!

So what’s going on? Well, the first Silicon Macs equipped with the brand new M1 chip are now available on the market. Here are two important pieces of information we need to share with you:

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Product
Vanessa Talbot

Automate repetitive tasks and more with form macros!

If you’re a fan of macros in the code editor, then 4D v18 R5 has some good news for you …  because now macros are also available in the form editor!

Let me start by telling you how useful macros can be for you. Have you ever needed to use formatting or naming rules in your application, then apply them to each new form? Or maybe you’ve had to work on existing forms created by someone else, and always need to do the exact same checks and analyses before getting started. If you’ve ever encountered one of these scenarios, then 4D v18 R5 is for you because it gives you the ability to create macros and save time on predictable, repetitive tasks.

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Product
Vanessa Talbot

Coder-friendly syntax for class functions and methods

Using $1, $2, and $n variables in your code not only makes the code less readable, it can also increase confusion since the human brain can find it difficult to remember what these variables correspond to. The solution is to create a variable with an understandable name and assign it the value of $1, $2, or $n.

4D v18 R5 has good news, you can now name your parameters when declaring:

  • a project method,
  • a trigger
  • a database method
  • a form method
  • a constructor of a class
  • a function of a class.

 

Let’s see how!

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Product
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ORDA – Improve your API with function scope

4D v18 R4 and ORDA made it possible for you to create high-level class functions above the data model. This allows you to write business-oriented code to hide complexity, reduce errors, and speed up the development process.

With 4D v18 R5, we’re bringing even more features to help you optimize and organize your code. For example, you might need to run a function locally on the client to improve performance when working in client/server mode. It’s now possible! Or if you expose your database as a REST server, you might want some functions to be available on the server-side but hidden for your REST clients. This is also possible!

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News
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4D v18 R4 is Here

I’m very happy to announce that 4D v18 R4 is now available!

4D v18 R4 is one of the best feature releases ever delivered, with 20+ new features added to 4D’s ever-growing list.

From the 4D language that keeps getting better, to new capabilities 4D for iOS offers for building enriched apps, to the implementation of 4D Write Pro features you’ve requested. PLUS a whole new set of 4D View Pro commands to give you further control over your documents.

Without further ado, here’s a sneak peek of what’s in store for you:

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Guest Post
Tiran Behrouz

How to create a simple “TimeStamp” class in 4D

by guest author Tiran Behrouz, 4D developer (Vancouver, Canada) 

The introduction of ORDA in 4D v17 was a game-changer. Now with the introduction of classes in 4D v18 R3, we will witness a paradigm shift in 4D programming. We can now take advantage of object-oriented programming concepts such as polymorphism, composition, and inheritance to write our own class libraries. In this video, I demonstrate how to code a simple TimeStamp class using 4D and ORDA. 

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