Fresh icons for Form Wizard
Sometimes little things can have a big impact … and it turns out that these little things we call icons are kind of important when it comes to today’s interfaces. That’s why 4D v16 R5 comes with a fresh set of icons available with the Form Wizard. These simple, flat and modern icons adapt perfectly to the macOS and Windows platforms.
New command to get Web Server information
This feature is another way of providing you the ability to create your own server administration dialog. Following the ability to retrieve information for all processes (added in 4D v16 R4), we are now offering you a new command which returns, as a whole, all runtime information about 4D Web server.
With 4D v16 R5, retrieving web server information has never been easier, thanks to a single command: WEB Get server info.
Working with JSON Pointers
In 4D v16 R4, we enriched object commands so you can validate JSON objects. 4D v16 R5 is going even further by introducing the support of JSON pointers. Great – but what is a JSON pointer and what can I do with it?
Just like you don’t store company details for each employee in a database record (using a link to the company record instead), it can be really useful to structure a JSON document with parts that can be reused in a number of places.
For instance, let’s take an example of a website order; the customer enters the shipping address and designates the billing address as the same. Instead of duplicating the address information, we can define the shipping address as a reference to the the billing address.
Generate digest now supports SHA-2
The digest functions are mathematical functions that compute a digest key for a document. Identical documents have the same digest key; if you change part of the document, the digest key is different. These functions are very useful for checking data integrity when you exchange or compare data. In 4D v16 R5, 4D has enhanced the Generate digest command to support SHA-2 algorithms following security recommendations.
Hash and verify passwords for web user login
Security is becoming an increasingly important topic as business applications become more frequently accessible through the web and are, as a result, more vulnerable to threats. As 4D is closely paying attention to security matters, in 4D v16 R5 we are providing you with a couple of security improvements, and one of them relates to the web users’ password protection through password hashing.
By the way, if you want to know more about how 4D is helping you to protect your data and with the security in general, I recommend you to take a look at this blog post.
More security for your 4D Server
Over the years, security has become a core topic for business applications. Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), both frequently referred to as “SSL”, are cryptographic protocols that provide communications security over a computer network. The TLS version that your application is using for web or client/server connections, for instance, contributes to its security level.
4D supports all TLS versions: 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2. The protocol version used is negotiated between the server and the client when establishing the connection. To increase the security level, beginning with 4D v16 R5, the default minimum supported version is TLS 1.2, older versions are rejected, as they could be unsecure.
A new tool: JSON Validator
4D v16 R4 introduces a new command: JSON Validate. This command allows you to verify that a JSON document is “valid” according to your JSON schema. This is really useful for exchanging information between servers or between a server and its client. Thanks to JSON schema standards, you can define a “protocol” for communication with your server or an external server. More details can be found in this blog post.
How to use Google Charts with 4D
According to neuroscientists, we respond better and faster to a visual form than any other type of representation. That’s why graphs and charts are clearly a key to a better understanding of data.
So if you’re looking to display bar charts, histograms, or pie charts which are modern and fully compatible with the leading browsers, but also more suitable for the way the human brain processes information, Google Charts is one possible answer. The available chart types in Google Charts is varied: from the classical bar/column/pie charts, Google Charts also offers elaborated graphs such as Treemap, Candlestick and Gauge charts.
Retrieve the license information by programming
When you perform analysis, reporting or debugging of your server application you may want to know the number of available clients, the number of consumed connections, the expiration date and many other information.
Now with 4D v16 R4, you can retrieve detailed information about the active license of your running 4D product (4D Server for instance). For example:
- version,
- platform,
- number of available and consumed connections for 4D Write Pro,
- number of available and consumed connections for 4D Client,
- expiration date,
- …
Define the tab order by programming
Here are 2 very common developer needs: 1. Depending on the user criteria, you want to rearrange the objects in the form. – 2. Depending on the selected item in a list, you want to show, hide or move the objects in the form.
In all theses cases, you need to change the tab order of the form objects. Now in 4D v16 R4, you can modify the tab order at runtime by programming. To do so, 2 new commands have been created: FORM SET ENTRY ORDER and FORM GET ENTRY ORDER.
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