Integrate 4D Components Directly from GitHub
Many 4D developers leverage the power of third-party components found on GitHub, particularly those listed in the 4d-component topic. 4D 20 R6 introduces a fantastic new feature: directly integrating these components within the Component Manager.
This blog post dives into the details, making your development process easier and more efficient.
How to Implement Continuous Integration with 4D: A Step-by-Step Guide
In the world of software development, a new concept has appeared in recent years called “Continuous Integration.” The definition we see or hear everywhere is :
“CI is a process that automates the compilation, testing, and delivery of an application on a regular and frequent basis.”
Having understood this definition, which expresses an interesting and promising process, what do I need to do to implement it in 4D? If you search the Internet, you’ll find that there are many CI tools and frameworks available.
However, there are several prerequisites before using these CI tools.
Saving project source code without tokens
Commands, constants, tables and fields are stored with their tokens in the project source code files (4dm files). This allows 4D to rename them automatically. But sometimes, you would like these source code files to be stored without tokens for a better readability with a version control system or an external code editor, or for better code sharing between projects. Let’s see how to make 4D store source code without these tokens.
XML invisible characters on stage!
Default End Of Line character and Byte Order Mark usage in text files have been modified in 4D v19 R2. With 4D v19 R3, 4D extends this behavior to XML files. Let’s see how.
An introductory guide to 4D and Version Control Systems
For many years, 4D has allowed you to develop binary databases as part of a team with a 4D Server. This way of developing is straightforward, but many developers asked us to be more efficient on source code management to deliver better traceability. 4D has heard them and developed Project mode to fit this need. This mode opened a new era of collaboration thanks to version control systems!
gitignore and 4D: a useful feature for Git users
Project mode allows you to easily track changes with Git, the most popular version control system. But often, you don’t want to track all the files of your project in the Git repository. 4D now offers you the possibility to define what not to track in your new projects.
Project Databases: Build your own documentation for components
In a previous blog post, we showed you that documentation for methods has returned in the Explorer. Want to take things even further and use them as documentation for your components? In this blog post, we’ll show you how!
News flash: 4D components available on GitHub!
In 2017, 4D initiated a new program to share the source code of 4D internal components to 4D Partners.
Sharing the source code of 4D components lets you customize them and make them your own! With project databases and the ability to share an application’s source code via a source control system, we’ve converted our 4D internal components into project databases and pushed the source code to the 4D GitHub account. It’s open to everyone, all you need to take advantage of it is an account on Github. Why did we do this? To make your life easier by keeping track of changes and modifications to both code and forms.
Project databases: Git. Commit. Pull. Push & more
In a previous blog post, we introduced you to Git (a version control system) and Github (a cloud-based hosting service) and how you can share your 4D code with other developers. In this blog post, we’ll go a bit further by exploring some scenarios a developer may encounter, such as cloning a remote repository, ignoring already committed files, and solving merge conflicts.
Project databases: Improved views in the form editor
The Form Editor allows you to create, modify, and customize your forms. Several tools are available to make your work easier, one of which is the Views palette. This tool makes it easy to build complex forms by distributing objects into different views. The views enable objects to be hidden or displayed as needed.
What if you’re working on a form developed by someone else? How can you quickly determine if the form uses views? Are there limitations on the number of views permitted? 4D v18 R2 and project databases eliminate these existential questions while greatly enhancing the user experience!
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