Generate, share and use web sessions One-Time Passcodes (OTP)
Today, web applications have become integral to our lives, offering convenient features that save time and simplify everyday tasks. As an example, creating accounts on various platforms is one the most frequent user action on web sites.
They expect this kind of process to be quick and accessible—whether at home, commuting, or relaxing on the beach.
Behind this simplicity lies a more complex reality. These operations often require integration with third-party systems, such as email verification services. This introduces challenges related to security, user experience continuity, and protecting against man-in-the-middle attacks.
For developers, ensuring a smooth experience means managing interactions between external systems and the 4D web session. This involves maintaining the user’s context—retrieving data, privileges, and the exact step of their journey to complete the process.
Sounds complicated? It doesn’t have to be! Discover how to build robust web applications that securely and efficiently communicate with third-party systems with 4D 20 R9.
Energize your Web applications with the OutgoingMessage Class
In today’s digital world, a smooth and intuitive user experience is key to any web application’s success. A critical part of this experience is providing users with easy access to various resources—whether documents, images, or other data types. To make this possible, your server must manage and deliver different content formats efficiently.
With 4D’s 20 R7 new REST server feature, managing diverse content delivery is now easier than ever. Previously, the REST server could only return scalar, entity, or entity selection data. Now, it can deliver full web content directly—content ready for a browser to handle.
Downloading files or receiving binary data from the REST server is now straightforward, thanks to the new OutgoingMessage class. With it, you can easily customize responses to suit your needs.
Read on to explore how the OutgoingMessage class can enhance your application!
Managing HTTP Requests with HTTP Agents
In 4D 19 R6, we introduced HTTP classes to modernize syntax and enhance functionalities for our HTTP client commands. Building on this foundation, 4D 20 R6 brings a powerful new feature: HTTP agents. These agents empower developers to customize and optimize their connections to HTTP servers by managing connection persistence and reuse for HTTP requests.
Create, Update, and Delete with Data Explorer
The Data Explorer is a powerful tool for visualizing data. Its capabilities allow administrators to effortlessly ensure data consistency. At the same time, developers can validate their code for creating, updating, or deleting data – all without the need to craft new forms.
Now, with 4D 20 R4, users have the ability not only to visualize but also to correct their data directly within the interface of the Data Explorer. That’s right! You can add, modify, or delete data directly in the Data Explorer interface.
Qodly Studio for 4D / What’s new with 4D v20 R3
You already know it, 4D revealed Qodly Studio for 4D early september this year. Introduced in 4D v20 R2, Qodly Studio benefits from the Feature Release lifecycle and gets its load of improvements and fixes with 4D v20 R3, currently in beta.
Wondering what’s new in Qodly Studio in this new 4D release? Read what’s next to get ready to use the latest Qodly features in your web app!
Debug on the server with scalable web sessions
Scalable web sessions were a significant improvement brought by 4D v18 R6. They allow you to use 4D tags, 4D actions, and REST API in preemptive processes, even in interpreted mode, on a 4D server. However, to debug such programs, you needed to open your development environment on the server to make it switch to cooperative mode, as the debugger window cannot be opened with preemptive processes. This way, until v19 R2, you could debug REST, 4D actions, or 4D tags. From v19 R3, all of this has become much easier, and you can debug on the server-side simply by attaching the debugger to it, as usual.
4D REST API + ReactJS
by Mourad Aouinat, Software Engineer at 4D Morocco
In a previous blog post, we saw how easy setting up a REST API using 4D. In this blog post, we will leverage the powerful 4D REST API in combination with React to build a To-Do app that includes features to open todos, create new ones, modify existing ones, and features for bulk modification and bulk deletion.
Get ready for the new SameSite and Secure attributes for cookies
Cookies’ abilities have grown and evolved over the years, but they have left some legacy issues. To handle this, browsers (including Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge) are changing their behavior regarding the SameSite and Secure attributes for a secure-by-default model for cookies.
As a 4D web developer, you may be concerned about the 4D web sessions session cookie if you want to prevent your application from Cross-site request forgery.
To prevent your web session cookie from circulating on the web pointlessly or being misunderstood by browsers because of a default value applied, you should ask if it is:
- a third-party cookie: associated with a domain name different from that of the page where the cookie is encountered. A third-party cookie is placed by a page object (e.g. an ad) originating from a domain other than the one hosting the page
or
- a first-party cookie: associated with the domain of the page
Depending on your use case, you should choose the appropriate value for the SameSite attribute of your web session cookie.
To reinforce security, the Secure attribute must be set for the web session cookie when the connection is secured (HTTPS) to indicate to the browser that the cookie can be sent safely.
Keep reading to learn how 4D has your back to improve privacy and security across the web.
ORDA: Easy looping with a new 4D tag
You have probably already used a For each…End for each loop to work with ORDA entity selections or with collections. Its use is simple and straight forward. Would like to use it as a 4D tag in your SHTML pages? Or perhaps with the PROCESS 4D TAGS command?
As of 4D v19, you can! Keep reading to learn more.
4D Data Explorer in Action
Even though the 4D Data Explorer is still in Preview version (there are certainly more features to come in the next versions), we thought we’d show you the product in action and let you discover its capabilities.
This is a web browser interface usable by the administrator as well as the developer, remotely (in a secure way with an HTTPS connection) or locally on the same machine as your opened database.
Need to check your data during development? Need to find data that could cause bugs? The Data Explorer, with its powerful query engine and intuitive web interface, is made for you!
Let’s watch the video:
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