Test the powerful 4D REST server with Postman
4D provides a powerful REST server, that enables direct access to data stored in your 4D databases. This makes it possible, for example, to build an API to use with a modern front end technology (e.g., Angular, React, etc). In this blog post, we’ll provide a first introduction to the 4D robust REST server. You’ll see how to configure it as well as test the create, retrieve, update, and delete (CRUD) operations using the API testing tool, Postman.
More information about web processes
You asked for more information about web processes to better identify requests that might be slowing down or blocking your server. We heard you and in 4D v17 R5, we’ve added information about the URL used by web processes. This information can be retrieved two ways: via the 4D Server Administration Window or via the 4D language with the Get process activity command.
New server administration commands
4D continues to deliver features to help you create your own applications to monitor your servers. From programmatically retrieving information about sessions, processes, and the application server, to getting information about the web server.
Having already provided you commands to read about statuses, 4D v17 R4 now gives you the ability to change statuses. You can now create your own administration interfaces as dialogs on the server, client, or even as HTML pages for web access. It’s up to you. These commands allow you to perform the same actions as the standard 4D administration interface. For example, you can send a message to your users to notify them of scheduled maintenance, or block new connections to the application server while you perform an operation on it.
Bootstrap and 4D transformation tags
Do you need to access your 4D data from a web page but don’t have a designer in your team? Are you uncomfortable designing the pages yourself because deep down you believe that it’s full of complicated and unwritten rules? Well, have you ever thought about Bootstrap?
In this blog post, we’ll look at how to take advantage of Bootstrap’s framework to design web pages in no time! We’ll also provide you with a database example to see how it can be combined with 4D transformation tags.
A+ security ranking for 4D web sites
After introducing Perfect Forward Secrecy, the security level of 4D Web server has been increased again with the support of HTTP Strict transport Security (HSTS). Henceforth, 4D Web server is compliant with the very latest security protocols. Simply upgrade to 4D v17 and enable HSTS to get the A+ ranking (the highest level) from SSL Labs for your web sites!
Higher security ranking for 4D web sites
HTTPS is a well-known HTTP protocol, covered with a layer of SSL/TLS encryption goodness. This protocol is intended to provide confidentiality and integrity by encrypting communications between your server and your end users, rendering your data secure from prying eyes.
4D v16 R6 takes it a step further: 4D Web server now supports Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). This provides you with the highest security level for your communications – by default! Beyond the protection it provides, the support of PFS also increases the SSL audit test results of an out-of-the-box 4D server, which is great for our customers. Especially those working with sensitive information.
Play videos with 4D
We’re in the visual and interactive content era. It’s becoming increasingly more and more prominent. Take a look at digital community statistics and you’ll discover that YouTube is the second most popular social network.
At some point, most web developers want to include videos in their sites and coincidentally, databases frequently contain links to videos (either hosted locally or on the web). This post shows you two ways to include videos in your 4D applications.
How to use Twitter’s search API with 4D
Given that there are around 6,000 tweets every second (i.e. over 350,000 tweets per minute, 500 million tweets per day equaling approximately 200 billion tweets per year), it would be great if we could search for those related to a specific subject rather than an avalanche of tweets we’re not interested in. Good news! Twitter provides a REST Search API that is great for searching tweets.
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.
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.
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