Getting started with XPages on IBM Bluemix - part I

 Well, finally it is Friday. It's been a busy week with a nice flow of Domino related development work. And tonight I wanted to take the chance to get my fingers on XPages on IBM Bluemix. So this blog post is about the steps it took me to get started...


As I do not want this experimental stuff to interfere with my work related projects I first started to update my private laptop to the latest and greatest releases (Designer 9.0.1 FP4 and XPages Extension Library 901v00_13). After that I spent some time  messing around with my bluemix account and finally creating a new one (it seems my old one has become inactive since I haven't used for too long?). Finally I was able to log in to IBM Bluemix and found the .xsp runtime in the catalog.

Create your Bluemix app

1. Login to IBM Bluemix at http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/
2. Open the Bluemix Catalog
   
3. Scroll to the very end of the catalog to the "Bluemix Lab Catalog" (currently XPages on Bluemix are in experimental stage)
   
4. I first created the sample todo app from the available boilerplate by selecting the option "XPages Web Starter" in the Boilerplate section. This is the same app as shown at IBM ConnectED 2015 in Orlando.
   
5. Specify a name for the app and click create
   
6. Wait until the app has been deployed automatically. This will take a couple of minutes (so I guess this is a good time to get a cold beer from the fridge)...
   
7. Finally, the app should be up and running:
   
   And tatataaaa: it can be accessed at http://rum.mybluemix.net/ 

Connect Domino Designer to your IBM Bluemix app

So the next step is to get access to the app from Domino Designer.

1. In the Dashboard menue click on "Start Coding"
   
2. Click on the button "Download Starter Code". This will download a zip file containing the NSF with the application's design as well as an IBM Bluemix manifest file.
    
   
   BTW: The content of the manifest file can be displayed in Bluemix by clicking on the Environment Variables menue entry.
3. Additionally you will need to download the ID file to use this NSF and to connect to theBluemix server. The ID File can be accessed from XPages NoSQL Data Service page. To open this page, open the dashboard and click on Services to access the Data Service page.
   
   and from there click on the "Launch" button on the top right corner.
   
   
4. Download the ID file from the following page - and display the password (f you don't want to guess it... ;-))
   

Now you are ready for opening the database in Domino Designer - but this will be covered in my next blog post.

iNotes calendar control - a good example to get started

In my previous blog post about the iNotes calendar control, I talked about some issues I was having with the iNotes calendar control which is part of the XPages Extension library. Yes, there are some issues, but to mke a long story short: the control is a great resource. If you want to learn more about this control, I can highly recommend to have look at the latest release of the TeamRoom Template which is deployed to your Lotus IBM Notes client.

If you want to learn more about the iNotes calendar control, check out the calendarView custom control.

BTW: On this control, I experience the same issue with the events as described here.

There is also a TeamRoom project available on OpenNTF (older version). And a demo video by Ed Brill demoing the TeamRoom template. The OpenNTF project description says:

This new TeamRoom OpenNTF 8.5.2 template has been built as a showcase application for the XPages Extension Library.  Approximately 80 different XPages Extension Library controls have been used in the construction of the TeamRoom OpenNTF 8.5.2 template, therefore making it a great learning resource on how to leverage the XPages Extension Library!

In my opinion this hits the nail on the head. This is excatly the reason why everyone learning developing XPages applications (beyond the entry level) should have a look at this template. Additionally this version of the TeamRoom template provides a much better Web UI. So your users might benefit from this template too :-)

XPages iNotes Calendar control - Events oddities

While working in one of our projects with the iNotes calendar control I experienced some oddities with the Events of this control. What I wanted to achieve is that some magic happens when clicking somewhere inside the control - e. g. opening the entry on which the user clicks... Should be pretty straightforward, I was thinking. Stupid me! As usual the devil's in the details.

I started by selecting the control and opening the events view and entered a simle JavaScript in the "onNewEntry" event. The script is supposed to show a message box after  clicking in an empty time slot.

 

In my case the result is that the event just doesn't get fired at all. I tested with FireFox, Google Chrome and even Internet Explorer. After some more testing and playing with the control I noticed an odd behaviour of Domino Designer:
As you can see on the Screenshot above, both events "onNewEntry" and "onOpenEntry" are marked blue which indicates, that there is some code in the event to be executed.  When I opened the "All Properties" view of the control to check the scripts there, I noticed that both events were empty, no script, nada, nil... Switching back to the events view, the scripts were there.

So that got me thinking. Once I entered the same code in an event from the "All Properties" view, the code is executed.

As far as I understand, the "Events" view is kind of buggy for at least this control. Besides the issue described above, I noticed that from the "Events" view I can enter CSJS as well as SSJS and Simple Actions. From the "All Properties" view, only CSJS can be used - and as far as I can see only CSJS is supported. Side note: I am using Domino Designer and Domino Server R 9.0.

 Lesson learned (again): All Properties is where you should do your work!The good news: as soon as you know how to work with this control, it works great :-)