Going Mobile with
Magic xpa 3.x
Self-Paced Tutorial

Book ID: UTGMMXA30
Edition: 1.00, February 2015
Course ID: UCGMXPA3x
Magic University Official Courseware

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Going Mobile with Magic xpa 3.x
February 2015

Copyright © 2015 by Magic Software Enterprises Ltd. All rights reserved.

ii

Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................... 1
About Magic xpa ....................................................................................................... 1
About the Seminar ..................................................................................................... 2
Seminar Prerequisites.................................................................................................. 2
Magic Software University .......................................................................................... 2
Setting Up the Mobile Clients .......................................................................................... 3
Mobile Design Mode .................................................................................................. 3
My First Magic Program ............................................................................................. 4
Mobile Preview Pane .................................................................................................. 4
Execution Properties File ............................................................................................. 5
Running the Program on a Mobile Device ..................................................................... 6
How Does It Work? .................................................................................................... 8
Executing a Program Directly from the Studio (Android only) ........................................... 8
Understanding the Client .............................................................................................. 11
About Mobile Devices .............................................................................................. 12
Magic xpa on a Mobile Device ................................................................................. 13
Developing in RIA .................................................................................................... 13
Form Considerations................................................................................................. 14
Window Types ..................................................................................................... 14
Form Size ............................................................................................................ 14
Placement................................................................................................................ 15
Supported Controls................................................................................................... 20
Edit Controls......................................................................................................... 21
Image Controls ..................................................................................................... 21
Two-State Images .................................................................................................. 21
Button Controls ..................................................................................................... 21
Tab Controls......................................................................................................... 21
Application Navigation ............................................................................................ 21
Navigation........................................................................................................... 21
Termination .......................................................................................................... 22i

Design Considerations .............................................................................................. 22
Status Bar ............................................................................................................ 23
Colors and Fonts ................................................................................................... 23
Colors ................................................................................................................. 23
Fonts ................................................................................................................... 23
Adding a font manually ......................................................................................... 25
Summary ................................................................................................................. 26
Advanced Controls ...................................................................................................... 27
Tables ..................................................................................................................... 28
Landscape Mode .................................................................................................. 28
Mobile Events .......................................................................................................... 29
Selection Lists........................................................................................................... 30
Selection Program ................................................................................................. 30
Selection Controls ................................................................................................. 30
Menus .................................................................................................................... 30
Summary ................................................................................................................. 31
Interacting with the Device ............................................................................................ 33
Mobile File System ................................................................................................... 34
Querying Device Characteristics ................................................................................ 34
Finding the Device Location (GPS) .............................................................................. 35
Camera Support ...................................................................................................... 36
Gallery Support ....................................................................................................... 36
Accessing the Mobile Devices’ Capabilities ................................................................. 37
Summary ................................................................................................................. 38
Offline Implementation ................................................................................................. 39
Concept .................................................................................................................. 40
How Does It Work? .................................................................................................. 41
Summary ................................................................................................................. 42
Customization and Installation ...................................................................................... 43
Execution Properties File – Additional Information ........................................................ 44
Customizing the Application ...................................................................................... 44
Keystore File ......................................................................................................... 46ii

APK File ............................................................................................................... 46
Installing the Client on the Android Device or Emulator ............................................. 47
Summary ................................................................................................................. 48
Preparing the Testing Environment ................................................................................. 49
Defining a Simulator ................................................................................................. 50
Android ............................................................................................................... 50
Android SDK Manager .......................................................................................... 50
Android Virtual Device Manager ............................................................................ 50
Installation on the Device ....................................................................................... 51
Using the Keyboard on the Device Simulator ............................................................ 52
Troubleshooting ....................................................................................................... 52
Mobile device fails to communicate with the Web server ........................................... 52
Execution properties file defined in the URL dialog is wrong ....................................... 53
Debugging .............................................................................................................. 53
Android ............................................................................................................... 53
iOS ..................................................................................................................... 54
Summary ................................................................................................................. 55

iii

iv

Introduction

Welcome to Magic Software University’s Going Mobile with Magic xpa 3.x self-paced
tutorial. We, at Magic Software University, hope that you will find this guide informative andthat it will assist you in getting started with this exciting product.

About Magic xpa
Magic xpa provides all aspects of the application development and deployment process
within a single end-to-end platform. It features a ready-made business application engine that
simplifies the code-writing process and enables you to deploy to market faster, using fewer
resources.
Applications developed using Magic xpa typically have fewer coding mistakes, undergo morethorough prototyping, benefit from greater business-side input and optimization, and can be
more easily adapted to changing business needs.
Magic xpa enables you to focus more on the business logic of the application and less onwhat is happening behind the scenes.

Install Magic xpa 3.x.
Please ensure that your computer meets the hardware requirements listedon the following page.
If you encounter any problems, contact msu@magicsoftware.com.

Understanding the Client1About the Seminar
The course is intended for people with a working knowledge of developing RIA applications
who want to know how to successfully develop applications for use on mobile devices while
using Magic xpa.
During the course you will learn about how Magic xpa works with mobile devices.
By the end of the course you will have created programs that demonstrate the ease of use of
the Magic xpa and mobile integration.

Seminar Prerequisites
Before you start with the seminar there is basic knowledge that you need to have:
Development knowledge

Working knowledge of Magic xpa while developing RIA
applications.

Your computer must also meet some basic requirements:
Hardware and Software

Windows 7 and later.
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
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

You will need IIS 7 installed on your computer.
.NET framework V4.0 (or above) installed on yourcomputer.
Magic xpa 3.0 or later.
A mobile device.
The Magic xpa client installed on the mobile device.
You can download it from the Google Play store orfrom the App Store.

Magic Software University
MSU offers various courses that may be of interest to you. To see the current offering, open thefollowing link:
http://www.magicsoftware.com/en/services/?catID=59&pageID=45&subPageID=756

Understanding the Client2Lesson1

Setting Up the Mobile Clients
Before we start discussing the development paradigm of mobile applications and thedifferences between developing a desktop and a mobile application, we will start by setting
the mobile environment, so that you will be able to run a Magic application on your mobile
device.

Mobile Design Mode
When designing a desktop application, the physical screen is normally a landscape-type
screen, meaning that the width is greater than the height. However, on mobile devices this is
not the initial mode. The initial mode is portrait-type in which the height is greater. You needto take this issue into consideration. As an example, a portrait form will not enable you todisplay a long row of text. You will need to consider using a multi-edit box with word-wrap. In
addition, the device size is much smaller than desktop applications and the controls arelarger.
Magic xpa allows you to easily develop mobile applications by using a Mobile Design mode.
When the Mobile Design mode is enabled and controls are added to the form, some of theproperties will be set with different default values, which better support the mobile platforms.
You activate this feature by clicking the Mobile Design Mode button
from the toolbar or by
opening the Options menu and selecting the Mobile Design Mode option.
The following properties differ from the non-Mobile Design mode:The screen size is smaller. This is because it is recommended to design a screen for thesmallest device and use placement to increase the size of the controls for larger devices.
The size of controls is larger.
The color of the table is defined according to the table color and not the column color (inthe Set Table Color property).
The Table control will not show scrollbars.

Setting Up the Mobile Clients

3








The Group control will not have a default text.
The Radio control will have a button appearance.
The Line control placed in a container control will be stretched horizontally to fill thecontrol.
The width placement of the Edit, Group and Line control will be set to 100%. Therefore,
by default, these controls will be resized.
Tab controls will be placed on the entire form area.
An Image control will have a different size when dropped on the form or in a Table
control.

My First Magic Program
We’ll start with a simple “Hello World” program:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Activate the Mobile Design mode as explained above.
Open the demo application.
Create a program named Hello World and give it a Public name of start.
Select the External box.
This is a RIA program, so in the Task Properties dialog box, set the Task Type to Rich

Client.
6. Add a Virtual variable named Sample text, which will be Alpha with a length of 20.
Provide an initial text of hello world.
7. Zoom into the Form Designer.
8. Now drop the Sample text variable on the form.
9. If the Mobile Preview pane is not visible, it is advised to show it as detailed below.

Mobile Preview Pane
When developing for mobile platforms, you can preview the Display forms that you aredeveloping by using the Mobile Form Preview pane. You access this by clicking the mobile
buttonfrom the toolbar or by opening the Form menu and selecting the Mobile Preview
Pane option.
This lets you play around with the placement and size of the controls and see how the controls
will appear on various mobile devices. The form and control properties related to placement
and size are the properties that are supported for this preview pane.
From the floating pane you can select which mobile device you want to preview, such as
iPhone 6. Next to the name of the device, you will see the dimensions of the device.

Setting Up the Mobile Clients

4

The options that appear here are defined in the Magic.ini file's [MAGIC_DEVICES] section orin the Mobile Device repository, which you can access from Options > Settings > Mobile
Devices.
You can also change the orientation of the device and change the zoom level.

Controls that are not supported for mobile devices, appear as a crossed out rectangle:.
The program is now ready for execution.
This is a Rich Client program, so if you execute the program using the F7 key, it will execute in
the RIA environment. So, to execute the program, you need to run the project.
10. Run the project (CTRL+F7).
The project is now ready to be executed on your mobile device.

Execution Properties FileTo execute the application on your mobile device, you need to tell the client where the serveris located and which application and program need to be executed.
This is done by defining an execution.properties file.
This file can be later be embedded in your client or placed on your server accessed you’re
your client using a URL.

Setting Up the Mobile Clients5Follow these steps to define the execution properties file:
1. Copy the devprops.txt file from the RIAModules\Android folder to a folder on yourserver that has an IIS alias so that it will be exposed for use. You can use for example
the Scripts folder under the Magic folder, which is exposed by default.
2. Open the file in a text editor and update the properties as follows:<properties><property key="protocol" val="http"/>

The protocol used. Leave this as http.

<property key="server" val="10.1.10.75"/>

Your server. It is recommended to use
the IP.

<property key="requester"val="MagicScripts/MGrqispi.dll"/>

The address of the requester. Make surethat the alias name refers to the scripts
folder.

<property key="appname" val="demo"/>

The application name. Write the demo
value or your application name if you
used another application.

<property key="prgname" val="start"/>

The public name of the program thatshould run upon execution. Write thestart value or your start program’s publicname if you used another name.

</properties>

The properties file does not need to have the txt extension. You can
use any extension you choose as long as you set the MIME type on
the server so that the mobile devices will be able to open the file.
It also does not need to be called devprops.

Running the Program on a Mobile Device
The first step in running your application on the mobile device is to install the client applicationon the mobile device.
At this stage, we will use a generic Magic xpa client application available on the Google Play
store and the App Store.
Of course you can create your own client application with your own application name andSetting Up the Mobile Clients6

logo. We will discuss this later on in the course.
1. After you install the client application on your device, start it by double clicking on theapplication icon.
When the program is run initially, you will receive the following dialog box, requiring you toenter the URL of a details file. You will also receive this dialog box if the URL file is not foundor accessible. (This dialog box will not appear for your users in your customized application.)
2. You can enter the following location (assuming
you used the magicscripts alias):
http://<ip address>/magicscripts/devprops.txt.

Note: Make sure that the mobile device has access tothis URL. In most cases, the development server is not exposed to the outside world. In thesecases, the mobile device should be connected to the same network as the development serverusing WiFi. You can easily check it out by opening abrowser and using the address above as the URL. You
should see the file’s content.
3. After writing the URL, click OK and the Hello
World program will appear:

Congratulations. You have just created and executed
your first program for a mobile device.

?

If you want to run another program as the start program, how will you
implement this?

There are a few ways of implementing this, such as:
In the Program repository, remove the start public name from the Hello World programand add it to the requested program. Do not forget to select the Expose option. This is avery simple method.
Add a public name to the requested program, such as orders and in the devprops file,change the <property key="prgname" val="start"/> to <property key="prgname"val="orders"/>
Note: It is not always feasible to use this option and you will understand why later in thiscourse.

Setting Up the Mobile Clients7

Execute it directly from the Studio (on Android devices) as explained later on.

How Does It Work?
As this is a Rich Client application, it works in a similar manner as other RIA applications.

When the mobile client application loads it searches for the execution details. The execution
details file is retrieved in one of the following two methods:
Opening a dialog box to receive the URL of the file as you did in this exercise.
Embedding the details with the client in an execution.properties file. You will learn more
about this in the lesson about customization.
The client reads the content of the file to find the address of the server, the name of theapplication and the name of the initial program. This is the reason you were instructed todefine the name of the application as demo and the program as start.
The process now behaves like any other Rich Client application.

Executing a Program Directly from the Studio (Android
only)
You can run a program or project on an Android device or simulator directly from the Studioby first pressing in the Execution on Android
Magic xpa toolbar or the Debug menu.

toggle button. You can do this from theOnce the button appears pressed in, you can execute your program or project on an Android
device directly from the Studio:
1. Press F7 to execute a Rich Client program. This will switch the engine to Runtime modeand launch the application on the mobile device or simulator using the selected
program as the start program.
2. Press Ctrl+F7 to execute the project. This will switch the engine to Runtime mode andlaunch the application on the mobile device or simulator using the start program that isdefined in the execution properties file.

Setting Up the Mobile Clients8For this to work, you should first:
1. Install the application on the mobile device or simulator.
You can use the client from the Google Play store or install the generic MagicDev.apk,
which is available in the RIAModules\Android folder. Refer to the Installing the clienton the Android Device or Emulator section in the Customizing the Application lesson.
2. Connect the device to your network so that the application will be able to connect tothe Magic xpa server to run the project.
3. From the Android settings menu, enable the USB Debugging option.
4. If you are using a device, connect the device to the PC using a USB cable.
5. In some cases, you will need to install the generic Google USB driver (from theAndroid SDK Manager, install the Google USB Driver package from the Extras folder)or the driver that came with the device.
6. If you used a custom client or the store client – Define the application package name in
the Run.bat file located in the RIAModules\Android folder under the installation folder.
To do it, open the file using a text editor and change the value of the PackageNamevariable to your package name, as it is defined in the settings.properties file.
By default, the value is set to com.magicsoftware.magicdev in order to run the
MagicDev.APK client.
If you are using the store client, set the name to com.magicsoftware.richclient.
To check if your PC can access your device, open the command prompt, navigate to the
RIAModules\Utils\ADB folder under the installation folder and execute the following
command: adb devices.
You should see your device in the devices list.
Note:

If the server on which Magic xpa is running is not defined in DNS, the Android
mobile client will fail to access the Magic xpa server, since the device cannot
translate the machine name to the IP address and you will get the following
error: "Unable to resolve host name". If you encounter this error, you need to set
the full URL with your machine's IP address in the HTTP Requester environment
setting. For example: http://192.168.0.111/magicscripts/MGrqispi.dll.
Usually, when using the Genymotion simulator, you can define the following
value as the IP address: http://192.168.56.1/magicscripts/MGrqispi.dll(192.168.56.1 is the default host IP address that the Genymotion VirtualBox
supplies).

Setting Up the Mobile Clients

9Setting Up the Mobile Clients10Lesson2

Understanding the Client
Developing mobile RIA applications using Magic xpa requires the same skill set as developing
desktop RIA applications. However, since the user interface and expected user experience are
significantly different from a desktop computer, there are important differences that need to betaken into account when designing the application screens and planning the user interaction.
Devices differ in screen size, fonts, expected interaction device features (such as a camera
and GPS), security related features and more. This lesson will give you a better understandingof the client devices.
This lesson covers various topics including:Form considerations
Design considerations
Application navigation
Supported controls

Understanding the Client

11About Mobile Devices
When you start developing for mobile devices, you will notice that there are a number ofcharacteristics that you will need to take into consideration.
iOS and Android devices each have different characteristics when it comes to displaying
information and enabling the user to enter information. You will learn more about this during
the seminar.
Screen sizes and orientation – Mobile devices have various resolutions and screen sizes inboth landscape and portrait orientations.
Keyboard devices – Some mobile devices have a full QWERTY keyboard. In addition to a
keyboard, some devices have a dedicated Menu key, an Esc key and a trackpad or
trackball that are equivalent to the desktop keyboard arrow keys. The trackpad also
provides a dedicated Fire action when pressed. Keyboard-only devices have a fixed
screen orientation and cannot be rotated.
Touch devices – Some mobile devices have a touch screen, some in addition to a full
keyboard, and some without a keyboard. Touch devices support screen rotation andprovide an on-screen virtual keyboard when a full keyboard is not available.
Windowing model – Mobile devices support a simple stacked window model. Eachapplication can open multiple windows, but each new window is stacked on top of theprevious windows and is modal. There is no mouse pointer and therefore the end user has
no control over the window, meaning that it cannot be resized or moved. When an
application is run, its main window (and subsequent stacked windows) occupies the entire
device screen.
Form navigation using touch keyboard – Touch devices use an on-screen virtual keyboard.
Some devices rely on tapping on the controls to navigate between the fields while others
have Tab functionality in the virtual keyboard. The navigation inside an Edit control ismade using a long press on the field content.
Context menu – The context menu is an important and central user interaction tool. Since
the screen size is relatively small, it is common to perform most tasks using the context
menu, instead of wasting screen real-estate on buttons and on-screen menus.
Input modes – The Edit control is always in Insert mode. There is no equivalent Overwrite
mode on the mobile devices.
Running in the background – The mobile devices’ OS is a multi-tasking operating systemmeaning that each application can run either in the foreground or in the background. The
end user can see the running applications and switch between them. An application
running in the background is not suspended and continues to run, but does not haveaccess to the screen.

Understanding the Client

12Magic xpa on a Mobile Device
When you decide to deploy on a mobile device, there are a few methods of developing yourapplication so that it may be deployed on the device:
Web application – A Browser application using the mobile internet browser. There areadvantages to this method in that if you already have a browser application, it canalready be deployed. Your application will not look like a native mobile application. You
will also have limited, if any, access to the mobile’s functionality, such as the camera.
Hybrid – The interface is a mixture of a native application, JS and HTML. As an example,
you may be using a Browser control to display a PDF. In this case, you have local accessto the device.
Native – This is a native mobile interface with full access to the device.
Magic xpa enables you to develop whichever method you select. This seminar will deal with
the native application.

Developing in RIA
Developing a RIA application for a mobile device, you use the same skills that you use for aregular RIA application. The difference being that you have to take into account a smaller
sized screen and different operating systems.
Each device has its own native look and feel. The preferred way to develop an application fora mobile device is to design your application with a native look and feel. You can define yourprogram so that it has a context menu, but that is of little use if your device is an iPhone inwhich there is no context menu. Your challenge is not the technology, but the display. You do
not need to worry about Java for Android or Objective C for iOS. You will see this later on inthis course.

Understanding the Client13Form Considerations
Window Types
All mobile forms are modal by definition. There are no non-modal windows and focus cannot
move between open windows. When defining Window Types in the Form Designer, all form
types are ignored and the Modal form type is used.
Full-screen forms – By default, the form will automatically be full screen, taking up theentire screen area of the device. All position and size properties of the form are ignored.
This means that when you design for a device such as Android or iOS, which have both amobile device and a tablet, the screens will be expanded or decreased accordingly andwill have a different look.
Pop-up forms – The form will be opened as a popup window (not full screen) if the Pop Up
form property is set to True. The location of the pop-up window is defined in the Startup
Position form property as follows:o The Customized value will open the popup window in the location defined by the X
and Y form properties.
o The Centered to... and OS Default … values will open the popup window ascentered on the device.

Each application must start with a full-screen form that remains open
for the duration of the session. When the initial program is closed, theapplication terminates. You can open additional forms, but if theinitial program closes, all programs will terminate.

Form Size
The RIA client supports both form scrolling and placement. However, when developing anapplication that needs to run on devices with significantly different screen sizes, such as theiPhone and iPad, it is best practice to develop two separate forms, since the number ofcontrols will be different on each device.
Placement should be used for each form so that it can be displayed on different devices.
The Width and Height Dialog unit values of a full screen form with a title bar are:
For iPhone: 18.75 x 37.5
For iPad: 53.5 x 111.5
For Android devices, each client is different.
You may decide that you want different forms for different devices or a specific form for amobile phone and a different form for a tablet. The ClientOSEnvGet function enables you to

Understanding the Client14

query for specific device capabilities or features and use it for conditional execution of logic.
You will learn more about this in a later lesson. Here are some properties that you can use:
ClientOSEnvGet ('device_os') – returns the device’s operating system.
ClientOSEnvGet ('device_orientation') – returns the device’s screen orientation.
ClientOSEnvGet ('device_screen-width') – returns the device’s screen width in portrait
mode in pixels.
ClientOSEnvGet ('device_screen-height') – returns the device’s screen height in portrait
mode in pixels.
Please note that the values are returned in pixels.

Placement
Often you design your form and the controls on the form according to a fixed size. You place
all the controls on the form relative to one another in the Form Designer and then you run the
program. In a Windows environment that is often satisfactory.
However what happens when the user increases the size of the form? This is a built-in featureof the Windows operating system. This can happen when the user drags one of the sides ofthe form or even the bottom right corner. The form simply gets increased. The image below
shows an example of what the end user will see when they use the bottom-right corner toincrease the size of the form.

This is not what you would want to happen. The table has a scrollbar and only displays a few
rows. You would expect that the table increase in size and the push button move accordingly.
This feature is handled by a property named Placement.

Understanding the Client

15

Increasing and decreasing a form is a typical windows movement, but how does that relate to
the mobile world? When you move from Portrait mode to Landscape mode you are in fact
invoking a change in size of the dimensions. You would want the table size to increase or
decrease accordingly. You would want control sizes to be changed. What about when you
move from a hand-held to a tablet or an Android device in which every device has different
dimensions. Placement is very important in these cases.
The examples here will be shown using regular Rich Client programs.
The Placement property determines whether or not controls are resized when a parent form or
parent container control is resized. When a control’s
Placement property equals zero, the relative size ofthe control does not change when the size of theparent container is changed in runtime.
When the Placement property is larger than zero, therelative size changes proportionally when the size of the parent container changes in runtime.
The placement of a control is governed by four values.

The X and Y values determine how the control moves itself when the form is resized. The value
is in percentages. When you set the value as zero, you are defining that the control stays inplace. When you set a value of 100, you are saying that the control moves with the form for
its full placement.
You can see this with a simple exercise using a regular Rich Client program in which you willdefine that the form’s push button remains relative to the form when it is resized. To do this:
1. Define a data source named Customers with the following columns:
Customer ID
Customer Name
Address

Understanding the Client16

2. Add a Rich Client program named Customers.
3. Zoom into the Customers program.
4. Define the Main Source as the Customers data source and add the Customer ID andCustomer Name columns from step 1.
5. Zoom into the Form Designer and add a Table control and drop Customer ID andCustomer Name onto the table.
6. Add a Button control. Open the control property sheet.
7. From the Event Type property, select Internal.
8. Set the Event property to the internal event, Exit.
9. Click on the Placement property and then click the Zoom button.
10. Set the value of 100 in the X property and the value of 100 in the Y property.
11. Click OK. The Placement property will show: 100,0,100,0.
12. Execute the program.

When you increase the form, it will look similar
to the image on the right.
As you can see, the push button remains fixed inposition, in the bottom right corner.
Notice that the table is still fixed.

In the Placement property, the Width and Heightvalues determine how the control resizes itself when the form is resized. The value is inpercentages. When you set the value as zero, you are defining that the control will not be
resized. When you set a value of 100, you are saying that the control resizes itself with theform.

Understanding the Client17

As an example, you will increase the size of the table when the form is increased. To do this:
1. Zoom into the Customers program and zoom into the Form Designer.
2. Park on the table.
3. Open the control property sheet.
4. Click on the Placement property and then click the Zoom

button.
5. Set the value of 100 in the Width property and the value of 100 in the Heightproperty.
6. Click OK. The Placement property will show: 0,100,0,100.
7. Execute the program.

If you increase or decrease the form you will see the changes. When you increased the form,
the table also increased. You saw more records in the table. This is in essence what will
happen when you move from Landscape mode to Portrait mode on your mobile device.
What you saw here was:Increasing one control, the Table control, when the form itself increases.
Have a control, the push button, remain in the same place relative to the bottom of theform when the form is increased.

The controls will never get smaller than their original size. So if you
are expecting a form to be resized, create each control at thesmallest required size.

The issue of placement gets more complicated when you have more than one control on theform and you want the controls to increase in width, when the form is increased. This isimportant when you have a large control, such as an Edit control, that you cannot initiallydisplay all the information, but when you increase the form you find that you have enoughspace to display more information.
The image below shows a very simple example:

When you increase the group container, you would expect that each control would increasein width. The controls would move and resize in the following way:

Understanding the Client

18

The Group container will increase in width and height.
The ID control will increase in size.
The Name control will move to the right to make way for the increase in size of the ID
control and will also increase in size.
The Address control increases in a similar way to the Name control, but you need to take
into account that the Name control both moved to the right and increased in size.
To do this:
1. Add a Rich Client program named Customers Group.
2. Zoom into the Customers Group program.
3. Define the Main Source as the Customers data source and add:
Customer ID
Customer Name
Address
4. Zoom into the Form Designer and add a Group control onto the form.
5. Park on the Group control and zoom into the Placement property. Set the Widthproperty to 100 and the Height property to 100.
6. You can name the Group control as Customers.
7. Drop the Customer ID Edit control onto the Group control. Set the Width property to
32. This control remains in place, but it must increase in size. Remember that we havethree controls that need to increase in size, so each control will increase in size by athird. Zoom into the Placement property. Set the Width property to 33. The setting will
be: 0,33,0,0.
8. Drop the Name Edit control onto the Group control. Set the Width property to 40.
Now comes the fun part. The ID control increased in size by 33%, so the Left or X
offset of this control must move by 33%. It must also increase in size by 33%. Zoom
into the Placement property. Set the X property to 33. Set the Width property to 33.
The setting will be: 33,33,0,0.
9. Drop the Address Edit control onto the Group control. Set the Width property to 24.
The Name control moved 33% and increased in size by 33%, so the Left or X offset of
the Address control must take both into consideration. Therefore it must move by 66%.
It must also increase in size by 33%. Zoom from the Placement property. Set the X
property to 33. Set the Width property to 33. The setting will be: 66,33,0,0.
When you increase the size of the form, the form will now look similar to the image below.

Understanding the Client19As a summary, when resizing the form:
Defining values of X=100 and Y=100 will keep the control in the bottom right position.
This is mostly used for buttons that should remain in that position, regardless of the size ofthe form.
Defining values of Width=100 will resize the control horizontally. This is mostly used when
the control size is smaller than its content.
Defining values of X=100 will move the control horizontally. This is mostly used when thiscontrol is displayed after a control that has a Width placement of 100%.
When you resize a control, you need to take into account the starting offset of theadjacent controls.

In the mobile world you have many different sizes and so you cannot develop, one size fits all.
Therefore placement is very important. Bear in mind when designing your form, that when you
design for a tablet and want the same layout on the mobile, such as developing for an iPadand viewing on an iPhone, the form may be too small and user-unfriendly.
On mobile devices, the Magic xpa placement mechanism is implemented in a specific way toaccommodate different device resolutions and to handle device rotation. The placement
mechanism is not relevant for pop-up forms. It works as follows:
Resize on open – Before opening the form, the form size as defined by the developer iscompared with the current screen size. The difference between the sizes on each axis isconsidered as a window resize, and will activate the placement mechanism on allcontrols. This enables forms designed for smaller screen resolutions to “expand” in higher
resolutions.
Resize on rotate – On touch devices, it is possible to rotate the device, effectively changing
the resolution on the fly, such as from 480x360 to 360x480. In such a case, the currently
displayed form will consider the new resolution as a window resize event, and will
activate the placement mechanism on all controls.

Supported Controls
Controls on mobile devices are different than the Windows controls in their appearance,
minimum size and space padding. They are also different on each device. The size of thecontrol will change according to the device’s DPI (dots per inch). As a result, the size of thecontrols defined using the Magic xpa Fit to Size option may not be large enough to display
the entire control text due to the larger padding on the mobile device controls.
The Rich Text, Rich Edit, Tree, List Box and .NET controls are not supported on mobile devices.

Understanding the Client

20

Edit Controls
You can control the layout of the keyboard by using the following properties in the Edit
control:Keyboard Type – Defines the keyboard content.
Keyboard Return Key – Defines the return key value and action.
Allow Suggestions – Defines whether the suggestion text will be used.

Image Controls
Images with the Copied style do not change and use the same amount of pixels as in theimage, so the images will appear in different sizes when used on devices with different DPIs.
It is best practice to use Distorted Scaling or Scaled to Fit styles to attain the desiredappearance.

Two-State Images
You can create two-state images. This means that by clicking on the image on the mobile
device, the image will switch to an alternate image. This is done by setting the Image List File
Name property in the Check Box control's Mobile section.
You can also create multiple two-state images. This is done by setting the Image List File Nameproperty in the Radio Button control's Mobile section.

Button Controls
The push button is not parkable. The current control will remain the parked control.

Tab Controls
The Tab control appears as a tab bar on Android and iOS devices. The tab bar will appear infull screen; therefore, when developing an app, it is recommended to stretch the Tab control
across the entire form. In general, the tab bar's functionality is based on the device's default
behavior. You can find more information about this in the Magic xpa Help.

Application Navigation
Navigation
Mobile devices can support a simple stacked window model. Each application can open
multiple windows, but each new window is stacked on top of previous windows and isinherently modal. Closing the current window and returning to the previous window can bedone either by raising the internal Exit event or using the built-in capabilities of the mobile
devices:

Understanding the Client21

Android – using the ‘Back’ button
iOS – using the ‘Back’ button on the title bar. If you decide not to display a system menu,
then you need to raise the Exit event yourself.

Termination
The application can be closed either by raising the internal Exit System event or using the builtin capabilities of the mobile devices:Android – using the ‘Back’ button from the first screen of the application
iOS – using the close button (‘X’) on the window title bar from the first screen of theapplication (if the window was defined to open a System menu)
When pressing the mobile device’s home button, the application will remain running in the
background.
When you terminate the application in other ways (such as from theNote:Task Manager), the context on the server will not be released
automatically. It will be released only after the context timeout period.

Design Considerations
Magic enables you to develop for mobile devices in the same manner that you developed forWindows with the same look and feel and functionality. However, when developing formobile devices you want your application to look like other mobile applications, meaning
native applications.
As an example of designing your screen for a mobile device, consider the virtual keyboardthat was opened when you started editing and ask yourself:
How do you add a new record? The Magic xpa shortcut is F4.
How do you delete a record? The Magic xpa shortcut is F3.
How do you move to the next record, or the previous record (Page Up / Page Down)?
What about query / sort / range, etc.?
When you look at your mobile contacts or mobile emails or other programs, you normally
have a list and when you want to add something you have a button for creating a record. The
same for editing; you generally have a button that opens a different form for editing. You willpractice this in the example in this lesson and the next lesson when you learn about tables,
combo boxes and other controls.

Understanding the Client

22

The end-user functionality component is usually not needed for mobile
device applications. Therefore, it is recommended to remove thedefault entry, UserFunctionality, from the CRR when developing amobile application.

Status Bar
You may have noticed that there is no status bar. Take this into account when displaying
messages.

Colors and Fonts
Whenever you design your form, you always take into account colors and fonts.

ColorsMobile devices use the same Magic xpa color table as other RIA clients. Each color mustspecify the exact RGB value for both background and foreground. You do this in the Magic
xpa color table. However, take into account that the mobile devices do not support theWindows “System” colors.
Mobile devices also support transparent and opaque colors.
If a system color is selected, the mobile device will display its own
default color for the form or control. If you want to use a specificcolor, you need to implicitly define the foreground and backgroundcolors.

For some controls, to see the border, you must use a color with a nonsystem color.
For Combo Box controls, to see the arrow you must use a color with asystem color.

Fonts
The Magic xpa mobile RIA client uses the same font table as other interfaces. Each device has
a set of available fonts that are usually different from the fonts found on a Windows desktop
and different from one another. If the font defined in the font table is not found on the mobile
device, the default font will be used with the size defined in the font table.
When you develop, you need to take into consideration whether you want to use specific fonts
for each device or enable the device to use the defaults.

Understanding the Client23

If you use different fonts for different devices, you will need to use an
expression for the font of a control. You can use the ClientOSEnvGetfunction in the expression:
IF (ClientOSEnvGet ('device_os')='android', '1','4')
You may decide that working with the CASE function will better suit
your application.

On Android devices you need to send the font family name and the style of the font you want.
The system will find a matching font for you. For example, to use a Droid Serif font use:
"Android Serif bold,Serif,12,0,0". You can see the font list in the System/Fonts folder in thedevice file system.
You cannot select mobile fonts using the Windows fonts dialog box. If you decide to use
separate font entries for each device, you need to edit the fonts table manually using an
external text editor such as Notepad.
For example, Android uses a font known as Sans:
1. Open the fnt_rnt.eng file in a text editor. By default, this file is in the support folder ofthe installation.
2. Add the following line: Android Edit Labels,sans,8,0,0,Bold
3. Save the file.
4. Close the demo application and reopen it so that the new font list will be reloaded.
5. Zoom into the Hello World program.
6. Zoom into the Form Designer and for the Label control, select the new font. Because
the font is now bold, you need to increase the width.
7. Execute the project.

You will see that the label is now bold.

Understanding the Client24Adding a font manually
When you added the font manually, you added the line:
Android Edit Labels,sans,8,0,0,Bold to the Font list.
Each entry in the list is defined in the following way:

The attributes are the Font Style and the Effects. The dialog box above will be translated to thefollowing entry in the Font list:

Understanding the Client25Summary
You were introduced to the new world of developing mobile applications.
You learned that you can continue developing your application in the same way that you
developed for desktop applications, but that it is good practice to take into account thelimitations of the mobile device, which are smaller devices and are also not Windows devices.
You learned to take into account the sizes, the colors and the fonts on the mobile device andyou learned how to get information from the device, such as its operating system. You can use
this knowledge to define that certain programs will not run on certain devices.
This lesson can be summarized by saying that when developing for a mobile device, think
native!

Understanding the Client26

Lesson3

Advanced Controls
In the previous lesson you learned about the mobile client and some of the limitations whenworking with different clients. You also defined a simple program. One of the more importantmessages in the previous lesson was that you need to consider the native environment when
you develop for the mobile. An Edit control with a long line of text will not be visible when it isdisplayed on a small mobile screen in portrait mode.
As you know when working with Magic xpa, when you design a program, you are not only
using simple controls such as a Button, an Edit, or a Text control, but you also display data ina table, select data from a list and others. You will learn about this in this lesson.
This lesson covers various topics including:
TablesEventsSelection Lists
Menus

Advanced Controls

27

Tables
As you learned, developing for a mobile device has limitations but it also provides you withsome advantages. When you use a Table control in Magic xpa, you normally add as manycolumns of data as you need. If there is not enough room to display the table, you have ahorizontal scrollbar on the form.
On mobile devices, horizontal scrolling is allowed on the form only. Horizontal scrolling on
the content of the table is not possible.
How many of you have developed a one-to-many form such as an order form in which theorder lines are displayed in a table? To create a new order-line, you instructed the user to click
F4 and you were able to enter a new line. The Create Line event is supported by Magic xpa,
but there is no F4 key on a mobile phone. This is also not the accepted method for the user
display when working with a mobile device. Remember also that when working with an
Android in the one-to-many scenario, you will not have a vertical scrollbar.
Apple wrote a document known as Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) in which they defined atable as a view that presents data in a single-column list of multiple rows. Look at the Contacts
or Emails. These are guidelines and so you define the interface as you want. As an example,
eBay displays three-columns: image, description and current bid.
The bottom line is that Magic xpa enables you to develop the display that you want, but it isadvisable to work with the guidelines of the device or at least develop a display that fits all
guidelines.

Landscape Mode
When you rotate your device to Landscape mode, you are able to view more information oneach line. When you use placement on the table you are able to view more of the text. For
example, have a look at the email list below:

Advanced Controls

28You also have the option of displaying more information on the table. Remember that you can
use the ClientOSEnvGet ('device_orientation') to know whether you are currently in Portrait orLandscape mode.

Mobile Events
When working with a mobile device, you use your finger as the mouse; your touch is mycommand. The touch events are mapped to Magic xpa events as follows:
The mobile “Touch”, “Click” or “Tap” events are equivalent to the Magic xpa mouse-click
event. These events move the focus between fields on a form. Touching on selection
controls changes the controls’ selection. Touching on buttons triggers the buttons’ event.
The “Press” or “Hover” events trigger a Magic xpa OK internal event. This event can thenbe handled by the developer.
“Swipe” events scroll within the form or control.

Advanced Controls

29Selection Lists
A selection list enables you to select a value from a list. This can be a regular control such as
the combo box, check box and the radio button, or a selection program that is defined in
Magic xpa as a Selection program. Remember that the radio button is not supported on all
platforms.

Selection Program
In Magic xpa Online programs and RIA programs, pressing Enter or the double-clicking action
raises the Select event. On your mobile device, you do not have an Enter button and you areunable to double-click. You need to find other methods to raise the Select event. Two methods
you can implement are:Use a push button that raises the Select event.
Trap the OK event. This is raised by the mobile “Press” or “Hover” events. Within thehandler you can raise the Select event.
Remember that the selection program is a modal full screen program, unless you define it as a
Floating program.

Selection Controls
Selection controls, such as the Combo Box, appear differently on each device. This is not
something you can control as this is defined by the operating system of the device itself. It
does, however, provide a native look and feel.

?

Give some thought as to how you are going to implement themodification of a field.

Menus
When developing any system, defining the Menu system is an integral part of the screen
design as the menus allow quick access to functionality. A menu system takes up valuable
screen real estate and is impractical in small devices. The Windows pulldown menu is
unsupported in mobile operating systems since there is no MDI On mobile devices. Therefore,
it is recommended to remove the Default pulldown menu entry when developing a mobile
application.
However, the context menu is an important and central user interaction tool. As the screen size
is relatively small, it is common to perform most tasks using the context menu, instead of“wasting” screen space on buttons and on-screen menus.
In Magic xpa, in Android devices, context menus are available at both the form and thecontrol level. On iOS devices, context menus are only available at the form level.

Advanced Controls

30SummaryIn this lesson you learned more about how to interact with the mobile device.
You learned about the table and some guidelines provided by mobile manufacturers.
You learned about some events that are unique to mobile devices and how they are defined in
Magic xpa.
You learned about selection lists and you were given some guidelines about menus.
In the next lesson you will learn more about interacting with the mobile device.

Advanced Controls

31Advanced Controls

32Lesson

4

Interacting with the Device
The advantage of working with a mobile device is that you are able to use the device’s special
features such as the GPS and camera.
This lesson covers various topics including:Interacting with the file system
Fetching information from the device
Using the GPS and camera

Interacting with the Device

33

Mobile File System
You can access the mobile device’s file system using Magic xpa functions. The naming
conventions for local folders and file names are according to the device’s OS:
Names are not case-sensitive.
Folder separators are defined using a slash mark (/).
Access to the different device folders depends on the device. For example:
On iOS, the access is allowed only to a temp folder provided by the OS. When using the
ClientFileXXX functions with a relative client filename, the file folder will be the temp folder.
When using these functions with a full path, it is recommended to use
ClientOSEnvGet('temp') to retrieve the temp folder.
On Android, you can access different folders.

Querying Device Characteristics
The ClientOSEnvGet function enables you to query for specific device capabilities or featuresand use it for conditional execution of logic. You already saw examples of this in previous
lessons.
The syntax is: ClientOSEnvGet ('keyword')
Here are the keywords that may be used within the ClientOSEnvGet function:

Keyword

Description

device_os

Returns the device’s operating system.

device_screen-width

Returns the device’s screen width in Portrait mode in pixels.

device_screen-height

Returns the device’s screen height in Portrait mode in pixels.

device_physical-width

Returns the device’s physical screen width in portrait modein inches.

device_physical-height

Returns the device’s physical screen height in portrait modein inches.

device_orientation

Returns the device’s screen orientation.

device_os-version

Returns the device’s OS version number.

device_model

Returns the device’s model number or name.

device_touch

Returns “1” if the device has a touch screen.

temp

Returns the temp folder on the device.

device_location

Returns the current device’s location.

Interacting with the Device

34Keyword

Description

device_magic_version

Returns the RIA client version number.

device_udf|getargs

Returns the query parameters when the application was
launched from another application.

device_udf|getpushid

Returns the device ID, which can be used for sending push
notifications to the device.

device_udf|my_string

Calls a user defined function.

device_resource-folder

Returns the value of the resource folder.

On Android devices, you can also use Java predefined keys to get additional information, forexample: ClientOSEnvGet ('java.io.tmpdir'). For more information, refer to:
http://developer.android.com/reference/java/lang/System.html#getProperty(java.lang.String)

Finding the Device Location (GPS)The ClientOSEnvGet function can also be used to query the current device location using theinternal or connected GPS device.
ClientOSEnvGet ('device_location') – returns the current device location, using any of theavailable location options (GPS, Network, etc.). The result is a string in the following format:
OK|Latitude|Longitude, where OK is a fixed part for testing if a result was returned, andLatitude and Longitude are the coordinates of the current location. If a location could not be
obtained, for any reason, an error message will be returned.
There are other methods of displaying the location in the device by using the Invoke OS Cmd
operation with Execute On=Client. You would therefore not need the subtask:
You can directly enter: https://maps.google.com/?q='&Trim (GPS
Location). If the Google Maps application is installed on the device,
you will be asked to decide in which application to display thelocation.
You can use 'geo:'&Trim (GPS Location). This will display each application that candisplay a geographical address.
You can load a specific application directly by using its name, such as:'waze://?q=London' to open the Waze GPS application and navigate to London.

Interacting with the Device

35Location queries can sometimes take time to respond, because theGPS device is searching for satellites. During this time, the clientis blocked, waiting for a response. You should make proper
indications for the user that this is the situation. As an example,
before invoking the GPS service, you can display a form such as“Searching for GPS location…”
Location queries have a built-in timeout of 20 seconds.
This operation opens the connection to the GPS and closes it
once the data is received. If you need to frequently get the GPSdata, you should consider keeping the GPS connection open by
writing native code to do so.

Camera Support
It is possible to initiate a camera from the device using the ClientFileOpenDlg function.
When this function is used with the following word: camera as the second parameter, thecamera will be opened.
This will enable the user to take a picture and select it. The full path name of the picture will be
returned from the function. It is then possible to upload this picture to the server using the
ClientFileToServer function.
Note that the camera value cannot be used to capture videos.
You need to provide all parameters for the ClientFileOpenDlg
function. Here is an example for use on Android devices:
ClientFileOpenDlg('','camera','','FALSE'LOG,'FALSE'LOG)

Gallery Support
You can also get an image file from an image gallery using the ClientFileOpenDlg function.
When this function is used with the following word: images as the second parameter, theimages gallery will be opened.
The full path name of the image will be returned from the function. It is then possible to upload
this image to the server using the ClientFileToServer function.

Interacting with the Device

36Accessing the Mobile Devices’ Capabilities
It is possible to use the device capabilities such as calling a phone number, sending an SMS,
and opening a browser, by using the Invoke OS command with the URL of the requiredcommand. For example:
tel:1-408-555-5555
sms:1-408-555-1212
mailto:support@magicsoftware.com
mailto:to=support@magicsoftware.com&subject=this is a test&body= test mailhttp://magicsoftware.com
Note:
Do not forget to set the Execute On property to Client.
When sending mail, there are some characters that are not allowed in the subject andbody. On iOS devices, for example, the ampersand (&) character should be replaced with
%26 and on Android devices the following characters should be removed:#,%,&, :, and =.
Refer also to:
http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007891-SW1

Interacting with the Device

37SummaryIn this lesson you learned how to interact with the device using Magic xpa functions. The
ClientOSEnvGet function has predefined keywords that enable you to use some of the device’s
options, such as the GPS and camera.
The built-in keywords enable you to fetch details about the device and display different
information. For example, you may decide that a certain program is only available if you areusing an iPhone.

Interacting with the Device

38Lesson5

Offline Implementation
Magic xpa mobile applications work in a client server mode in which the client, the mobile
device, is the interface that the user sees and contains part of the code. However, the server is
at a remote location, has the database and handles any heavy workload. There is constantcommunication between the client and the server depending on the type of work involved. As
you already know, when you call a new task, this process involves accessing the server tofetch the task details and then to display the task on the client.
What happens when you do not have internet communication? That is where offline
programming is necessary. Magic xpa enables you to develop Offline tasks. Offline programs
allow users to continue to be productive in areas with intermittent, limited or unavailable
internet connectivity. While working offline, data is stored locally on a local database, andperiodically, when internet connectivity resumes, you can synchronize it back to the server.
This lesson covers various topics including:
The Offline concept
How the Offline concept works

Offline Implementation

39

Concept
When planning an offline implementation, it is important to understand the challenges andconstraints that you need to overcome to enable applications to work completely offline
without a server connection. Unlike a connected application, server connectivity is either
non-existent or intermittent, and applications need to be adjusted to handle this scenario
properly, without compromising usability and data integrity. As a programmer, you need totake into account the technical aspect of being disconnected, and the data consistency aspect,
as follows:
You can store a subset of relevant server data or client-only data on the client. You need tounderstand what data is constant data, such as a list of countries and which is not updated
often, such as suppliers and items that are updated often, such as stock. However, evenwhen dealing with stock, you may not need all of the data on the client. For example, asalesperson who deals with orders involving computer hardware only needs the products
dealing with computers, while a salesperson who handles cleaning products only needs
that subset. You can also have a scenario where the salespeople have access to the entire
catalog but only current stock quantities is kept on the server and needs to besynchronized.
On systems that require user authentication, consider storing user credentials securely on
the client.
Allow data entry on the client and update client data with server data for data consistency.
Working under intermittent network connectivity (network disconnects, slow connections)while allowing uninterrupted operation and data consistency.
Keeping application resources such as application metadata, image resources and so on,
locally on the client, while allowing updates during connectivity periods.
The above challenges define an offline pattern that is different from patterns used when
network connectivity is guaranteed, and require the developer to handle additional usage
scenarios. Magic xpa provides tools and features that allow developers to tackle thesechallenges and provide a complete offline experience.
Some programs are totally client programs and some are server-based and others are both.
An example of a client program can be something like a university student’s lesson timetable.
This timetable is only updated every semester and, therefore, the data can be kept on theclient. An auction-based client depends entirely on server data and, therefore, you need aninternet connection for this. A customer order can have elements of both server and client
data.

Offline Implementation

40

How Does It Work?
Unlike connected applications, offline applications are designed to work without (or withintermittent) network connectivity. This limitation defines a different execution flow for offline
applications.
To define an Offline program, you simply define a Rich Client program and select the Offline
check box.

Typical offline applications will work as follows:
On first invocation, offline applications must download and synchronize all necessary
resources required for the offline operation. These include application metadata, images,client-side data and so on. This requires an offline application to be connected at least
once before it can work offline. If there was no initial connection, the programs will notwork.
For applications that require user authentication, user credentials should be securely stored
on the client to allow for operation without server authentication. To ensure validity, such
credentials should be re-checked when connected.
Following initial invocation, all user interactions must be done using local resources only
(local data, local images and so on). By using local resources exclusively, the application
is guaranteed to work, regardless of the internet connectivity state and without requiring
server access. All data updates should be stored locally on the local database.
Periodically, at an application-dependent timing, the application must synchronize
modified local data back to the server and download server data that was modified since
the last synchronization. Remember that data objects can be updated by multiple clientsand by the server simultaneously and therefore two clients may update the same data at
the same time. You need to take this scenario into account.
Since Magic xpa automatically synchronizes metadata objects while connected, anapplication that runs offline must be allowed to periodically synchronize changes to its
metadata objects. Typically, if an internet connection is available on startup, metadata
objects will be synchronized automatically. The developer should plan for allowing
metadata updates to happen when the application changes.
For more information about how to implement each of the above, and the supporting Magic
xpa features that enable each capability, see the Developing Offline Rich Client
Applications.pdf that can be found in Magic xpa’s Support folder or in the Magic xpa Help.

Offline Implementation

41

Summary
If you decide to give offline capabilities to your application, you need to give thought as to
how to implement the programs and of course which programs are offline and which are not.
You need to think about the following issues and take into account:
Which programs are fully offline and which need to be online.
An Offline program cannot call a server program and you need to use the Main Program
to call a server program.
Your implementation of the synchronization operations and how to have the same data on
the server and the client. Remember that when you have multiple clients you may
encounter a situation where the same record is updated by two different clients.

Offline Implementation42

Lesson6

Customization and Installation
In previous lessons you used the Android emulator and you used the environment that the
installation process provided. In this lesson you will learn how to provide your own
environment.
This lesson covers various topics including:
Customizing the client application
Signing the keystore file
Creating your own Android package file
Installing the client on the Android device or emulator
Note: There are similar methods for creating an iPhone file. Check the Magic xpa Help for
assistance.

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43

Execution Properties File – Additional Information
In the first lesson, you learned about the execution properties file. In that lesson, you used an
external file and defined its location in a dialog box opened from the generic Magic xpa
client.
When a mobile device client is prepared, it is compiled with a certain execution properties
file. This file tells the client where to find the initial program to load. There are three ways ofdefining an execution properties file in the compiled client application:
An empty file – In this scenario, the end user will initially get the dialog box requesting theaddress of the properties file. This is the same behavior you saw in the first lesson whenusing the generic Magic xpa client. This is very useful during the development process
because it enables you to separate your development and production environments. You
do not want your end user to be prompted to enter your server details.
Entering the server, application and programs – The format will be similar to the devprops
file that you learned about. The end user will not be prompted for the path to the devprops
file. This means that all information will be compiled with the client. The disadvantage hereis that if you make changes to the application name or the program name, such as thechange from start to orders, you will need to recompile the client application and upload itto the mobile device.
Entering a URL – You enter a URL that is a full URL directing the application to thedevprops file found on your server. The devprops file then directs the client to theapplication and program. The advantage here is that if you need to change theapplication name or the program name, there is no need to prepare a new client. In the
devprops file, you saw the <property key="server" val="10.1.10.75"/> property. In theexecution properties file, you can use either. To enter a URL you would use the following
property: <property key="url" val="http://example.com/MobileScripts/devprops.txt"/>
You will learn more about compiling a new client in the next section.

Customizing the Application
Throughout this course, you used the icon provided by the installation, which includes the
Magic icon and wallpaper. However, the client may already have an installation of anotherapplication or you may want to provide your icon. Creating a custom application requires
compilation using tools provided by the mobile devices.
You can change items such as:
Icon
Startup splash screen
Execution properties – You learned about this in the previous section.
Client title
Application version
Package name
Here is an explanation on how to do this for an Android-based mobile application. For iOS-

Customization and Installation44

based devices, please see the Magic xpa Help. You will need the JDK and the Android SDK.
The SDK is a part of the Android emulator. The source code for the Android application isprovided in %EngineDir%\RIAModules\Android\Source. You can modify the mobile
application’s settings by updating the settings.properties file located in the directory mentioned
above. You can change the following properties:

Property

Description

sdk.dir

The directory in which the Android SDK is installed. When you
use the \ character, you need to double it: \\targetThe Android version that the compilation is done for. It isadvised to use the most updated version. The minimum version
that you should select it the version that Magic xpa iscompatible with. Note that the version should be installed onyour PC. You can see the installed versions using the Android
SDK manager or by browsing to the android-sdk\platforms
folder.

client.title

The application title as visible to the user.

client.version.code

An integer value that represents the version of the application.

client.version.name

A string value that represents the release version of theapplication code, as it should be shown to users. Your version
code and name can be different, since only the name isdisplayed to the user.

package.name

The identifier of the project. The package name must be
unique across all packages installed on the Android system.

output.dir

The folder that will contain the built installers.

build.dir

A temporary folder location used during the build process. This
folder is removed after a successful build. It can be an absoluteor relative path.

key.store, key.alias,
key.store.password,
key.alias.password

The properties of the keystore. A sample keystore is provided
in the Android folder.

Icon – To change the icon, replace the icons’ files in the res\drawable-XXX subfolders. You
will need to provide icon files in all of the following sizes: 36x36, 48x48 and 72x72
pixels.

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45

Startup screen logo – To change the startup screens, replace the logo.png files located in
the res\drawable-XXX subfolders. You need to provide logo files in different sizes
corresponding to the device’s size.
Execution properties – Open the execution.properties file and change the execution
values.
You need to define either the execution properties’ values or a URL referring to a
file containing the execution properties’ values as defined above. Leaving the
URL property empty means that a dialog box will be opened and the end user
will need to write the URL.
Now that you have all the information, you can start preparing the APK file (for Android
devices).
There are a few stages (which are explain later on) to preparing an APK file:
1. Prepare a keystore file. The keystore file is a file that enables you to “sign” your APK
file. To do this, you use your own keys and certificates. A sample file is provided withthis course.
2. Create the signed APK file.
3. Upload the new APK file to the Android device or emulator.

Keystore File
A sample keystore file is provided in the installation. Remember that when you deploy yourapplication, you need to provide your own keystore.
To create the keystore, you will use the keytool.exe application installed with the Java SDK,
found in your %JAVA_HOME% folder.
4. Run the following command and follow the instructions:
Keytool –genkey –keystory KeystoreName –alias AliasName
KeyStoreName and AliasName will be replaced with your own details. During the process,you will be asked for the password of the keystore and the alias. You will be asked for
identifying details such as your name, company and address. At the end of this process the
keystore file will be updated with the new information.

APK File
The APK file is based on both the execution.properties file and the settings.properties file.
Make sure that both are defined as you require. Compilation of the Android project isperformed using the Ant tool. The Ant tool is provided with the installation and is located in
the %EngineDir%\RIAModules\Utils\apache-ant-1.8.3 folder. To continue:
5. Navigate to the application source folder:%EngineDir%\RIAModules\Android\Source.
6. Run the following file: build.cmd.

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46

The build process creates an APK file named according to the client.title setting of thesetting.properties folder and is located in the output.dir folder.
You can edit the build.cmd file in order to troubleshoot the build
process. For example:
To see the full actions, remove the -q from the command in thebuild.cmd file.
To save the log to a file, add -l build.log to the command in thebuild.cmd file.

7. Copy the APK file to the scripts folder.

Installing the Client on the Android Device or Emulator
There are a few methods to install the APK client on the Android client:
Run the APK directly on the Android, after receiving it as an email attachment or similar.
Download the APK via the mobile device’s browser by navigating to the APK file. For
example: http://server_name/magicscripts/myapp.apk.
Download your application from the Android market.
After successfully installing the APK you will see a new icon under the Applications in thedevice.
Refer to the Customizing Your Application and Installing an Application on a Mobile Device
or Simulator topics in the Magic xpa Help for more information on how to customize andinstall the application on an Android device.

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47

SummaryIn this lesson you learned how to prepare your own client, which you can use to call your own
Magic xpa application. Remember that the steps to prepare your application are:
1. Prepare the icons and splash images.
2. Define the settings.properties file.
3. Define the execution.properties file.
4. Get a keystore file. Check this link for more details:
http://developer.android.com/tools/publishing/app-signing.html
5. Create the APK file.
6. Install the APK on your device.

Customization and Installation48

Lesson8

Preparing the Testing Environment
When you develop you need to have a testing environment. This seminar installed the Android
Emulator as a part of the seminar but you will need these tools for your own testing
environment.
This lesson covers various topics including:Installing the Android emulator
Defining the MIME type
Troubleshooting
Debugging
Note: There are similar methods for creating the testing environment for iOS devices. You canfind information about this in the Magic xpa Help.

Preparing the Testing Environment

49

Defining a Simulator
To test your environment, you need to set up a simulator.

Android
To run the Android emulator, you need to download and install the Java SE Development Kit(JDK) 6 and the Android SDK. The JDK is installed automatically during the Magic xpa
installation if you installed the Web Services component during the Magic xpa installation.
You can download them from:
JDK: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
SDK: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

An alternative emulator can be downloaded from:https://cloud.genymotion.com/page/launchpad/download/. This emulator is actually avirtual machine running virtual Android devices. After downloading and installing the virtual
machine, follow the wizard to download and install Android devices. Note that this emulator
is faster than the native Android emulator.

Android SDK Manager
During the installation of the Android SDK, the Android SDK manager will be launched.
You need to select the following components (for each component you need to select the latest
Android versions or at least the versions that Magic xpa is compatible with):Tools\Android SDK Tools – For Magic xpa 3.0, for example, you will need version 24 orabove.
Tools\Android SDK Platform-tools – For Magic xpa 3.0, for example, you will needversion 21 or above.
SDK Platform – For Magic xpa 3.0, for example, you will need version 21 (the package isavailable under the Android 5.0.1 (API 21) section) or above.
The installation package will then start downloading the package to your system. This process
may take a while depending on your download speed.
The Android SDK Manager is installed on your system enabling you to add or remove
packages in the future.

Android Virtual Device Manager
After installing the SDK platform:
1. Click the Tools menu and start the Manage AVDs (Android Virtual Device) entry inorder to configure the Android emulator and virtual environment.

Preparing the Testing Environment50

2. In the Android Virtual Device Manager screen, add a new device and specify:
Name – The name for the virtual device.
Target – Choose the Android version, for example: Android 4.0.
SD Card Size – Define a size for the SD card, for example: 20. The SD Card is
the Android storage card. Since this is an emulator, you simply define the size ofthe storage file.
3. Click the Create AVD button. After the device creation is complete, the device will be
added to the list.
4. Select the device and click Start to run the emulator.
Note: Additional information about the emulator can be found at:
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/devices/emulator.html.

Installation on the Device
As you learned in the previous lesson, there are a few methods to install the client on the
Android device:
Run the APK directly on the Android device, after receiving it as an attachment as an
example.
Download the APK via the browser as explained.
Download the APK from the Android market.
To download from the browser or to run the APK directly from the browser, you need toconfigure the Web server to support the download of the APK file. This means defining a
MIME type. According to the Microsoft MSDN, Internet Information Services (IIS) serves only
static files with extensions registered in the Multipurpose Internet Mail Exchange (MIME) types
list. IIS is preconfigured to recognize a default set of global MIME types, and also allows you
to configure additional MIME types and change or remove MIME types. These MIME types
are recognized by all Web sites you create in IIS.
To add a new MIME type, you:
5. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) manager.
6. Navigate to the Default Web Sites.
7. In IIS 7, open the Mime Types and add a new one as follows:
Extension=.apk
MIME type=application/vnd.android.package-archive
For IIS 6, you define a MIME type as follows:
1. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) manager.
2. Navigate to the Default Web Sites.
3. Right-click and click Properties.
4. Click the HTTP Headers tab.
5. Click the File Types button.

Preparing the Testing Environment51

6. Click the New Type button and add a new one as follows:
Extension=.apk
MIME type=application/vnd.android.package-archive

Using the Keyboard on the Device Simulator
When you start typing in an Edit control on the device simulator, you will noticethat a virtual keyboard pops up on the emulator. It is important to use thiskeyboard. You will notice that, as an example there is no Delete key, since there
is no functionality for the delete hotkey in some devices. The backspace key,which in many cases behaves like the delete key, is displayed as an X
. For
regular typing you can use your own keyboard. If you use your keyboard Tab
key, you may get unexpected results, so it is good practice to use the emulator
keyboard.
If the keyboard does not pop up, then click
the keyboard icon at the bottom of the screen
and you will get the popup dialog box asshown on the right. Set the Use physicalkeyboard property to OFF.
On regular mobile devices with a virtual
keyboard, the virtual keyboard isautomatically displayed when parking oncontrols that require keyboard input, namely
modifiable Edit controls. On other controls,
the virtual keyboard is automatically hidden.

Troubleshooting
The most common problem regarding the mobile RIA client is that the client fails to connect tothe Web server that is serving the application. There are several scenarios where this problem
can occur:

Mobile device fails to communicate with the Web server
You will not see any requests in the Broker or GigaSpaces Monitor or any connection
indication in the Web server log.
If the communication is performed using WiFi, verify that the device is connected to thecorrect WiFi router.
Try connecting from the device browser to the Web server to see if there is a connection.
For example: http://192.168.137.1/MagicScripts
If you do not get a response, then the Web server may not be configured correctly.

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52

Your firewall may be blocking the communication. Try to enable inbound http/httpscommunication in the firewall rules. If the problem remains, try to disable the firewall
completely. If you can connect from a browser to the Web server or if your application is now
working, then you can enable it again and make sure that the firewall enables inboundconnections on port 80/443. To enable port 80:
1. In the Control Panel go to:Windows Firewall > Advanced settings > Inbound Rules.
2. Open World Wide Web Services (HTTP Traffic-In) and select Enabled.

Execution properties file defined in the URL dialog is wrong
You will not see any requests in the Broker Monitor, but you will see the access to the server in
the Web server log.
Check that the execution.properties file was saved in ANSI format.
Check that all the attributes in the execution.properties file are spelled correctly and havethe correct values. Remember that the values are case sensitive.
If the settings.properties file contains a URL attribute with reference to an external
execution file, check that:* The external file can be accessed from the mobile device. You can check it by entering
the same URL value on a browser on the device.
* The external file is in ANSI format and all the attributes in this file have the correct
value (case sensitive).
Verify that the Magic xpa RIA server is up and is running the project defined in the settings
properties.
To check your file on the Windows desktop, you can rename the file to execution.properties(remember that you gave it a txt file extension), place it in the%EngineDir%\RIAModules\Desktop folder and run the MgxpaRIA.exe application in thatfolder. If everything is properly defined, the RIA application should start on the Windows
client.

Debugging
As in the desktop RIA, you can activate debug logs on your mobile client by defining a proper
value for the InternalLogLevel property in the [MAGIC_RIA] section of the Magic.ini file.

Android
The application log is written in the internal device log.
You can see the log by using the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) utility, which is located in theplatform-tools folder in your SDK folder, usually at: C:\Program Files\Android\android-

Preparing the Testing Environment53

sdk\platform-tools.
To use the ADB utility on a mobile device, make sure that the mobile device is defined to:
Run in debug mode. To enable it, go to Settings/Applications/Development and check the
USB Debugging check box.
Allow installation of a non-market application. To enable it, go to
Settings/Applications/Application Settings and check the Unknown sources check box.
To view the device log, run the following command: adb logcat.
To view only the RIA client related entries in the device log, run the following command:
adb logcat MAGIC_DEBUG:D *:S. Note that this filtering will not show crashes or illegal
actions.
To clear the log, run the following command: adb logcat -c.
To save the log to a file, run the following command: adb logcat > file.log.
If you need to provide a log of a specific scenario or crash, you need to clear the log first, run
the action that caused the crash and then save the full log to a file.

iOS
The application log can be downloaded to a PC using iTunes.
Simply connect your device to iTunes. In the device apps, select your application and then you
can retrieve the log file.

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54

Summary
You now have the tools to create your own testing environment. You can set up a testing
environment before you try it out on your own tablet or mobile device. Bear in mind that you
are working with an emulator and an emulator is slower than your device and is limited;
therefore, there are some items that you may not be able to test satisfactorily, such as acamera or the GPS. You will however be able to test the general look and feel of the native
application.

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Preparing the Testing Environment

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