I am looking to develop some web app for my Android device. Found Sencha and think it might be a good tool to try out.
I suppose I would need to find a web server to host the Sencha app to run the app? What kind of web server is needed? I suppose one that able to run HTML5, CSS, Javascript is enough?
Can anybody recommend one (free one)?
Thanks.
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Thanks for the answers to the above post. I am new to this stuff, so got some more follow-up and somewhat related questions:
1) I read from the Sencha site that the app can be developed locally using things like XAMPP installed on local Windows PC. Question -- Why need this local host when I can just use an external Web Host?
2) It was also mentioned that for Windows may not need XAMPP if Window's Internet Information Server (IIS) is already running. How do I know if my computer is running this and so don't need to install another local server? (I asking this because I had installed an XAMPP before on another computer and things got quite messed up and so I want to avoid doing it if possible).
3) Once I got a web host, to have an app running, I would just have to have the JS files in the web host together with the Sencha framework right? If so, then I don't understand what is meant by "Build" in the Sencha documentation.
Thanks.
Sencha Touch is a client side framework, therefore there are no server side requirements. That said, any web host should do.
However, I'll go ahead an make a recommendation... a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySql) will work the best. Of course you can substitute any of the stack for something of your favor, this setup seems to be the most favorable. Some of my colleagues utilize Ruby/RoR instead of PHP, so as you can see it is quite flexible in terms of environment.
When searching for a hosting provider, do your research and select something that fits with your budget but still gives you the best bang for your buck. Be sure to ask them questions!
Tip: Make sure you have access to your web server's configuration file so you can add mime_types and make other mobile oriented tweaks if needed.
First you must know that HTML5, CSS and Javascript are all front end stuff that do not count when you talk about Hosting. These are taken care of by the client agent (browser).
What really matters is your server side language: PHP, Python(Django), Ruby, etc.
So it mainly doesn't matter which framework, as much as which language that framework use.
This is a generic answer that will help you decide not only in terms of Sencha but for any other framework.
Take for instance WordPress. It uses PHP and MySQL, so first I look if my Web host supports Mysql and PHP and in general this would be enough to know that I can use if for my WordPress site.
And by the way, most Web host companies allow you to ask them questions before buying. So go ahead and question them about anything that concerns your requests.
Sencha provides an app hosting service through its Sencha.io cloud services.
Related
I'm trying to setup a server based on our needs for a new website. Basically, I need to build a website based on social engine, and according to the platform's requirements (found here: http://www.socialengine.net/support/documentation/article?q=152&question=SocialEngine-Requirements) it requires the webserver to be Apache based.
Now my issue comes with the addition of a web application that needs to be included in the site. The web application requires the server to be capable of Asynchronous Request Processing, and is currently only supported by Tomcat or GlassFish.
I found a couple tutorials such as this one http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/2203891/Integrating-Tomcat-with-Apache.htm that explain how to "integrate" Tomcat into Apache. Would a server running Tomcat alone be able to handle the applet needs as well as serve the Apache (assuming HTTP) needs from the Social Engine platform? Are there any hosting providers any of you would reccomend?
Although I've done alot of front end stuff before, this is the first time i have to deal with any of the back end details, so my knowledge of server side functionality is really garbage. Please let me know if I'm not asking the right questions.
Thanks
You wouldn't really be able to use Tomcat for both apps, since the other one needs PHP. It's pretty common to have both Tomcat and Apache running on the same server. You might want to look up more recent documentation on mixing them, even this but definitely have a look at mod_proxy_ajp.
What's the other application? It's a little tricky to set up Asynchronous Request Processing if you are new to server apps, but there is also a lot of documentation, so if you're game, you can probably figure it out OK. You might also want to see if that app would work with node.js (hosting info here)
If you want to set it all up yourself, you could get a virtual private server from Rackspace Cloud or similar host or get a shared host that has the required apps already set up, which would limit your ability to customize the environment and may require 2 hosting plans, but would be easier to set up. It also somewhat depends on if both apps need to be on the same machine for any reason and/or on the same domain.
A regular LAMP stack will run SE4 just fine, however, you will need to do some tuning to get the page loads under 3 seconds. You will want to remove any Apache modules that you aren't using with a2dismod. For instance, if you're not using any Ruby on the site, a2dismod ruby. This will help get memory usage under control. APC is a must.
For a much more in depth read on tuning php/apache, please read this: Performance tuning on Apache, PHP, MySQL, WordPress v1.1 – Updated
I have a website running on CentOS using the usual suspects (Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Since the time this website was originally launched, it has evolved quite a bit and now I'd like to do fancier things with it—namely real-time notifications. From what I've read, Apache handles this poorly. I'm wondering if I can replace just Apache with Node.js (so instead of "LAMP" it would "LNMP").
I've tried searching online for a solution, but haven't found one. If I'm correctly interpreting the things that I've read, it seems that most people are saying that Node.js can replace both Apache and PHP together. I have a lot of existing PHP code, though, so I'd prefer to keep it.
In case it's not already obvious, I'm pretty confused and could use some enlightenment. Thanks very much!
If you're prepared to re-write your PHP in JavaScript, then yes, Node.js can replace your Apache.
If you place an Apache or NGINX instance running in reverse-proxy mode between your servers and your clients, you could handle some requests in JavaScript on Node.js and some requests in your Apache-hosted PHP, until you can completely replace all your PHP with JavaScript code. This might be the happy medium: do your WebSockets work in Node.js, more mundane work in Apache + PHP.
Node.js may be faster than Apache thanks to it's evented/non-blocking architecture, but you may have problems finding modules/libraries which substitute some of Apache functionality.
Node.js itself is a lightweight low-level framework which enables you to relatively quickly build server-side stuff and real-time parts of your web applications, but Apache offers much broader configuration options and "classical" web server oriented features.
I would say that unless you want to replace PHP with node.js based web application framework like express.js then you should stay with Apache (or think about migrating to Nginx if you have performance problems).
I believe Node.js is the future in web serving, but if you have a lot of existing PHP code, Apache/MySQL are your best bet. Apache can be configured to proxy requests to Node.js, or Node.js can proxy requests to Apache, but I believe some performance is lost in both cases, especially in the first one. Not a big deal if you aren't running a very high traffic website though.
I just registered to stackoverflow, and I can't comment on the accepted answer yet, but today I created a simple Node.js script that actually uses sendfile() to serve files through the HTTP protocol. (The existing example that the accepted answer links to only uses bare TCP protocol to send the file, and I could not find an example for HTTP, so I wrote it myself.)
So I thought someone might find this useful. Serving files through the sendfile() OS call is not necessarily faster than when data is copied through "user land", but it ends up utilizing the CPU and RAM less, thus being able to handle larger number of connections than the classic way.
The link: https://gist.github.com/1350901
Previous SO post describing exactly what im saying (php + socket.io + node)
I think you could put up a node server on somehost:8000 with socket.io and slap the socket.io client code into tags and with minimal work get your existing app rocking with socket.io (realtime baby) without a ton of work.
While node can be your only backend server remember that node likes to live up to it's name and become a node. I checked out a talk awhile back that Ryan Dahl gave to a PHP Users's group and he mentioned the name node relating to a vision of several node processes doing work and talking with each other.
Its LAMP versus MEAN nowadays. For a direct comparison see http://tamas.io/what-is-the-mean-stack.
Of course M, E and A are somewhat variable. For example the more recent koa may replace (E)xpress.
However, just replacing Apache with Node.js is probably not the right way to modernize your web stack.
I have the following scenario:
We develop a silverlight 4 app for our customers, that will be used as an out-of-browser app. The app is working offline, i.e. app and database are on the users local machine. The app is using WCF-RIA-services to connect to the local database. The database will be an SQL Server Express, SQL Server CE or MySQL. We are using MVVMLight and MEF.
An external webserver is only used for updating the app from time to time or adding new modules to the app. To achieve this we do something similar as shown in Jeremy Likness blog (http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jlikness/archive/2010/05/25/silverlight-out-of-browser-dynamic-modules-in-offline-mode.aspx )
The reasons why we are doing such a scenario are complex. But to keep a long story short it is mainly for compatibility reasons for a later online version and we don't want to use WPF. So we need to get this working with Silverlight and WCF-RIA services.
Ok, that's the scenario and here's the question:
Do we need a local webserver in this scenario? The app is programmatically installed as out-of-browser, the database is local and connected via WCF-RIA.
If yes, which webserver would be sufficient? It should be installed and configured via an initial setup that is executed by the customer. The customer should not have to do anything with configuring the webserver.
Any other ideas or comments on this scenario? Any other possible solutions for this?
Thanks for your help
Dirk
silverlight wasn't meant to be used this way I think. So it would be like when you are developing app in visual studio and use Cassini to see result - everything runs locally - but you still need a web server. Maybe more info here - http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/06/WPF-vs-Silverlight
I´m not able to provide with a full answer to your problem, as we are currently facing the same problem. (WPF not being cross-platform, Very specific hardware on some clients)
But I may share some of our thoughts on our type of Thick-Silverlight-Client:
To keep deployment etc. simple we use a self-hosting process (installed as background process)
We may not use RIA as the background process has to run using Mono VM (but for MS-only solution see Can WCF RIA Services be self hosted? )
Architectural thoughts on standalone "Clients":
Depending on your requirements implementing a server for each client communicating with the "main"-server by messages (NServiceBus) may be overkill. But if you want to use a client database if offline and silverlight for ui you should consider using an event-driven-architecture.
There is a slideshow on combining "Event-Driven-Architecture" & "CQRS" with Silverlight. But i would not use it as a blueprint more like an inspiration.
http://www.slideshare.net/dennisdoomen/cqrs-and-event-sourcing-an-alternative-architecture-for-ddd
I'm in the process of providing a Web UI as an alternative to our current desktop UI for our C/S enterprise application.
When developing the client-side in our desktop version, UI developers could connect to any server so they only needed the client-side environment.
When developing a Web UI (Client-side JavaScript in the browser), we are bound by the browser's "Same origin policy" so the UI must talk to the same server from which the UI code is downloaded.
As far as I see it till now, the development scenario for the UI guys is:
Developer installs server on local
machine and runs it.
Developer edits the HTML+JS+CSS files on local installation.
Developer has to reinstall/update server on local machine each time there's a need to test UI code against new server behaviour.
This does not seem too comfortable, at least compared to our previous C/S style development.
Are there any other ways you can suggest to that will not require UI developers from installing and updating server side components on their development machine ?
Or anything else related that can simplify the development process ?
Thanks :-)
Editing in some clarifications:
I'm mostly interested in the aspects of UI coding, not UI design.
I need a lot of server interaction - getting data from RESTful web services, which are developed in parrallel - hence the need to have an up-to-date server
You haven't specified the development platform.
As far as pure HTML/JS/CSS is concerned, you don't need a server. The UI developer can fine tune UI components locally.
The moment you want to talk/integrate to Server (via AJAX, JSP, ASP...) then you need to connect a development server as now your changes have to be served by Server.
Most of UI fine tuning can also be done from Firebug
In our office when changes to styling are required we save the page as a local copy and send it to the UI designer, he makes his changes and we integrate them. So the UI designer don't have to maintain a development environment.
JSONP lets you work around the same-origin problem (with server support) -- check it out! If the front-end-in-the-browser developers are using a good framework suc as jQuery or (my favorite) Dojo, JSONP should be no harder for them than plain JSON.
Develop on a shared server, but depending on the size of the team.. that's challeging with respect to version control.
Or deploy automatically generated virtual machines with nightly builds, so the devs don't have to install, but always use a recent version.
In the case of UI developers depending on a common REST server, the UI development can be done on the local machine and the REST service should be on a central server. When changes are made to the REST service these should be deployed to the central server (when stable), so all developers can use the newest version (this also helps with testdata).
You could try using a proxy on the developer's machine where some paths redirect to the server and some paths redirect to local folders.
Hmm, I actually didn't really get any information on what kind of technology you're using. If - with UI Developers - you mean designers, which have to take care about the CSS, layout etc, then we do it the same as lud0h said. We (developers) send the UI designers a copy of the server-side produced HTML pages. They then edit the HTML pages according to accessibility guidelines, CSS and layout and send us back the outcome of their work. We use their HTML pages then for integrating them in our web applications.
If you don't just mean tuning CSS, but also to write JavaScript / Ajax functionality you HAVE to use a server with which you're communicating. As you said, normally this is done by having a local environment which is similar to the server-one. In .Net Visual Studio '08 provides an internal webserver, alternatively you have to install IIS locally. In Java environments you have to install Tomcat and related technologies. In my eyes this is a must. What you have to have is
Versioning system (CVS, SVN,...) where developers commit regularly (minutes/hours)
local environments where developers checkout the source from the repository and develop
Test server where you deploy on a daily basis (could be like daily builds) in order to test your running product
I guess this should be what a professional development environment should consist of. The difference to C/S application development is that web UI and web-client code are not that separable as a Client UI in C/S environment from the server-side. Unless you develop with technologies like GWT or Silverlight which are quite similar to C/S, just running inside the browser, but communicating over RPC calls or web services.
//Edit:
What I nearly forgot. Don't do something like developing on the server directly, meaning that all of the developers access the server's filesystem where the code, UI etc. lies!!
You can use CORS. a new technique just like Ajax, but with ability to make calls on other domains. so you will need only one UI on one server. think this can help you.
I've created a service for one of my apps. How do i create a system tray component in VB.net that can be used to monitor the progress of the service? Is there a way to have this installed via tcpip on multiple client machines such as those that are for our employees?
We do exactly that here, with the server running a really basic HTTP server on a configurable port on a separate thread that returns status in an XML format (nothing else, just that) -- the client just uses a web request to get the XML, before parsing it and displaying it appropriately.
This approach also allows for future extensibility (detailed status, sending service control commands, adding an association to an XSLT file elsewhere for use with a normal web browser, etc.)
You could use WCF for this. Using WCF your service would open up an EndPoint which would expose status information to callers. You could then build a tray icon application that can be deployed to the employees workstations. The tray icon application could periodically poll the WCF service the your Windows Service is hosting and get status information. I know #Johan mentioned Remoting already and this is a similar approach. I'd recommend WCF though as the programming API is more simple, IMHO, and WCF will give you more flexibility with regards to network transports, etc.
I guess your question is not about how to actually do the "traybar"-thing, but how to communicate with the service to get the information you want to show in the monitor/traybar-program?
It can be done in many ways, API is one way, use sendmessage/postmessage/getmessage is one way to make 2 running programs communicate with each other without having to store anything in files or databases first.
DDE is another way. If it needs to do the stuff via net then there is something called NetDDE, but I havent done anything with NetDDE I cant help anything there.
But about the API and DDE, feel free to ask more questions if you want some clarification.
I'll take the second question: Is there a way to remotely install software on client machines?
Yes. However it is very dependent on your environment. For example, if you have an Active Directory domain, you can use group policy to force installation of software on the client boxes.
If you don't like that or if you aren't on active directory, you can buy something like Altiris to push installs down.
Another option would be to use login scripts which would run a custom program to detect if your program is installed and take appropriate action. But then you are probably better off buying Altiris.
For the comunication part, i have used remoting before, and this works very well. With a little bit of configuration, you can even get it working to another machine.