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Luis Majano

August 29, 2019

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It has been a long time coming, but we finally get a major release for DataBoss our Dynamic Administrator. This major release brings a slew of updates, new features and now Adobe 2016, 2018 and Lucee 5 Support.

What is DataBoss?

Ortus DataBoss is an application that will help you manage CFML Object Relational Mapper (ORM) objects without the need of writing administrative code for them; thus a Dynamic Administrator.  DataBoss will talk to the underlying ORM engine (Hibernate) and get all the necessary information to manage all the ORM entities and its relationships in that specific CFML application DataBoss has been deployed to.  You can watch our introductory video to get a quick overview of what DataBoss is and how it can benefit your development.  In version 3 we have added the capability to do RESTFul exports, so you now can use DataBoss as your a data API layer as well.

Capabilities

  • Download as a standalone application that can integrate with any framework or application
  • Download as a ColdBox module so it can integrate with any ColdBox 5+ application
  • Automatic Hibernate ORM entity detection and analysis
  • Ability to manage all supported Hibernate relationships: One-To-Many, Many-To-One, One-To-One, Many-To-Many in a response interface
  • Ability to manage multi-level inheritance relationships
  • RESTFul exporting built-in for all entities with pagination and multiple response formats (xml,json,jsonp,wddx,pdf)
  • Ability to control the data marshalled form the RESTFul exports
  • Internationalized and localized for: English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese and more
  • Ability to create/edit/delete and multi-delete any managed entity and its data
  • Built-in form validation based on ColdBox Validation and ORM metadata
  • Customizable validation rules
  • Customizable HTML 5 controls for persisted properties: Checkbox, Radio Buttons, Multi-Select, Text, Email, URL, Password, Textarea, Super Lite Rich Text Editor, Date Picker
  • Ability to paginate entity records and do inline filtering/sorting of data
  • Easily interface layout overrides if ran as a ColdBox Module
  • Easily extend the custom CSS framework
  • Ability to reload the ORM engine a-la-carte
  • Application responsive design ready for phone and tablet usage
  • Database null support

RESTFul Exports

One of the major features of this release is the ability to export your ORM data via JSON, XML, WDDX or PDF.  We have included the mementifier module as part of this release which will allow you to define metadata in your entities that will be used to export the data as an API. 

There are two entry points for resource export:

  • Entity Listing
  • Entity by ID

Listing Export

The listing export uses the following RESTful route:

// With Format in URL
/databoss/entity/:entity/export/:format

// With Format as Extension (if enabled)
/databoss/entity/:entity.(json|jsonp|xml|wddx|pdf)

 

Here are some examples:

 

// With Format in URL
/databoss/entity/user/export/json
/databoss/entity/roles/export/json
/databoss/entity/roles/export/jsonp
/databoss/entity/entries/export/xml
/databoss/entity/entries/export/wddx

// With Format as Extension (if enabled)
/databoss/entity/user.json?page=4&excludes=role,permissions
/databoss/entity/user.jsonp
/databoss/entity/user.xml
/databoss/entity/user.wddx
/databoss/entity/user.pdf

You can choose pagination and even choose which columns to include/exclude in your final output representation.

Entity Export

The entity export uses the following RESTful route:

// With Format in URL
/databoss/entity/:entity/id/:id/format/:format

// With Format as Extension (if enabled)
/databoss/entity/:entity/id/:id.(json|jsonp|wddx|xml|pdf)

 

Here are some examples:
 

// With Format in URL
/databoss/entity/user/id/2/export/json
/databoss/entity/roles/id/3234/export/json
/databoss/entity/user/id/2/export/wddx
/databoss/entity/user/id/2/export/jsonp

// With Format as Extension (if enabled)
/databoss/entity/user/id/2.json
/databoss/entity/user/id/234234.xml
/databoss/entity/user/id/2234.pdf

 


Resources

Release Notes

  • Adobe ColdFusion 2016 and 2018 Support
  • Lucee 5.3+ Support
  • Boolean support for single check boxes
  • Upgrade to cborm v2
  • More dynamic entity validations on all forms
  • Full RESTFul API support for exporting entity data via mementifier.  You now also have complete control of the output of the API
  • ColdBox 5 Upgrades
  • UI library updates
  • Ability to exclude/include entities in the home page selector
  • Performance updates
  • Non-standard include path on minified CSS and JavaScript can cause some resources to not load

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