Client using Python to access data on AWS S3

Python is one of the most trending programming languages and it can use the web framework to create database projects. The client using an intermediary flask server is well suited. 

You can develop a client application using React with Python and access the AWS's S3 bucket via  Flask server.

Here are some relevant links that you may want to look up or quick tutorials to get the hang of it.

How to create a React+Flask Project?

https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/how-to-create-a-react--flask-project

https://rajrajhans.com/2020/06/2-ways-to-upload-files-to-s3-in-flask/

Microsoft Visual Studio provides full support for almost any kind of project:

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/tutorial-flask

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/nodejs/reactjs-tutorial

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/07/amazon-s3-features-now-available-aws-toolkits-for-visual-studio-code/

You can get a link to download the latest community version(free) here:

https://hodentek.blogspot.com/2021/07/visual-studio-2022-preview-available.html

Build web apps with R studio

 R language is open source with a huge number of developers. It has a great arsenal of great stuff already accomplished. It is a language that you should get exposed to yourself. You just install R Gui and you are ready.

Shiny is an enterprise-grade web application framework targeted for those who want to develop with R using the familiar HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Using R you can turn terrific analytic solutions you have developed/developing into interactive web applications.

Go to this site (https://shiny.rstudio.com/) directly and learn more.

 

Rshiny-00

If you have R Studio you have Shiny because Shiny is a package that you can download.

In this first part we only talk about the very basics.

I assume you have read my previous hands-on R examples in my blogs.

http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/2015/09/what-is-good-way-to-learn-r-language.html
http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/search?q=R+language

Here I just show a very basic (aka Hello World) example of creating content for a web page using R GUI. More will come later in my blogs.

Launch R Gui as shown and provide reference to the shiny "library" as shown by typing in the three lines of code (The four lines of code in red).

 HelloWorld_00

When you hit Enter after the third line where you define the shiny app, a browser window will open as shown displaying the apps output as shown at a port of the local host.

HelloWorld_01

You also get a response (the last line) in the R GUI as shown.

HelloWorld_02
That is all there is to create a content.

The ui summarizes your user interface, the server is something like a web server and shinyApp is your web response. No fuss, very simple.

Take a look at some of the nice apps with SHINY here.

Developing mobile apps, check out Appery.io

It is a cloud based mobile app developer platform with full back-end support. You can build both hybrid as well as web apps with API support. The apps (iOS / Android) run in the browser using appery.io's visual App Builder.

Apps built using appery.io communicate with server / back-end that consists of:

Database
Server code
API Express- a tool exposing enterprise databases such as SQL Servers via REST APIs
Support sending push notifications.

Before installing on the device you can even test using the Appery.io Tester app.

This video shows platform features:



There is free trial you may want to sign up. Once signed in you will have a dashboard which has all of these:

    Apps
    Databases
    Server Code
    API Express
    Plugins
    Resources
    Account

Here are some example apps (covers most of the common ones you may be interested in) that you may want to peruse before working on your own.

    Weather API and Geo-location App.
    Ionic Components Example.
    Clickable List App.
    Create-Read-Update-Delete App.
    Todo App.
    Login-Registration App.
    Picture Upload App.
    Charts App.
    Email with SendGrid.
    SMS with Twilio.
    Email with Mailgun.
    OAuth Login with Google App.
    Stripe Payment App.
    Facebook App.
    PayPal App.
    Barcode Scanner with Database App.

Well, to test it out is free and it does not hurt. Why not test drive and see for yourself.

Learn for Free Geo Web Apps

This course is offered by ESRI.

Read here:
https://geonet.esri.com/community/education/content
and here:
https://geonet.esri.com/message/556447#556447

This is announced on the site:
February 2, 2016: Do It Yourself GeoApps (landing page forthcoming). This (Massive Open online Course) MOOC is for anyone who wants to build geo-enabled apps that make communities smarter and businesses more successful. Anyone can learn to build apps with configurable templates like Storymaps, and with applications called Web AppBuilder and AppStudio, all with little or no coding. Coders can learn about Esri's developer resources like SDKs and APIs, and can join the GeoDev community. Four weeks, self-paced, 12-18 hours total.

Section 1: Overveiw of the Course and Geo Apps
Section 2: Geo apps for Smarter Communities
Section 3: Put Your Story on the Map
Section 4: Web Apps for Your Community
Section 5: Native Apps for your Community
Section 6; Building Geo Apps onOpen Data
Section 7: Custom Coding and the GeoDev Community

Creating web apps with Intel XDK, step-by-step

Intel XDK is an easy to use program that you can use to create cross-platform apps (http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2014/08/cross-platform-apps-are-easy-with-intel.html). There is continuous build activity with Intel XDK and you can sign up and get the latest build. It is free and updated continuously.

It is somewhat slow, but that is my experience. I have used it so far to only look at some simple stuff and if you are interested, it may help you to review the following posts. It is written from the point of view of someone who has not done a lot of programming but still interested in building some apps.

You learn how to do a ListView app using Intel XDK here,
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/09/creating-listview-type-of-cross.html

You learn how to do a TabView app using Intel XDK here,
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2014/11/creating-cross-platform-apps-with-tab.html

You learn how to do a Side Menu app using Intel XDK here in a four-part post,

Part 1:
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2015/11/develop-side-menu-app-using-intel-xdk.html

Part 2:
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2015/12/develop-side-menu-app-using-intel-xdk.html

Part 3:
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2015/12/develop-side-menu-app-using-intel-xdk_19.html

Part 4:
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2015/12/develop-side-menu-app-using-intel-xdk_26.html

Besides Intel XDK, there are lots of posts on my Mobile blog here:
http://hodnetekMobile.blogspot.com

Firefox 42 better than Microsoft Edge 25.10586.0.0 when it comes to CSS3

This is if we were to look at the results from this site here (http://css3test.com/). Still Firefox undergoes lot more tests than Microsoft Edge to arrive at this conclusion. The following Specifications were tested.

The test at the above site checks which CSS3 features the browser recognizes

    Backgrounds and Borders
    Image Values and Replaced Content
    Selectors
    Media Queries
    Basic User Interface
    Transitions
    Animations
    Transforms
    Text
    Text Decoration
    Fonts
    Writing Modes
    Color
    Multi-column Layout
    Values and Units
    Regions
    Speech
    Flexible Box Layout
    Grid Layout
    Box Alignment
    Resetting All Properties
    Conditional Rules
    Masking
    Compositing and Blending
    Shapes
    Exclusions
    Filter Effects
    Pointer Events
    Fullscreen API
    Fragmentation
    Positioning
    Will Change
    CSSOM View Module
    Ruby
    Scroll Snap Points
    Logical Properties


Firefox 64% -> Determined by passing 816 tests out of 1469 total for 335 features

Microsoft Edge: 48% ->Determined by passing 650 tests out of 1469 total for 335 features

I did have the latest Chrome and as it presented some problems, I had to remove it. Perhaps I was testing on a Trojan infected computer.

Create amazing mobile HTML apps using Meteor

It appears Meteor can provide a radically simpler way to build real time mobile and web app using only JavaScript from one code base. I have not used Meteor and the content for the post came from here.

Here are some Highlights:

Universal JavaScript
Same code from client to cloud; from packages to database apis; from browsers to mobile devices via Meteor's unified isobuild system

Mobile and Web apps
As Installable iOS and as Android app
As a web app that loads on demand

Reactive Rendering
While being thin,  gives a thick client feel and look using Meteor's Blaze Framework with AngularJS and ReactJS

Meteor's Cloud Platform Galaxy
Deployment, scaling and monitoring for connected clients
Provides actionable metrics to stateful connected client apps
One command to update all connected browsers and apps (Hot Deploy)
Coordinated version updates

How is it different from AngularJS and ReactJS?
Meteor has Blaze library and is full stack, while AnjularJS and ReactJS are JavaScript UI frameworks. These frame works can be used in conjunciton with Meteor.

More details and Q&A here. I will give it a try one of these days.

Web Apps with backend data are crucial for business

We live in a data-centric world.

Data in your store changes with time and you may have to handle data that need to scale. It follows that the applications that you build should scale. Also the developers who work for you may be more proficient in one programming language than the other. Azure Web Apps using SQL and NoSQL database backends are most suited, as scaling is built into Azure. Further Azure Web apps can be written in a number of languages that include: 

• .NET
• Java
• PHP
• Node.js
• Python

Most developers can handle two or more from the above list.

Infrastructure management is highly automated and scaling is no problem as Auto scaling capability helps you to go up or down depending on your traffic.

Web Apps with backend are really crucial for your business and your backend can be SQL Database (relational) or NoSQL (non-relational). Microsoft can handle both types, relational with SQL Azure database and NoSQL with DocumentDB (service that helps you to store, index and query JSON-based data. Review references for DocumentDB on Hodentek blog at the conclusion of this post.

You are not sure but would like to try it out for free. Here is the link (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/scenarios/web-app/) where you can get started.

Free trial may be available only for new users. I have been using Azure since it's beta and I have tried to get the free service but I have not been successful. This may be different now.

References:
Format SQL Response in JSON Format
Moving data to DocumentDB
Data store for IOT
Getting to know DocumentDB-2
Getting to know DocumentDB-1
Signing up for Azure DocumentDB
DocumentDB is announced
 

Intel XDK and Firefox OS Marketplace

With Intel XDK you can build apps both Native and Web Apps. For example you can build a Web App for Mozilla Firefox OS.

Here is an example of a Web App built for Fireox OS. The app was originally built for Nokia Windows Phone shown here.

WebApp_Firefox00.png

This was rebuilt for Firefox OS.

WebApp_Firefox.png

Intel XDK lets you build the above and generates a manifest.webapp file.

WebApp_Firefox2.png

This zip file can be uploaded to Firefox marketplace.
Subsequent builds will allow make changes to the manifest.webapp.

Here are some recent marketplace items.

WebApp_Firefox3.png

Before you put it on the marketplace test it in the Firefox OS simulator. The simulator also has a manifest.webapp editor.

More details here.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/xdk/docs/building-firefox-os-apps-in-the-intel-xdk

 The same Windows Phone app built and tested on Firefox OS 3 simulator. The app at the bottom 'H' is the HodentekBooks.

 

Microsoft rolls out new Azure App Service

Microsoft ties up three of its offerings (Azure Web Sites, Azure Mobile Services and Azure BizTalk Services) into a new Azure App Service to provide a unified expereince ofor the developers.

This is achieved by the following 4 key components, the last one being the connectivity platform for systems both on-premises and the cloud:

• Web Apps
• Mobile Apps
• Logic Apps
• API apps

Web Apps (Azure web sites) provides support for .ENET, Java, PHP, Python and other languages through integration with Visual Studio OnLine, GitHub, Bitbucket etc.
Mobile Apps provides backend capabilities for not only native Windows but also for Android and IOs mobile platforms cvia Xamarin and Cordova.
Logic Apps can be created by developers for automation of process execution across various services akin to BizTalk services for enterprise integration.

Read more here and here and here.

Some interesting posts can be found here:
http://hodentekPlus.blogspot.com