JRapid Starting Guide

1. About this post

This post is intended for users who want to start developing applications with JRapid, including programmers, designers and business analysts.

2. JRapid's Community

Stay tuned to JRapid’s Community and find last minute information, documentation, forum, articles, blog posts and community items in community.jrapid.com.

3. Create a free project

To create or open an existing project you must login in www.jrapid.com with your JRapid account using your email and password.

You will be taken to the Management section where you can manage your projects, servers, billing and account settings.

To create a new project click in the "Create" button.

Enter a project name and hit tab. The base package name is auto completed, but you can change it if necessary.
Leave the other fields with their default values and click "OK" to continue.

Wait a few seconds while your project is created.

You will then see your new project in the "projects" listing and receive a confirmation email. Click on the project's name to enter the JRapid IDE.

4. About the JRapid IDE

The JRapid IDE provides an integrated environment for generating JRapid applications either through a visual interface or through editing the XML source code.

4.1 The Splash Screen

Once logged into the project, the Splash Screen or "Welcome screen" will pop up. Just close this window to start modeling your JRapid application from scratch.

You will now be looking at the JRapid's web-based IDE in the "Main" view.

4.2 The Source code Editor

Most of the time you will find it easier and more intuitive to develop your applications using the IDE's visual interface. But if you feel more comfortable writing your application's definition directly through the XML source code, you can switch to the built-in editor.

You can try the JRapid IDE in a demo project here.

5. Modeling your applications

JRapid IDE Working Steps:

1. Think your application in entities and properties.
2. Describe the model in the design or code perspective.
3. Generate files and deploy to the cloud in just one click.
4. The application is ready!

JRapid applications are modeled using Entities which contain Properties. The JRapid's Code Generator will generate Java classes (definition classes, Data Access Objects, etc), hibernate mapping files, database
tables with the entity's properties as columns, HTML forms, etc.

Entities and Properties take a "name" attribute which uniquely identifies them and are used for the underlying Java classes, database tables and columns. They also have a "label" attribute which is used as the descriptive name shown to the end user.

To create an Entity using the JRapid IDE's visual interface go the "Create" menu > "Create entity".

The "Editing AppEntity" window will be opened. Complete the required attributes "name" and "label" and add properties as you like.

6. Generate files

JRapid’s generation process can be divided in two: creating the presentation layer of the application (HTML, CSS, etc.) and creating the service layer (Java classes and database tables).

In order to generate all the files, compile java classes and refresh the cloud context, click on the "Generate HTML + Java" link.

7. Your First JRapid Application

This post will end with a step-by-step example of the development of a sample CRM application. You will find more CRM application examples in the JRapid's Wiki and User Manual.

Application requirements (from client for example):

"A CRM application which manages Companies and Sellers. A company can own many sellers and a seller can belong to only one Company. The application should be able to store, find and edit companies and sellers and display record listings of both."

Given the application requirements we can detect a "Company" entity, a "Seller" entity and a one-to-many relationship from Company to Seller.

Step 1:

Create the "Company" (menu: Companies) entity with the following properties:

1. "name" (type/entity: string, display: primary)
   
2. "address" (type/entity: string) and "thumbnail" (type: image)
3. "thumbnail" (type/entity: image)

Step 2:

Create the "Seller" (menu: Sellers) entity with the following properties:

1. "thumbnail" (type/entity: image)
   
2. "name" (type/entity: string, display: primary)
   
3. "surname" (type/entity: string)
   
4. "birthdate" (type/entity: date)

Step 3:

Generate HTML + Java.

Step 4:

Connect the entities by adding the following properties:

1. a "company" property (type/entity: Company) to the Seller entity.
   
   

   

2. a "sellers" property (type/entity: Seller, collection: set, embedded: inline, childproperty: company) to the Company entity.
   
   

   

By doing this you are modeling a one-to-many relationship from Company to Seller. You can learn more about modeling relationships with JRapid in the collection Wiki page.

Step 5:

Generate HTML + Java

Step 6:

Preview Index.

8. Next steps

Congratulations ! You have created you first JRapid application! No standard Java, JDBC, Hibernate, JavaScript or CSS code required.

Now have a look to the real "Sample CRM" application.

JRapid allows the development of much more complex web applications which generally demand developers to code custom business logic. Even though the "Files" view is a fast way to submit small changes to the application's code, it is not as powerful as a desktop IDE like Eclipse. Fortunately, JRapid developed an Eclipse Plugin which main goal is to keep your JRapid project synchronized with your workspace.

Check the JRapid's Documentation page were you will find more documentation about JRapid, tutorials, examples, etc.

Do not forget to check the Community's blog posts in community.jrapid.com!