Bob‘s ActiveRecord class?

What is the latest version? Really the one from 2015?

That is the one I downloaded in May… Apparently it is no longer going to be free.

ARGen is now Tim’s so I can’t really say where he’s going with it. But I believe (I could be wrong) that ARGen will still be able to output 2 tables at a time and no UI with no license. I can say that Tim’s done a ton of work to make it work better and fixed some longstanding issues - all things that we had on our list when BKS had it.

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One of the things I’ve done is make sure the ActiveRecord module has a Version constant! If the ActiveRecord module doesn’t have one, it is very out of date.

The latest version of ActiveRecord is bundled inside ARGen, and you can use the ActiveRecord library without a license for ARGen. As Bob mentioned, you can use the trial to generate up to two table classes.

This is the easiest way to get the latest ActiveRecord version, and as a bonus you’ll get an example for what the classes you write by hand should look like.

The ActiveRecord library is MIT licensed. You can use it without a license for ARGen. Where did you get the notion that the library itself wasn’t going to be free? I’d love to correct this!

The file was not available on Bob’s website and I did not see a way to download it on yours. That is why I assumed you were updating it and making future versions part of the ARGEN product.

Looks like it was a bad assumption! That said I don’t know where one can get a current version of ActiveRecord.

-Karen

I think I have made a bad assumption myself. I assumed that people weren’t downloading from that page because I’d never gotten a complaint that version!

I will consider the best way to bring back the separate ActiveRecord download and keep all of it’s homes in sync and up to date.

The latest publicly available ActiveRecord is version 2019.01 found inside ARGen 3.1.2 which includes a fix that respects the ActiveRecordConfig.kIncludePostgres setting. It’s only an issue if your Xojo license doesn’t include the database server plugins (i.e. a Lite license) - it doesn’t cause a functionality problem.

The next version of ARGen features an updated ActiveRecord library that include an actual license text so that developers are aware that the library is MIT licensed and that they are free to use it. It has some great updates:

New:

  • API 2.0 support
  • Multiple database connections in one project
  • Verify that class database properties still exist in the database at runtime
  • Saving a nil foreign key will INSERT / UPDATE a NULL value for the field

Changed:

  • Rebranded library name
  • Fixed all warnings in the ActiveRecord module
  • Consolidated multiple modules in to ActiveRecord

Removed:

  • REALSQLDatabase

Again When one downloads Argen from your site on only gets the Argen executable but not the ActiveRecord source files and it’s not available on Bob’s site. Bob’s site used to provide the source code for ActiveRecord.

I assume you will not be providing that any longer?

-Karen

For the immediate time being you’ll have to download ARGen 3.1.2 and use the trial to generate a project with the newest library. I’m considering ways to keep everything in sync and offer a separate download for just the library. The separate download will likely reappear when I release the next version :slight_smile:

The main goal is to prevent the separate download from falling out of sync.

When you say Library are you taking pre compiled or encrypted source code for ActiveRecord or unencrypted source code. Basically I am asking if the source code will be available freely again. That is what Markus was asking about I think.

-Karen

The ActiveRecord module is and will continue to be available in source code form. :slight_smile:

(it’s just an oversight, I promise!)

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Oh so when it generates the couple tables it spits out the entire ActiveRecord code along with it ?
Thats handy

Yup. That’s why we never updated the original project. ARGen always had the most complete and up to date code.

FWIW, I did some beta testing for Tim yesterday and the changes in ARGen are superb. He did all the things that were on my wish list for years and did considerable clean up and made the overall project simpler and more concise. I think people will be pleased with the next version. BTW, I have no idea when that will happen.

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But Bob Promised !!!

:stuck_out_tongue:

Troublemaker.

6 months you say ?
That wasnt my fault - troublemaker :slight_smile:

It was not registering on me that the Demo ARGen would spit out The Active record classes.

BTW what UI stuff does Argen do? I thought it just produced classes for interaction with a DB.

UI generation is disabled in the demo and I did not see any screen shots of the of type UI stuff it can produce on your website.

It might be a good idea to put some screenshots up to show all the types of UI stuff it can produce.

-Karen

ARGen will do a basic List view with handlers for Add, Edit, Delete and the Add/Edit will take you to an appropriate Edit window. The Edit window has the basic controls, label array, Load/Save/Validate methods already put in. The List Window is fairly complete with only a few places to modify for your own code, but the Edit window has a number of places where you have to finish up the code as there’s no way to accurately guess what your project requires. ARGen puts in #pragma error statements in all the places where you need to do work and in many cases ARGen will have commented code that might be close enough but we leave it up to you to figure that.

To generate the UI requires a license. The license also lets you do more than two tables/views at a time. If you’re doing a lot of db projects from scratch, like BKS did, then this saved hundreds of hours of monotonous coding time.

I’m sure Tim will do a video at some point or add additional screenshots to his webpage.

Big thanks to Bob for answering some questions for me :smiley:

The UI that’s generated is more useful than it is any kind of a visually appealing design. ARGen will generate rows of field label + control from how the User Interface setup panel is configured. I think Bob’s right, a video might show this feature best. You can change the types of controls generated. Coming in the next version ARGen will default BOOLEAN fields to checkboxes!

I’ve also (just) changed the #pragma errors into hard breakpoints so that you can run the project right away and take care of hooking up the UI as you get to each window. The next version has a bunch of refinements that I’m really excited to share. I’m waiting on some more beta feedback, but have a feeling I’ll be releasing soon :slight_smile:

Can you move to another database? For example have an SQLite database and save it as a PostGres when you develop a need for multi-user?