Newbie Customization

[Ledbelly2142]

Hi, I'm new to AppGini and no PHP expert. I am very happy with what I have been able to accomplish in a short period of time, its a huge time saver and app enabler, THANKS!

Now that I have my first app running, I would like to customize it for branding, e.g. add my company/app logo and stuff. Where do I start?

I read about the "hooks" but do not grasp how they relate to customization.

Also, I would like to add charts inside the app. I would like to add pie charts, Radar charts, line charts, and bar charts for data visualization. It may be easier to add charts outside the AppGini interface, my hope is that someone has done this before and can point me in the right direction.

Any pointers are appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg

[peebee]

Hi Greg,

Hooks really have nothing to do with "branding" your database (logos, style, etc). Hooks are designed to control/trigger actions or functions within your database. Such as; On "Save" -> perform a function (like send an email, etc).

To add logos and other such customisation you will need basic html & CSS knowledge/skills. For instance, to add a logo to your login page; simply open login.php (an AppGini generated file) and insert your image there above the form; into the "login-splash" <div> for example. You can also add individual style by adding appropriate code to the generated style.css file.

You can also add your own branding to all pages within the data tables and detail view by editing the generated header.php & footer.php files. Same principle as the login page - just insert the logo image using html & CSS.

You can also add custom headers/footers to individual pages by inserting code using custom hooks (slightly more complex). See: http://bigprof.com/appgini/help/advance ... ame_header

As far adding charts, etc... It will all depend on what you want to inert and where? AppGini doesn't generate charts/graphs if that is what you are talking about. If you are wanting to insert your own charts, how to go about it would depend on where you want them to be displayed?

Hope that helps a little way to what you are trying to achieve.

[Ledbelly2142]

peebee,
Thanks for the pointers, much appreciated.

The charts I would like to do have to do with inserting them on an appgini php generated page. One way I could do it is by creating the chart (java or other) and add the url to a table, that way a user can just click on the link and goto the chart.
I would like to include the chart in the php form... but in order to do that, I would need to change the fixed width of the columns on the php table pages. I don't know if changing the column width can be done for the php table display pages.
I hope I am making sense.
Thanks,
Greg

[Johnk]

Hi Greg,

I've already asked Ahmad to consider a WYSIWYG version of AppGini but I'm not too sure he's planning to do it in the near or distant future.

One thing I want to do is put fields beside each other: Firstname, Lastname. I'm able to do this myself using a WYSIWYG HTML editor. In my case, Dreamweaver.

AppGini creates a HTML file called xxx_templateDV.html. You'll find it in the Templates folder of your generated code. It's not easy to play with, but anything you do to the template will be reflected on your site. I've put fields three abreast and added text. I haven't put a logo there because I don't need to. Keep in mind that the file may be overwritten when you make changes somewhere else, so always keep a copy.

Be warned, some knowledge of HTML is required and you need to know how to use your HTML editor. I think Ahmad will eventually be "forced" into making AppGini easier to manipulate and I've put him on to a couple of similar programs that have a few interesting ways of doing things. Whether he takes up the challenge and whether he can get around copyright issues is something only he can decide. Maybe he'll leave well alone, but I think the next version may still have a few desirable features.

[Ledbelly2142]

John,
Thanks for your feedback. I use NetObjects 12 (it works...)for my WYSIWYG editor, and Notepad++ for editing. I did read that every time you change/update your appgini app, most things get written over. There appears to be a way to select (checkbox) files not to overwrite, my guess is that someone familiar with this process can negotiate the file overwriting safely. I don't yet understand it fully.

If there was a feature I to recommend, it would be having HTML5 as an optional PHP directed output.

I will dive into formatting the xxx_templateDV.html pages after I get my mountain of data entry in...

Thanks for your help.

-Greg

[Johnk]

Hi Greg, The easiest way to overcome AppGini from overwriting files is to make them read only. On your Windows test box, just right click the file and in Properties click read only. That should be more secure than AppGini''s compiler because we often forget and click overwrite all.

When you're playing with the editor, keep in mind that Ahmad has a lot of coding for a field to highlight the label when you hover over it etc. I deleted a lot of that stuff and everything continued to work. Hopefully Ahmad will do a dissection one day and tell us what each line of code does.

The process is messy but it works.

John