js.component: Taking 4D to the next level – Aparajita Fishman

Posted on February 22, 2022 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, March 2, 2022, 12:00 noon, CST (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
js.component: Taking 4D to the next level – Aparajita Fishman

4D has taken a lot of steps towards modernizing the language with v19, but there is other functionality that is taken for granted in the JavaScript world but missing in 4D — until now.

js.component a pure 4D component comprising 30 classes with over 400 functions that:

  • Dramatically improves the developer experience
  • Reduces method count, lines of code, and coding time
  • Provides multiple, super-convenient ways of debugging code
  • Fills in many holes in the 4D language
  • Implements key object-oriented techniques that are mostly unknown in the 4D world
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Keeping Up With 4D’s Latest Technologies — A Worthwhile Endeavor – Chris Belanger

Posted on January 11, 2022 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, January 19, 2022, 12:00 noon, CST (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
Keeping Up With 4D’s Latest Technologies — A Worthwhile Endeavor – Chris Belanger

Since 4D version 17, 4D has provided many new features that facilitate simplification and clarity in data structures and code. We have new Data Structures such as Objects and Collections. We have new Language Features such as Dot Notation and Formulas to say the least. We now have ORDA (Object Relational Data Access) where the database is itself an object! And we now have ORDA classes and custom made classes.

Phew! That is a lot to learn in just a few versions of 4D. We are all exploring how to take advantage of the many new features and finding out how to integrate the new language into older applications. It can be hard to keep up sometimes, but it is a worthwhile endeavor. So come for a run with us, and see where the 4D road is heading!

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Avec classe: UI with Class – Vincent de Lachaux

Posted on November 12, 2021 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, November 17, 2021, 12:00 noon, CST (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
Avec classe: UI with Class – Vincent de Lachaux

For this final 4DMethod meeting of 2021, you are going to need imagination.  Think of how in the finale of classic kung fu movies, you would often see a Shaolin master off to the side with their arms crossed waiting to engage the battle and unleash the fury of the ages with their veritable martial arts skills.  Now instead imagine that scene, except it is a 4DMethod meeting on Zoom with a kind-hearted Frenchman, Vincent de Lachaux, ready to release his 4D mastery in the form of a set of classes to manage form objects in a 4D application interface. 

Yes… epic indeed!

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4D Server Monitoring using Grafana and Prometheus – Thomas Maul

Posted on September 24, 2021 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, October 6, 2021, 12:00 noon, CDT (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
4D Server Monitoring using Grafana and Prometheus – Thomas Maul

Grafana is a well-known, open source tool to visualize data metrics such as CPU load, disk IOPS or network traffic. People have used Grafana to create some pretty incredible dashboards for tracking anything from Kubernetes container-orchestration system, to home energy usage, to website performance, to GitHub repository activity, to Covid-19 cases, and on and on.

Prometheus, also open source, is used to fetch and store raw metrics in the form of time series and can be used for event monitoring and alerting. Grafana and Prometheus are easily used together to generate beautiful and informative dashboards that will offer powerful insight into performance data.

In this meeting, Thomas Maul, the VP of Product Strategy for 4D and Managing Director for 4D Germany, will demonstrate how 4D, Grafana, and Prometheus make a power trio that rocks.

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Enrich UX and UI with Unicode Special Characters – Add Komoncharoensiri

Posted on August 16, 2021 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, August 25, 2021, 12:00 noon, CDT (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
Enrich UX and UI with Unicode Special Characters – Add Komoncharoensiri

Unicode support allows 4D to handle a wider range of character set in an application. The basic range of Unicode includes several letters, flat drawings, and symbols. As part of the extension, Unicode also includes special HTML-symbol characters like rich icons and emojis. These special characters can be efficiently used in text expression in a way that words sometimes cannot. They can also be used as icons to enhance the User Interface.

In this meeting, we will explore a few ways on how to take advantage of these special Unicode characters to enrich the application user experience and user interface.

A 4D Project on Github with some code examples will be made available.

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Different ways to access and display 4D data – Christophe Flament

Posted on May 4, 2021 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, May 12, 2021, 12:00 noon, CDT (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
Different ways to access and display 4D data – Christophe Flament – Ponga Consulting, Inc.

4D is constantly evolving adding new concepts and features.  As 4D developers, we have to keep up.  Here is an opportunity to learn some of those new concepts.

In this demo, Christophe Flament will demonstrate how to access 4D data via HTTP requests, displaying it using ORDA: collection / object.  He will also explain some of the code techniques we can now use with 4D v18 R6.

Using a project database (Library-Demo) adapted from a v17 demo, Christophe will explain how you can display data into a form with a listbox loading it via an HTTP request.  This concept is useful, for example, if you want to create a Volume Desktop application that will run independently with no local data/ getting it from the 4D Server via HTTP request calls instead.  The same concept is also applicable to PHP code loading the 4D data into a web interface or using the Postman application for testing.

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Argus Development Environment Shell and Tools for 4D – Jody Bevan

Posted on March 4, 2021 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, March 31, 2021, 12:00 noon, CDT (UTC−5:00)  (updated from March 24)

Special Topic:
Argus Development Environment Shell & Tools for 4D – Jody Bevan

Let Jody Bevan take you on a tour of the Argus Development Environment (ADE).  Jody has been a big name in 4D development since his days with JonokeMed, what used to be one of the widest used medical applications of its type in Canada.  He has rolled that momentum and experience forward into his latest project, Argus ADE. Continue reading →

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Building developer.4d.com, a Markdown-based Documentation Site – Arnaud Schmitt

Posted on January 21, 2021 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 12:00 noon, CST (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
Building developer.4d.com, a Markdown-based Documentation Site – Arnaud Schmitt

Some of us live by the mantra “When all else fails, read the manual.”  However I think that applies better to Ikea than 4D application development!  We all rely heavily on 4D documentation and are often even obliged to create documentation for our own applications (see… developers favorite task).

This meeting will offer us all a rare peek behind the scenes of how 4D documentation is maintained and how the approach is changing to keep pace with the evolving platform.

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Quickly Open Things in 4D Development Environment and Sync Code Between Projects – Cannon Smith

Posted on November 11, 2020 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, November 18, 2020, 12:00 noon, CST (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
Quickly Open Things in 4D Development Environment and Sync Code Between Projects – Cannon Smith

Project mode in 4D opens some interesting development tool possibilities that we didn’t have before, especially now with the new FORM EDIT command added in v18 R5. In this meeting, we’ll explore two such tools that have been made available publicly on GitHub… DevQuickOpen and DevSync.

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Building your own Classes in 4D – Tim Nevels

Posted on October 5, 2020 by 4DMethod

Wednesday, October 7, 2020, 12:00 noon, CDT (UTC−5:00)

Special Topic:
Building your own Classes in 4D: Examples and sample code – Tim Nevels

4D v18 R3 introduced another new feature to the 4D programming language which will be sure to transform application architectures for years to come:  Classes.  In short, this is a pretty big deal.

But Object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts may be unfamiliar to some of us, and the functionality in 4D is certainly new.  So let’s all start exploring and digging into the new concepts together!

Continue reading →

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