V. 10.2 is out: new calendar/date picker, new permissions copy feature, many important fixes

Posted by Eugenio on 16 Jul 2020

Hello everybody,
I am glad to announce the availability of DaDaBIK 10.2 Manarola.

This version contains two important new features, some other improvements and the fix for many issues.

Here are the two big features:

1) We have a new, modern and powerful calendar/date picker: flatpickr. This replaces the old jquery date picker (you can still use the old date picker by setting $date_picker_type in config.php) and provides several improvements including localization (the calendar uses the general language you chose for your DaDaBIK application) and user-friendly date format (you can show, in the edit form, something like May 12, 2020 even if the value you are sending to the server is 2020-05-12, see new config param $date_format_edit).

2) Table-to-Table permissions copy. This was the most upvoted feature in our canny and therefore I decided to implement it.
When you copy permissions from table A to table B, DaDaBIK identifies the fields that A and B have in common and copy the permissions, for all the groups, only for those fields. A typical use of this feature is when you create a view B starting from a table A (where the view B has the same fields table A has, or a subset of them) and you want to assign the same permissions.
This feature is for Enterprise/Platinum version only.

You can see both the new features in the sales management online demo (check the table orders to see an example of the new date picker)

Other improvements in the change log

About the issues fixed: the bug related to group-to-group copy permission (you probably heard about it if you are registered to this newsletter) made me go for a complete code revision (related to wildcard escaping) so in the changelog you will see a more complete description of the bug (that has been fixed) and the description of several other (related and not related) issues that have been fixed.

I strongly suggest to go through the change log ( to understand which issues your current DaDaBIK application might have) and to upgrade to this latest version.

Among the other things, a known bug, not fixed yet, has been added to the documentation, related to records having, has unique field value, a string containing particular characters. I would say that the vast majority of typical dadabik applications are not affected, but it is important to check that out.

You can buy your license here

As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 10.2 copy from the upgrade page .

I hope you will have a great and safe summer!

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

New upgrade procedure + Folding@home

Posted by Eugenio on 30 Apr 2020

Dear DaDaBIK community,
I hope that you and your beloved ones are still doing fine during this difficult period.

I am writing this email because some time ago I started to work on a long-awaited improvement: an easier upgrade procedure.

The general idea for the new procedure is:
1) you copy the zip file you download into an "upgrades" folder
2) you run the upgrade script, that should take care of everything

It's not a trivial thing to develop, it's full of tricky details and I would like to hear your comments, ideas, thoughts about it. I've created a post on the forum with some details and you can add your comments there:


Finally let me add something not related to DaDaBIK: this is a very difficult period all over the world and in the area where I live (north Italy) the impact of the virus has been particularly strong.

There are many ways we can contribute to the fight against COVID-19 (by donating money to the most under pressure hospitals in your area or all over the world, for example) and I think you all are aware of them.

I would like to add one little thing we all can do from our home, using our computers: download and install foldingathome.org to use the computational power of your computer to help research on COVID-19 and other diseases.

Maybe you can use foldingathome when your computer is idle or you have an old computer or other supported device that you can use (switching off the monitor to save electricity).

I've just created a DaDaBIK team on foldingathome and if you want, feel free to join it (Team ID 264163) to connect our little efforts.

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

Low-Code Corner, a new YouTube Series

Posted by Eugenio on 31 Mar 2020

Dear DaDaBIK community,
first of all, I really hope that you and your beloved ones are doing fine during this very difficult period.

As probably most of you, I am spending my time at home and during the last week I started to work on a few things that I always postponed.

One of these things is a new YouTube series called "low-code corner": it's a series of short videos, each focused on a very specific aspect related to the development of a Web application using DaDaBIK, most of the times related to the questions I receive more often.

Every Monday morning I will post a new episode. If you want to keep updated on the videos, click on SUBSCRIBE and then hit the notification bell on YouTube , I won't send you an email for the next videos.

The first episode is related to the language translations / localization of a DaDaBIK application, including some advanced uses. You can watch the video here .

If you have any suggestions for the next episodes, send an email or post a comment on YouTube.

Stay home. Stay safe.

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

V. 10.1 is here with improved PDF templates. Let's shape the future of DaDaBIK together with canny.io

Posted by Eugenio on 9 Mar 2020

Hello everybody,
I am glad to announce the availability of DaDaBIK 10.1 Manarola. It is mainly a maintenance release, but it also contains some improvements.

The most important improvement is related to PDF templates: now your PDF templates can contain not just HTML code but also PHP code.

If you think this is a litte improvement, you are probably wrong. Adding PHP code to your templates opens to MANY new possibilities: just to mention an example, part of your template can now change according to some conditions (e.g. according to the user currently logged in). For a very simple example of PHP code embedded into a PDF template, check this

If you had some *.php template files, the files must be now renamed to *_settings.php (see the documentation).

Other good news:

• Nested master/details views (the items table of a master/details view is also a master/details view) are now fully supported (with unlimited levels of nesting).
  
• Primary keys composed by multiple columns are now partially supported: when DaDaBIK detects a table having a composite primary key, it automatically adds a unique, auto-increment, additional field to the table and uses it as "unique field". This feature at the moment is only available on MySQL and you have to enable it from config.php (add_additional_dadabik_id_field parameter)
  
  
• DaDaBIK now shows, for uploaded pictures, the picture itself in the edit form (you can disable this feature from config.php)
  

For the complete lists of bugs fixed and changes, see the change log. It is very important to check fixed bugs especially if you use PostgreSQL or lookup fields with default values.

You can buy your license here.

As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 10.1 copy from the upgrade page.

But there is more.

During all these years I've experimented several methods to track and include your feedback and ideas in the development of DaDaBIK:

• the feature requests forum, available since 2002, with more than 300 features requested since then
  
• the "Desiderata" document, shared with some of the users for planning which features should be finally implemented in each major release
  
• the skype calls I make since a few years ago with the beta testers, typically one month before publishing a major release
  

I think that most of the new features implemented in DaDaBIK have been chosen according to the comments and ideas emerged using those tools.

During the last beta test for v. 10 Manarola, one of the beta tester suggested me to try some modern tools for feedback collection. I decided to accept the advice and I've tried a few of them and I've finally decided to adopt canny.io.

While it is not perfect, I think it is what we need to easily track our preferences and suggestions. Have a look here:

https://dadabik.canny.io/feature-requests

You can upvote existing features or propose new ones. At the moment there are about 30 features and they are the result of an accurate analysis I've done considering the forum, the old desiderata documents, the skype calls and the features I think would be useful.

If you want to upvote or propose a new feature, you have to sign up for canny (signup link, top right corner). Please note that you need a valid DaDaBIK forum account to sign up and you have to use the same email you used on the forum; all the users registered without a correspondant DaDaBIK active forum account are periodically deleted.

Let me know if you have any suggestion about this new tool and please add your contribution. My suggestion is to upvote MAX 7-8 features: if everbody upvotes every feature we won't get any insight.

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder

18 years of low-coding / no-coding with DaDaBIK - DaDaBIK 10 "Manarola" is here

Posted by Eugenio on 12 Dec 2019

Hello everybody,
I am very glad to announce the release of DaDaBIK 10 Manarola.

It's a very important anniversary: not only it's v.10 but DaDaBIK also turns … 18!

I published the very first 1.0 beta release in November 2001. I started to build DaDaBIK because I felt frustrated as a Web developer: I felt I was wasting my time dealing with repetitive coding tasks. What I needed was a flexible tool capable of handling those repetitive tasks for me, freeing up my time for more complex and unique tasks. The very first idea (back in 2000) was to create a smart automatic CRUD creator, one of the very first in the market. Creating such a tool seemed challenging and that was the other reason because I decided to start :)

After 18 years and 79 releases, I still use DaDaBIK to build Web applications and thousands of other people (coders and non-coders) from all over the world can also do it.

I have spent a lot of energy on this new version, I really wanted to build something special to take DaDaBIK to the next level as a low-code no-code development platform and I hope you will like it.

SO ... WHAT'S NEW IN DADABIK 10 ?

The list of new features is very long, I'll just mention a few of them here, please have a look at our release video for a more detailed analysis and check our new online demo.



DB admin
Create and alter tables directly in DaDaBIK without the need to use PHPMyAdmin or similar tools. You don't need to start from an existing database or Excel file anymore. You can create your database with DaDaBIK.

FORM configurator live preview
Stop jumping back and forth from the form configurator to your final application. You can now see a live preview of a form WHILE you are setting the form configurator, in the same page.

Conditional fields
Show/hide a field in a form according to a custom function (e.g. according to the value of another field).

Revisions / Audit (platinum only)
Track a version HISTORY of your data and see - through a convenient interface - WHO and WHEN changed your records.

HTTP API (platinum only)
Integrate DaDaBIK with other applications: authenticate and select records via an HTTP API, getting replies in JSON.

Pivot tables
Create reports using summary/pivot tables to aggregate data; use them to build dashboards.

As usual, you can find all the new features and bug fixes in the change log and, as mentioned before, you can find an analysis of the new features in our release video on youtube.

You can buy your license here. As usual, if you already have a license, get your v. 10 copy from the upgrade page.

A few words about the name :) After "Monterosso", "Manarola" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manarola) is another wonderful Italian village belonging to the "Cinque Terre".

Many thanks to all the beta testers, who went through three private beta releases during the last months: thanks for your time and for the fruitful Skype talks we had …. your feedback (positive and negative) contributed to shape V. 10 "Manarola" as it is released today and will contribute to shape future releases.

Merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone!

Best,

Eugenio Tacchini
DaDaBIK founder