Developer Blog

Data and Scripting Basics

Published September 22, 2014 by Cate

Data Classes

Script Language

Screen Data and Scripting

Data and scripts are crucial building blocks of your Appway solution. Proper data management is key, making sure that the data model accurately describes how data is organized, with clear relationships between pieces of information. When it comes to data management it is also important to think about the data life cycle, where the data is stored, how long it will be stored there, how it gets cleaned up.

"Data Class" business objects describe the data in your app and form its data model. Data classes allow you to create and manage complex structures of entities and their attributes. The "Create a Data Class" video guides you through the basic steps.

Read our Data Classes: Best Practice guidelines for suggestions on how to manage data classes in an efficient and streamlined way.

Scripts
If you want to define and manipulate instances of your data model, then you need to use expressions and scripts.

The Appway Script Language is an object-oriented, strongly typed, interpreted script language that supports the creation of new data classes, primitive types, functions, and class methods.

You can use the Interactive Script Editor to write and execute Appway scripts outside the context of a process. Our "Using the Interactive Script Editor" video tutorial gives you a short introduction — and also highlights the code snippet library, where you can save code fragments for reuse.

If you need to reuse more than small snippets, you can also create your own Script Functions: reusable sections of code available globally in the Appway Studio. Appway automatically creates the skeleton Script Function structure, which you then need to modify. Watch "Create a Script Function" to find out more.

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Image courtesy ArtfulMagpie / Flickr

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