Release 1.1.3.1 of Domino REST API introduces a breaking change in CORS handling. This makes configuration less straightforward, but as the documentation states, it increases the flexibility and probably makes things a lot easier for larger environments. And though regex is not something Domino developers work with regularly, there are tools close to home that can help.
As a researcher, I'm always looking to learn, to expand the toolbag I have, and find innovative ways to improve outcomes. Even when AI is not at the heart of the project I'm working on, I'm constantly looking for ways it can make my life easier and life easier for developers using what I create. And the fact that we targeted a standard IDE means the effort required to integrate AI is reduced. But as with any new tool, it's important to learn what it can do and what it can't. And work this week has shown me that this requires a diligent approach.
Back when the application was on XPages and spots were associated to a trip, there was a summary page that gave stats for the number of new spots, ships, ports, and countries during a trip. Now the requirement for trips has gone. But sometimes it's nice to see details of new documents across a period of time. So over the weekend, I added that functionality. This was very similar to a Spots By Date page, which I had not yet covered. So we'll cover both together.
In my last blog post I talked about CSP and inline CSS. I mentioned that I had not addressed these issues with this Ship Spotter app. In this blog post we'll start to fix that.
Recently there have been discussions about inline CSS in XPages. The absence of anyone mentioning a feature in XPages prompted me to eventually ask about a piece of functionality relevant to this.
Now the application is built and has been in use for many months. It's time to review experiences and lessons learned.
One of the key skills when working in IT research is the ability to work out how something works, either by looking at the code or being able to see the process behind a button or API call on your screen. The inevitable consequence then is that you understand how things work, you see comparisons between technologies or frameworks, and you begin to identify whether or why something will work or fail. You also gain understanding of various possible approaches and which is the right one. That results in a "lessons learned" blog post like this one.
Now that we've set up the CRUD pages for ships and spots, it's time to put them together. When we search a ship, we'll want to be able to see the spots created for that ship. Now let's set that up.
When it comes to creating Ship Spots, one of the pain points I highlighted with the previous application was when a Ship Spot required creating a new Port or a new Country. This required switching to an "admin" area to open a Port form to complete and save; and if the country hasn't been created, it requires additionally switching to a County form to complete and save, before returning to the Port and back to the Ship Spot. Options were cached server-side in viewScope, so launching additional browser windows wasn't an option - the page would still need to be refreshed and entered data lost. We can improve on this.
In the last part I covered CSS Grid and its use for the layout of the Ship Spot form. In this part I'm going to cover the additional form functionality and save functionality.