With Protogrid, a simple, useful App can be created without any programming skills. As soon as you want to add some customized comfort functionalities with JavaScript, it can be neccessary to access the database of the application through the JSON-API. There exists a documentation of the JSON-API, which explains requests and responses. Nevertheless it can be helpful to test the requests and see, what the responses look like, without running code to discover the API.

Postman

Our Developers use Postman to do this. Postman allows to make different requests and look at the responses. Thanks to the included authorization it is easy to imitate the behaviour of the script library.


Under the tab "Authorization" you can choose the option BasicAuth and log in with your Protogrid Login data.
Now you can start different requests. I show you the basics of GET and POST, since those are the most frequent request types.


To perform a request of type GET, first choose the option GET at the top and enter the desired API request. By clicking on Send your request gets sent and you get the response below the "Authorization". Now you can see, how the returned JSON-object response looks like and where you find your desired information.


To perform a reqest of type POST, choose the option POST and enter the address. Now you need to add the data you want to send with the request. Do so by choosing "Body" in the top tab bar, where you also find the "Authorization" tab. As type, choose "raw" and in the appearing drop down menu select "JSON(application/json)". Now you can enter your data. After sending the request, you find the response in the same text field as before.

By performing this operations, you come to know better the API and you are able to test your requests. Please be aware, that your requests get tested on the real data and therefore will be visible in your Environment.
For additional questions, our protogrid support team is happy to help you.

Data management can have different shapes: Workers and their current tasks must be laid down in an organised manner. Product catalogues are supposed to be mobile. Important documents should be accessible offline. For such and similar problems there are many applications that are almost, but not quite, suited to the needs of the user. With some (usually time-consuming and complicated) auxiliary constructions, these applications can be adapted to their own needs. At least up to the next structural change of the data.
It would sometimes be much simpler and more efficient to program your own small application, which is tailored to your own problem and can be quickly changed for internal adaptations. However, programming skills are often required to achieve this, and if you don't have those skills available, development becomes expensive. This is the starting point on which Protogrid can give a hand.
Protogrid is a platform that allows you to program an application for data management without any previous knowledge. After the free registration in trial mode you can create an application with a simple click. You define the name and URL of the application along with read and write permissions and an empty application is created. Now you can define different "Protos". A Proto represents a data unit, for example a person, a product, a document. By adding different fields, the Proto gets properties: A text field for the name, a date field for the birthday, a relation field for the department in which this worker is employed. In the Proto for departments, we create a list view to see all the persons working in this department. For persons we do not want to allow attachments, but for projects it should be possible to attach a file. Different colors for different data units simplify navigation. Red for urgent communications, green for permits. In order to make the application accessible to foreign employees, we add another language and translate the application into the respective language. If these basic Protogrid capabilities are not sufficient to adapt an application to the problem, you can program extensions with JavaScript.

Once the application has received its basic structure, it can be published as an iOS application. This application is also available offline and updates the data as soon as there is a connection to the server. If you add a new field, the iOS application adapts itself without requiring a new release. This means that all users of the application are always up to date and small adjustments can be made at any time. Different access rights for different people ensure that data can only be changed by the designated employees.
In just a few hours you can develop an application that fits perfectly to your own situation.