Manage Applications

HarperDB Applications are enabled by default and can be configured further through the HarperDB Studio. It is recommended to read through the Applications documentation first to gain a strong understanding of HarperDB Applications behavior.

All Applications configuration and development is handled through the applications page of the HarperDB Studio, accessed with the following instructions:

1. Navigate to the HarperDB Studio Organizations page.

2. Click the appropriate organization that the instance belongs to.

3. Select your desired instance.

4. Click applications in the instance control bar.

Note, the applications page will only be available to super users.

Manage Applications

The Applications editor is not required for development and deployment, though it is a useful tool to maintain and manage your HarperDB Applications. The editor provides the ability to create new applications or import/deploy remote application packages.

The left bar is the applications file navigator, allowing you to select files to edit and add/remove files and folders. By default, this view is empty because there are no existing applications. To get started, either create a new application or import/deploy a remote application.

The right side of the screen is the file editor. Here you can make edit individual files of your application directly in the HarperDB Studio.

Things to Keep in Mind

To learn more about developing HarperDB Applications, make sure to read through the Applications documentation.

When working with Applications in the HarperDB Studio, by default the editor will restart the HarperDB Applications server every time a file is saved. Note, this behavior can be turned off by toggling the auto toggle at the top right of the applications page. If you are constantly editing your application, it may result in errors causing the application not to run. These errors will not be visible on the application page, however they will be available in the HarperDB logs, which can be found on the status page.

The Applications editor stores unsaved changes in cache. This means that occasionally your editor will show a discrepancy from the code that is stored and running on your HarperDB instance. You can identify if the code in your Studio differs if the "save" and "revert" buttons are active. To revert the cached version in your editor to the version of the file stored on your HarperDB instance click the "revert" button.

Accessing Your Application Endpoints

Accessing your application endpoints varies with which type of endpoint you're creating. All endpoints, regardless of type, will be accessed via the HarperDB HTTP port found in the HarperDB configuration file. The default port is 9926, but you can verify what your instances is set to by navigating to the instance config page and examining the read only JSON version of your instance's config file looking specifically for either the http: port: 9926 or http: securePort: 9926 configs. If port is set, you will access your endpoints via http and if securePort is set, you will access your endpoints via https.

Below is a breakdown of how to access each type of endpoint. In these examples, we will use a locally hosted instance with securePort set to 9926: https://localhost:9926.

• Standard REST Endpoints Standard REST endpoints are defined via the @export directive to tables in your schema definition. You can read more about these in the Adding an Endpoint section of the Applications documentation. Here, if we are looking to access a record with ID 1 from table Dog on our instance, per the REST documentation, we could send a GET (or since this is a GET, we could post the URL in our browser) to https://localhost:9926/Dog/1.
• Augmented REST Endpoints HarperDB Applications enable you to write Custom Functionality with JavaScript for your resources. Accessing these endpoints is identical to accessing the standard REST endpoints above, though you may have defined custom behavior in each function. Taking the example from the Applications documentation, if we are looking to access the DogWithHumanAge example, we could send the GET to https://localhost:9926/DogWithHumanAge/1.
• Fastify Routes If you need more functionality than the REST applications can provide, you can define your own custom endpoints using Fastify Routes. The paths to these routes are defined via the application config.yaml file. You can read more about how you can customize the configuration options in the Define Fastify Routes documentation. By default, routes are accessed via the following pattern: [Instance URL]:[HTTP Port]/[Project Name]/[Route URL]. Using the example from the HarperDB Application Template, where we've named our project application-template, we would access the getAll route at https://localhost/application-template/getAll.

Creating a New Application

1. From the application page, click the "+ app" button at the top right.

2. Click "+ Create A New Application Using The Default Template".

3. Enter a name for your project, note project names must contain only alphanumeric characters, dashes and underscores.

4. Click OK.

5. Your project will be available in the applications file navigator on the left. Click a file to select a file to edit.

Editing an Application

1. From the applications page, click the file you would like to edit from the file navigator on the left.

2. Edit the file with any changes you'd like.

3. Click "save" at the top right. Note, as mentioned above, when you save a file, the HarperDB Applications server will be restarted immediately.