Upload files of size up to 32 MB, in your online database

iFreeTools Creator, your online database application builder built for hosting on Google App Engine, has had support for image fields since the early days. These image fields used Google App Engine's datastore to store the files. Due to the design of the App Engine datastore, the maximum file size for these fields was limited to 1 MB. We had an automatic size-reduction enabled for these fields, to reduce the file sizes of the uploaded files. This field has been serving our free-users and our paid-customers well until now.

For bigger files, there was always the option of storing them within Google Drive and attaching the files from Google Drive to database records. But these attachments are treated different from the normal fields. So, some clients have been requesting support for bigger file uploads.

Based on a prioritization request from our client, we have now enabled support for bigger file uploads for our paid single-tenant deployment customers.

Paid deployments will now have an option to add new attributes with Image / File Upload (Big) data-type.

These new attributes will store the file contents in Google App Engine's blobstore. The blobstore allows files of sizes up to 32 MB to be uploaded, utilizing the 5 GB free blobstore quota, offered by Google for all Google App Engine applications.

Additional storage will be billed at $0.026/GB/month (payable to Google) :
https://developers.google.com/appengine/pricing#Billable_Resource_Unit_Costs

We have started rolling in this feature for our paid customers. If you are a paid customer of iFreeTools, you should see this feature available in your deployment very soon.

Do you have a feature request for iFreeTools that you want to be prioritized? Get in touch with us, so that we take this forward.

Attach files or folders from Google Drive to your database records

Following our recent back-end changes in iFreeTools, we are now glad to enhance our Google Docs attachment feature, to now support attaching any files/folder from within Google Drive.

Earlier, it was possible to attach limited file types alone from Google Docs (document, spreadsheet, presentation and PDF), like shown below :

With the recent upgrade and subsequent changes, we have moved to using latest version of Google services and have integrated with Google Drive API.

This has enabled us to allow attaching any of the files or folders from within Google Drive, including Microsoft file formats, Google drawings, standard images files and zip files.

The attached files or folders will get listed under the database record's details page.

Like in the earlier implementation, the attachment process does not duplicate the file contents, but creates an association with the database record within iFreeTools, so that you can access the latest version from within the record's details page. The sharing permissions configured for the file/folder in Google Drive will hence remain enforced.

Hope you like the new feature. Feel free to send in your feedback on how you think we can make things better for you in iFreeTools.

Back-end changes in iFreeTools

We have recently invested in migrating iFreeTools code to the latest computing environment on Google App Engine. As a result of these changes, iFreeTools is now able to utilize computing resources in a better way, than it was possible earlier.

The new version having these changes has already been rolled out in our free multi-tenant deployment, hosted at http://creator.ifreetools.com and we are in the progress of rolling this version for all single-tenant deployment customers.

What these back-end changes will mean for you :

If you are a user of the free multi-tenant deployment, you will be glad that we can serve more of the growing number of free applications. You may have also already experienced lesser latency than earlier, in the recent days.

If you are paid customer, using our single-tenant deployment option, you will be able serve more users with lower computing instance hours. This is now possible because each computing instance can handle more than one request at the same time (multi-threaded processing).

These back-end changes also enable other possibilities and new features, including some features which have been oft requested by our users. 

Keep following our blogs for more details on these new features.

Assigning colors to database records, for use in Calender views

We have now enabled an option to show entries in calendar view with configurable background and text colors in your favorite online database builder.

To use this feature, you need to add 2 new attributes and provide them with aliases as backgroundColor and textColor. You can assign the colors directly in forms (selecting from a list of choice-values) or you can assign them automatically using formula.

When the calendar views are displayed, iFreeTools will check to see if there is an attribute with alias as backgroundColor and textColor within the record, and if so, it will use those attribute's values for the calendar rendering.

As an example, let us consider a database of issues, reported by customers. If the issue records had a Severity attribute, which can take values as Critical, Major, Minor, and Cosmetic and if we wanted to view the entries in the calendar, such that the background color is based on this Severity, using the following colors for those severity values :

Severity : Critical, Major, Minor, Cosmetic

Then, we can add formula attributes to set the required color values for the records, so that they are used in the calendar view. Our sample app to showcase this new feature will similar to the issue tracker application we had built in one of the earlier walk-through, with the following attributes :

• Title attribute as Single-line Text.
• Description attribute as Multi-line Text.
• Steps to reproduce attribute as Multi-line Text.
• Severity attribute as Multi-line Text with choice values Critical, Major, Minor, Cosmetic & alias as severity.
• Background Color attribute as Single-line Text with alias as backgroundColor & formula expression as :
  switch(severity == "Critical", "red", severity == "Major","orange", severity == "Minor", "yellow", severity == "Cosmetic", "lightblue").
• Text Color attribute as Single-line Text with alias as textColor & formula expression as :
  iif(severity == "Critical", "white", "black").
• Status attribute as Single-line Text with choice value as New, Accepted, Closed & alias as status.
• Tester attribute as Lookup field (Reference), with Refers To as User.
• Date Logged attribute as Date with formula expression as :
   iif(dateLogged, dateLogged, today()).
• Date Closed attribute as Date with formula expression as :
   iif(status == "Closed", iif(dateClosed, dateClosed, today()), None).

Now assuming we also wanted to mark the closed issue as green, the formula for Background Color can be changed to be similar to the one given below :

iif(status == "Closed", "green", switch(severity == "Critical", "red", severity == "Major", "orange", severity == "Minor", "yellow", severity == "Cosmetic", "lightblue"))

The configuration of the Attributes is given below for reference:

We can now proceed to add entries into the issue records and they would get assigned with background and text colors based on the formula expressions we have specified.

The following image shows the calender view with some sample entries having the configured background and text colors.

Existing entries will have to be re-indexed once (from under More Actions > Re-index, in the list views) to have the formula attributes updated.

Hope you like the new feature. Feel free to let us know your feedback and suggestions.

Specifying default values for form fields, using expressions

iFreeTools Creator, your easy web-based database software built for hosting on Google App Engine, now supports specifying default values for attributes in forms. The default values can be configured using the Default Value Expression in Attribute definition.

Expressions should return the result in the expected data-type. For details on using expressions, you may refer to our help docs.

Sample default value expression for each data type are given below:

Data Type	Examples
Single/Multi-line Text	"Velachery" Text values have to be provided within quotes. val_from(user(), "Name") to set the currently logged-in user's name. val_from(user(), "Email Id") to set the currently logged-in user's email-id.
Yes/No checkbox (Boolean)	True False val_from(user(),"Role") == "admin" to mark as Yes, if the current user has admin access.
Number Integer/Decimal numbers	1 -2 33.5 -44.75 val_from(fetch_one("Fee Details", "Year":year(), "Month":month()}), "Fees")) to fetch the values form an existing database record, in this case, from Fee Details entity, which matches the condition of having the Year attribute as the current year and the Month attribue as current month. From this matching record, we get the default-value from the Fees attribute.
Single line text - Choice Value	"Cash" Any of the choice values can be provided. For example, the above is valid if the choice values were : "Cheque", "Cash", "Bank Transfer"
Date	today() today() + timedelta(5) to set the date value as 5 days from the current date.
Date and Time	now() now() + timedelta(0,3600*10) to set the date-time value as 10 hours from the current date-time.
Image	key_id(val_from(fetch_one("Default Values",{}), "Default Profile Image")) to fetch the image form an existing database record, in this case, from Default Values entity, having an image-attribute with name as Default Profile Image.
Geographical Location (Geo Point)	"13.1207829,80.2377078"  in case you know the co-ordinates of a specific location, the value has to be provided within quotes. val_from(fetch_one("Default Values",{}), "Default Location")  to fetch the location form an existing database record, in this case, from Default Values entity, having an geo-point-attribute with name as Default Location.
List (with string values)	["English", "Spanish", "French"] val_from(fetch_one("Default Values",{}), "Default Languages") to fetch the values from an existing database record, in this case, from Default Values entity, having an list-attribute with name as Default Languages.
Lookup field (Reference)	key_id(fetch_one("Teacher",{"Name":"John Smith"})) to fetch the values from an existing database record, in this case, from the Teacher entity, having Name as John Smith.

Hope you like our new feature. If you need assistance in using this feature or if you have suggestions, feel free to use the feedback form in our application.

What's Cooking : Internationalization & Localization support

We are glad to share the news that iFreeTools will soon be supporting internationalization and localization.

Once available, you will be able to select the language in the App Settings and the application will be rendered using the selected language.

For the first cut, we are enabling support for Tamil, a south-Indian language, which we have been using in our testing. The image below shows the Add Attribute form in Tamil.

You will be able to try the Tamil language in our Labs set up currently and the changes which will make it into the other deployments very soon.

Help translate iFreeTools and get a $90 discount* on your single-tenant deployment!

If your language is not already supported in iFreeTools Creator and if you are interested in helping us support the same, feel free to get in touch with us for the language mapping file. Once the translation is completed and imported into your single-tenant deployment, you should be able to have the application in your language.

Update : 

Spanish language support : 

Our effort to support multiple-languages was triggered by Ms.Belén Lara's detailed blog post on iFreeTools Creator, which is equivalent to a quick-start guide in Spanish : ...crear una Base de Datos on-line. iFreeTools.

After we added support for multiple languages, she has also provided the Spanish translation for the application. Coming from a technologically savvy database user, we believe her translations should work out well for the Spanish users of our application.

Thank you, Ms.Belén Lara!

Italian language support : 

We have rolled-in Italian language support in iFreeTools Creator, thanks to the efforts of Mr.Adriano Caresani. If you are looking to build your online database application and would like hire an Italian-speaking consultant, you should get in touch with Adriano.

Thank you, Adriano!

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*Terms and conditions, for this offer :

• The compensation for the translation mapping file, which will become a property of iFreeTools, will be provided in the form of discount to subscription fees alone.
• This discount is applicable for one paid, single-tenant deployment and towards the first year subscription fee alone.
• Even if the language mapping is already available with us, translation to popular country-specific dialects may still be eligible for a $45 discount.

The terms and conditions of this offer can be refined / altered / the offer itself might be withdrawn at any time. You are requested to kindly get in touch with us using the feedback form, to know if you can avail this offer.

Enabling fine-grained Public Access to your Online Database

A lot of our users have been requesting an option to enable publishing of selected subset of data from their online database application, which they have hosted on their Google App Engine account and mapped to their Google Apps domain.

This may be for use-cases like sharing the knowledge-base section from the online database application or may be, to allow users to view a directory of some sort, without having to ask them to login into the application, using their Google / Yahoo! / Google Apps user account.

We have now enabled this public-access facility as a premium feature in iFreeTools, available for paid single-tenant deployments. Preview of the feature is also made available in the free multi-tenant deployment at http://creator.ifreetools.com, which will work like in the paid deployment, except that it will list limited data, so that you can try out the feature before you sign-up for the paid deployment.

To enable public access to your database, you will have to :

1. Define a new Auth Profile with permissions set for the View operation and select the fields which you would like to make visible for public access. Other permissions set for Add / Edit / Delete / etc.,. will be ignored, when this auth-profile is used in the context of public-access.
2. Add a new user with email-id as public-read-only-user@ifreetools.com, associating the auth-profile

That is it!

You can now access the application by tweaking your URL to use a /x/ instead of /b/. That is, if the direct link to your application instance is..
http://creator.ifreetools.com/b/12341234

then, the public access for this web-application will be available at..
http://creator.ifreetools.com/x/12341234

All "write" operations (Add / Edit / Delete) are disabled for the public-access. Your users can still use the embed-able public web-forms, to enable adding new records into the database.

All the public access pages will be marked with a noindex and nofollow meta-tag, so the contents would not be indexed by crawlers which follow this meta directive. This meta-tag can be removed on request, in paid single-tenant deployments.

Hope you like this new feature. Feel free to use the feedback form in the application and let us know how we can help you meet more of your business use-cases with iFreeTools.