Hybrid Web Container - Offline apps for data capture?

[Former Member]

I am investigating SAP Mobile Platform / Sybase Unwired Platform for our client.

From what I have gathered so far, Hybrid Web Container apps are based on HTML5/Javascript, allow the workflow design in the SUP Workspace, and are meant for "online" applications.

Does this mean that in order to develop an offline application that can be used for data capture, a Hybrid Web Container app will not work?

Or is it possible to build an HWC app that will run in offline mode, allow the user to capture data and submit it when the device is online again?

[Jitendra_Kansal]

Martin Ceronio

Please go through below links:

http://scn.sap.com/thread/3405801

http://scn.sap.com/community/mobile/blog/2013/05/08/building-offlinedisplay-only-hybrid-web-containe...

Rgrds,

Jitendra

[Former Member]

I have seen this series, but like I said, I am specifically interested in offline data capture, whereas this relates only to display.

[midhun_vp]

The HWC apps are meant for online apps they are called lightweight apps ( small business scenarios like approvals ). From SUP 2.2 the added functionality is showing viewing the data even the device is offline. But the operations cannot be performed while the device is offline.

The HWC apps are based on the web technologies like HTML5 , javascript and css. It is possible to make changes to the standard way of behavior of HWC, to make it work in offline. Once the user perform an operation store that value in the device local DB and we can keep a button "SYNC" in the screen whenever the device comes online the user can click on screen and all the data stored locally can be pushed to SAP. But there will not be any APIs to do this or there is no API to perform operation automatically once the device comes online ( these are available with Native apps ). Hence it is difficult to implement this scenario in HWC.

In HWC for writing your own custom code the provided class is custom.js inside the autogenerated file of HWC app. A good example on how to write custom code is here,  http://scn.sap.com/community/mobile/blog/2013/02/20/develop-hwc-app-with-customized-list

Based on the business requirement we have decide on which architecture we have to go with. If the business process is small and need to do in online means HWC will be the preferred one. Since it will not take much time for development and it will run in all major Mobile OS. If the business process it big that involves large amount of data and offline capabilities we have to go for native app development.

- Midhun VP

[Former Member]

Hi,

as you know HWC is HTML5 based app, so you could use only things that are available in HTML5 (e.g. web/local storage with limit of 5 Mb or external JS libs that do the same) and write your own code that will identify when user has online connection in order to initiate upload to the server.

  As alternative to WebDB you can use built-in storage of HWC container that will run your app  - look at file SUPStorage.js - to my knowledge it is an encrypted storage but only in form of key-value pairs -- see more details here: http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/topic/com.sybase.infocenter.dc01853.0222/doc/html/vhu1314287208386...

That's basically it. For the rest I guess the best is to go native....

Best regards, Artem