What kind of web services demos do we need?

[JoeySpinella]

Hi All,

In trying to build a community of online users that can help educate LabVIEW developers on web technology, I am looking for ideas of what kind of content we need.

I am working to create a set of introductory demos so that users can get from this basic tutorial:

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361L-01/lvhowto/build_web_service/

to creating advanced thin clients like this:

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-38927

There are many important concepts to learn about the LabVIEW web server, HTML, JavaScript, XML, and JSON along the way.

I hope that this community can grow to replace this individual page and provide a much more holistic learning resource:

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-17328

Do you have any demos or resources that you think should be posted in this group?

Do you have any ideas of helpful content?

My goal is to grow this into a community like the UI interest group:

https://decibel.ni.com/content/groups/ui

[ian.yeager]

Joey,

Great start so far, hopefully I can add intelligent discussion to the group. One thing I'm considering is utilizing a more modern framework for my web apps integrating LabVIEW like Node.js. Using ESP templates is becoming a little dated. I mean, their webpage was created in 1998. I'll be happy to share any working examples I get done.

[JoeySpinella]

Ian,

I'm so glad you found this group! Having a Node.js example would be super.

I am planning to create a "Miscellaneous Demos" document that can point to noteworthy demos that implement interesting web technology. Once you post yours, I can feature it there.

[antarcticcat]

Joey,

Someone at NI sent me this link a while back. It is more about UI in general, but did go into web services briefly. Found it very helpful for what i was trying to do, and thought it might be useful to someone here as well. Especially the d3js reference for creating  charts/graphs that can be periodically updated using ajax.

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-39389

http://d3js.org/

HTML has native controls for the basic UI elements (text/numeric/ring/enum) but I've had trouble finding many good graph controls/indicators, especially any that support the built-in zoom/drag/cursor features that the LabVIEW UI has. From what i've researched so far, d3js seems to be able to support such features, but it's up to the developer to implement them.

It would be nice to have a js library of 'LabVIEW' controls and indicators that covers the areas where HTML does not have native support. And even where HTML does have a native element, the library could provide validation and formatting of the data.