topic Re: WAB App Development Cycle/Practices (Dev/Stage/Production) in ArcGIS Web AppBuilder Questions

WAB App Development Cycle/Practices (Dev/Stage/Production)

GertConradie — Fri, 06 May 2016 09:24:12 GMT

(I use WAB 1.3)

What is the 'best practice' in terms of WAB Application Life Cycle - we do development work for a client that would receive the 'product' once completed.

Our current process are:

Develop web maps under our own AGOL account
Develop WAB apps based on these web maps under our own AGOL account. (During development, WAB run authenticated against our AGOL account)
Widget development follow file & source control management steps more or less like described here; http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/devsummit15/papers/dev_int_69.pdf (it work very well)
We use the ArcGIS Online Assistant tool to migrate web maps between AGOL accounts. (it work well)

My question/problem are related to moving the WAB apps to a different AGOL account/url. I want to point the finished WAB app to use the 'production' version of the web map on a different AGOL account. The problem is that my WAB apps are not listed if WAB runs against the production AGOL account. How do I changes this? - I can see the settings and relationship(s) between app and portal url are stored in the '~arcgis-web-appbuilder-1.3\server\db\apps' file, but I cant edit that manually/with a text editor.

Any advice please. It would have been great to have this as an option in WAB.

Re: WAB App Development Cycle/Practices (Dev/Stage/Production)

RobertScheitlin__GISP — Fri, 06 May 2016 13:00:22 GMT

Gert,

Let me begin by saying that I would recommend that you use WAB Developer edition. The reason behind this suggestion is that the code is not minifed and can be easily be modified.

I can see the settings and relationship(s) between app and portal url are stored in the '~arcgis-web-appbuilder-1.3\server\db\apps' file, but I cant edit that manually/with a text editor.

Why can you not modify the main config.json file where the portalUrl is stored?

Are you wanting to leave the app on your AGOL?

Re: WAB App Development Cycle/Practices (Dev/Stage/Production)

GertConradie — Fri, 06 May 2016 14:06:39 GMT

Hi Robert

I do use WAB Developer Edition to create the WAB applications. We have Web Maps inside our company's AGOL account and that is then used by the WAB applications.

We export and deploy these WAB applications as part of a custom web portal to IIS / a web server - not onto AGOL.

I can modify the main config.json for a specific WAB application - the main "portalUrl" setting and the "portalUrl" on the map is changed to the 'live' AGOL account. I dont see any change - if I want to select a different web map from AGOL, I still see the list from the AGOL account that is used to log in when WAB developer edition start.

The moment I change a single character in the '~arcgis-web-appbuilder-1.3\server\db\apps' file, I get an error when the WAB Developer Edition startup.

("Possibly unhandled Error: apps: Error during load - SyntaxError: Unexpected token at ~\arcgis-web-appbuilder-1.3\server\node_modules\tingodb\lib\tcoll.js:121:18 at _catcher (~\arcgis-web-appbuilder-1.3\server\node_modules\tingodb\node_modules\safe\lib\safe.js:341:4)")

the above happen even when changing only the "Description" of a WAB application. (I was hoping to change the url and user detail there) No WAB applications are listed then. When I revert it back, the error disappear. (I don't know how the change is being detected - must be a hash of the file content?)

Re: WAB App Development Cycle/Practices (Dev/Stage/Production)

RobertScheitlin__GISP — Fri, 06 May 2016 17:04:43 GMT

Gert,

It sounds like you want to look at this thread then:

Is it possible to link WAB developer edition to multiple AGOL orgs?

Re: WAB App Development Cycle/Practices (Dev/Stage/Production)

GertConradie — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:20:00 GMT

Thanks Robert - yes that was helpfull. My scenario was tricky - I have custom widgets with config files of which the settings change when the AGOL account / web map change.

I end up creating a second web app builder (developer) app, empty the new numeric folder and map the TFS node to that. I then did the modifications to go live and have them under source control. (It help with automated publishing etc)