Combining QuickReport and MapViewer Templates

[GarrettSmith1]

Hello Everyone.

I am trying to combine some of the basic functionality of the QuickReport and MapViewer templates. I would like some simple functionality from the QuickReport template, that is allowing people to take pictures and populate an attribute table in the field as well as some of the simple functionality of the MapViewer template where users will have a map that can be used to navigate to the places where the pictures and attribute data were collected using the QuickReport functionality. 

I have watched all the AppStudio 2020 workshop videos and completed all the demonstrations and feel as though I have hardly scratched the surface when I compare those exercises with the amount of coding that is happening in the templates. Which is to be expected since it seems like coding is a necessary skillset when trying to decipher these "template" apps. Even looking at all the coding that is present in these templates, before even getting to the page, is a bit overwhelming. 

My issue now is that I am not sure what the most logical path is to take with the development of this app. I thought about literally combining the two templates and whatever I do not need would just sit unused but I cannot figure out how to create subfolders in Qt Creator. My issue with not being able to combine them is that they both have different folder structures and names. Same for starting from a blank slate. Even if I were to copy and paste from the templates I would need to set up these sub folders, and it does not seem like Qt Creator has an intuitive way to do so, especially on a Mac. I have about three weeks to get a somewhat functioning version to my client and I am willing to accept any advice about what is the best route to take with this. Each day goes by with me staring at and trying to decipher the code in the templates and it has not really worked out for me thus far as it can all become a bit overwhelming.

Thanks and sorry for the rant.

[ErwinSoekianto]

Garrett, 

I know its not an easy experience to do this, I just want you to know that I have taken note of this pain point, and we will see if there is anything we can do in the future to make this experience a little bit better. 

My suggestion is to use the Quick Report as a based app, and add the functionalities that you want from the MapViewer to be added to the QuickReport on the map page. I think that is the easiest path, depending on how much map-related functionality you would need.

Thank you,

Erwin

[GarrettSmith1]

Hi Erwin

Thank you so much for the note.

I think that my largest frustration is that AppStudio is touted as an easy solution to app development and I would say that it has a much steeper learning curve than advertised. Even for the templates, it still requires a fair amount of coding and code dissection. Even after watching all the videos from the workshop and working through some of the examples included in AppStudio it is rather difficult to know what is actually going on. 

Moving forward I would suggest adding more comments into the template files so that people know what the code means and what it is doing. For example, when I do data analysis in R, particularly for a published article, I include comments in every line so that people can replicate it rather easily. There is no context for much of the code and I think that adding these comment lines would not be something that is difficult to include.

I do think that there is promise for AppStudio, though I would probably not advertise it as an easy option for app development.