Development Environment for ArcGIS WebApp Builder

[StefanP__Jung]

What Developent Environment are you using for developing Custom Widgets? Especially to be able to develop the Settings part as well.

Currently I'am trying to figure out how good it works with Visual Studio 2012 to have the benefit of debugging.

If i only have to develop one Widget the best way for me was to create an application and add some Basic Widets and download it. Then i've created a WebProject with Visual Studio based on the application. Within the Application i've created a new Widget and added the Widget to the config.json. This worked pretty well for developing and debuging the Widget itself, but it got more complicated when trying to work on the Settings-Part. Therefor i created a new "dummy-widget" for development and copied it to the settings folder of the original widget (+ renaming Widget.* => Settings.*). To really test the settings i need to copy the widget to the web-appbuilder directoy and edit the application.

If i imagine to develop 10+ widgets with a team and the widgets also needs to comunitate with each other, this might not gona work this way.

Are there any other good Ideas? How are you develop custom widgets?

Stefan

[TimWitt2]

Hey Stefan,

I create a webapp, add the widget I am working on and then I go to the following folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot\arcgis-web-appbuilder-1.2\server\apps\"Id of your app which contains the widget you work on"

While changing code in my widget I just reload the app that contains the widget whenever I make changes to debug in chrome developer enviroment.

It is not very fancy, but works for me

Tim

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

I would check out Robert Scheitlin, GISP​ 's workflow documented Re: Builder and stemapp. Custom widget workflows.   Robert is by far the most active on widget development, at least within the geonet community and/or sharing with the community.

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Rebecca

  Thanks, I was trying to find that thread so I did not have to re-type it here.

[StefanP__Jung]

Thanks for your answer. I was hoping that there is a better way for the development.

This is the best way i can see to handle the problem with develop the settings, but still not the best one for devloping a few widgets with 3+ people.

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Stefan,

   When I started I was stuck on wanting an IDE that would have intelisence/autocomplete so I tried Aptana and many others but I finally decided to just try and use the IDEs that the esri dev teams were using like SubLime, IntellaJ, Brackets, and I decided on Brackets. You can debug in any modern browser, but Chrome is the best for this. You do not need VS just for debugging.

[StefanP__Jung]

Hi Robert,

yes debugging should not be the problem with chrome, firefox etc.

But I am still thinking about the best solution to work together with a few people, developing widget that also might communitate with each other. You already mentioned in the other post that you develop on it's own, so you are not running in this kind of problem.

In the current scenario everybody should have its own instance of webapplication builder running locally, and work in its own app folder ([install dir]\server\apps\[app #]\widgets). So this should be the part that is pushed to a repository.

To make it available for others in their local envirionment and to make it available for new apps i it also should be located at [install dir]\client\stemapp\widgets. So i need to update all the changes of the widget at both locations.

But still if someone creates a new widget it will not be available in an existing app. Or we have to copy it "manually" to the app folder and edit the config.

Stefan

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Stefan,

   I am not aware of a way to get past the manual copy right now. Others have tried to install WAB Dev on a server but I think the limitation is probably going to be tingo db that WAB uses by default. I will look into this some more.

[RogerF]

Stephen

Did you find any solution/approach to your problem ? We also need to set up something like that for few developers. Please share your approach if you have come up with