Detect Mobile Environment

[emhill]

We are going to attempt to dive into the mobile side of things in Profound UI and I had a few questions. We are wanting to put our item inquiry on the iPhone. We want our techs to be able to quickly look up an item to see if it is in stock and what branch has it. We do not want to have to write a completely new item inquiry program for this if at all possible. We want to use the existing item inquiry. We also do not want to actually create an app but to just allow the user to access the program via the iPhone web access.

1. Is there a way to detect what environment the user is in at the time the program is called? I know you can call a PUI program to determine if you are in a Genie session or not but is there something similar to detect a mobile device?

2. By just coming in via the iPhone's web access will the smart phone functions still work? Finger controlled dropdowns, finger controlled scrolling of grids/subfiles, etc.

Looking forward to doing this but need a little up front assistance.

Thanks in advance!!!!!

[David]

There is a global JavaScript flag "pui.touchDevice" which will be set to true if running on an iPhone.

This is not automatically communicated to RPG, though. One approach that may work is that your RPG program could look at the "user agent" string that is sent from the iPhone's browser.

The "user agent" string is a text value that a browser passes to the server to identify itself. See here for Apple's explanation for iPhone:

https://developer.apple.com/library/saf ... Phone.html


You can get the user agent string in a Profound UI application like this:

RPG CODE

D getenv          PR              *   ExtProc('getenv')                                                                        
D  name                           *   Value Options(*String)                                                                   
                                                                                                                                    
     D UserAgent       S            200A                                                                                            
                                                                                                                                    
      /FREE                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                    
        If getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT') <> *Null;                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                    
          UserAgent = %Str(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT'));                                                                              
                                                                                                                                    
        EndIf;                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                    
      /END-FREE

If running in a Genie session, there is not a way to get the user agent string, unfortunatley -- the above code will only work when running outside of Genie.

[David]

To answer your other questions here, yes, the touch gestures you mention there will work fine, and also the pop-up keyboard, etc.

The only things that you get by running natively on the phone vs. in Safari, is that in Safari you will not have access to the hardware features -- like the camera, etc.

[emhill]

Thanks for reply, David!

I was able to get to the program via the iPhone with no problem but the sizing is all wrong. It is too big for the iPhone screen. When I created the display file and formats in Designer I used the mobile layout with the iPhone canvas (320X480) but it is not scaling right to my screen. Is there something else I need to do when creating the display file? The program is working fine. The dropdowns are working just as you said they would but the screen size is not right. I attached a couple of screenshots from my phone. The first is scrolled all the way to the left and the second is scrolled to the right.

image1.png (11.41 KiB) Viewed 4199 times

image2.png (15.73 KiB) Viewed 4199 times

Thanks is advance for any help on this!!!!!!

[David]

Hard to say from the shots. Do you mind attaching your display so that we could have a look?

An easy way to do that is to use Save As, then click on the "Local" tab. This will download it to a PC file that you can attach here.

[emhill]

Attached is the file in .txt format... There is one that is a replica of the JSON type and another that is a copy of the saved DDS.

[Antonio]

Hello,

We were able to fix this on our end by adding the following:

maximum-scale=1.0

to the following line inside of the start.html file located in profoundui/userdata/html:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, target-densitydpi=device-dpi" />

So, something like:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, target-densitydpi=device-dpi" />

Also, I noticed you werent using percentages for the position of your objects. Using percentages allows your objects to be more dynamic in size and position and allows them to change whenever a device rotates (as opposed to being static). YOu can manually define these percentages for the position properties of each object,or you can use the predefined percentages located in design tab.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

[emhill]

I changed my SCR01 format to SCR01A and used percentages. I made the change to the start.html code as well. Still doing the same thing. No difference at all. After changing the start.html code would I have needed to reboot or restart something?

Thanks for your help!

[Antonio]

You would have to reload the application after making changes to start.html, but I imagine you did that.

What version of Profound UI are you using? Also, could you send me a copy of this new display file? Ill see if I still get the original problem with your new screen on my end, and debug it from there.

Also, if you could send me a copy of your start.html or a screenshot of it, thatd be great.

Thanks!

[emhill]

We are on version 4.1.7. Attached are the files you requested...

Thanks!