Book Image

Rapid Application Development with OutSystems

By : Ricardo Pereira
Book Image

Rapid Application Development with OutSystems

By: Ricardo Pereira

Overview of this book

OutSystems is a software development platform that speeds up the build phase by abstracting code and making almost everything visual. This means replacing textual language with visual artifacts that avoid lexical errors and speed up code composition using accelerators and predefined templates. The book begins by walking you through the fundamentals of the technology, along with a general overview of end-to-end web and mobile software development. You'll learn how to configure your personal area in the cloud and use the OutSystems IDE to connect with it. The book then shows you how to build a web application based on the best architectural and developmental practices in the market, and takes the same approach for the mobile paradigm. As you advance, you'll find out how to develop the same application, and the great potential of reusing code from one paradigm in another and the symbiosis between them is showcased.The only application that'll differ from the application in the exercise is the one used in business process technology (BPT), with a focus on a common market use case. By the end of this OutSystems book, you'll be able to develop enterprise-level applications on the web and mobile, integrating them with third parties and other systems on the market. You'll also understand the concepts of performance, security, and software construction and be able to apply them effectively.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: OutSystems 101
5
Section 2: The Magical Path of the Backend
10
Section 3: Create Value and Innovate with the Frontend
16
Section 4: Extensibility and Complexity of the OutSystems Platform

Taking logic decisions with conditional paths

In this part of the chapter we will learn how to code decisions based on data criteria and conditions.

Often, in our actions, we need to make decisions. This decision-making can be done through two artifacts:

  • If – In the case of If, there are two possible outputs: true or false for the condition being tested. An interesting feature is that we can change the branch from true to false (false is automatically changed to true). Just right-click on If and select Swap Connectors. The Ifs can be nested (putting Ifs inside each other in branches when required), although when increasing complexity is an issue, it is advisable to use the Switch artifact:

Figure 6.6 – Example use of the If artifact in a Server Action

  • Switch – With Switch, we have multiple outputs (which allows us to test multiple conditions), and we can define how many we need. The operation consists of cases (if...