Deployment overview
Enabling rendering
Qodly Studio encapsulates Qodly pages, including layout, data connections, and event-driven logic, in a structured JSON file. This JSON file is processed on-the-fly by the Qodly renderer to serve a fully functional web page.
See this page for detailed information on how to render Qodly pages in Qodly.
To enable the rendering of Qodly pages, the following options must be set.
- The 4D project's Settings > Web > Web Features > Expose as REST server option must be activated.
- The 4D web server must be running.
Renderer buttons are not available if the configuration options are not activated.
Scope of Qodly forms
When rendering Qodly forms in the Qodly Studio, the renderer will connect to the 4D web server through HTTP or HTTPS, depending on the settings, following the same HTTP/HTTPS connection pattern as for the 4D WebAdmin web server. See also this paragraph about URL schemes and license usage.
Keep in mind that Qodly Studio runs through the 4D WebAdmin web server. When you use Qodly Studio as a developer, even when you preview a Qodly Page in the studio, you're using the 4D WebAdmin web server. This allows you to see dataclasses, functions and attributes that are not exposed as REST resources for example (they are greyed out).
However, page rendering happens outside Qodly Studio, and is served by the standard 4D web server. In this situation, your web application cannot access assets that are not exposed as REST resources. See Exposed vs non-exposed functions and Exposing tables for more information on how to expose assets.
Accessing Qodly pages
For deployment, the WebAdmin server is not necessary. End-user access to your web application made with Qodly Studio is based on the 4D REST protocol, and as such, it works as through a conventional 4D remote application.
Your Qodly pages are available through the following url:
IP:port/$lib/renderer/?w=QodlyPageName
...where IP:port represents the address of the web server and QodlyPageName is the name of the Qodly page.
For example:
https://www.myWebSite.com/$lib/renderer/?w=welcome
Preview Qodly Application
You can preview your Qodly application at any moment by selecting the Preview Qodly Application... command in the Windows menu (4D Server) or in the Design menu (4D single-user).
This command launches the Qodly renderer on a local address in your default browser and displays the start page defined in the Application settings of Qodly Studio.