Tips and tutorials

Customizing the data displayed in the table view


Sometimes you may need to change the way data in one of your tables is displayed to users. Imagine this scenario: You have a rating field in one of your tables that takes a value between 1 and 5. Instead of displaying the rating, you want to show stars. Here is a screen shot of the table view showing the original data:

Default formatting of the table view fields.

Quickly backup and restore your MySQL/MariaDB database


It's very important that you have a backup plan of your MySQL database. Loosing even a single day's worth of data can be frustrating and critical to your business. If you have shell (command-line) access to your database server, here is a very easy and quick backup method: Use mysqldump.

Creating the backup

To create the dump, use this command from your shell/command-line: 

mysqldump -uusername -ppassword -–default-character-set=utf8 -N database > backup.sql

Import your existing MySQL/MariaDB database schema to AppGini

If you already have one or more existing MySQL (or MariaDB) databases, you can easily work with them in AppGini. The steps are explained below, but here is a quick TLDR-style overview:

  1. Download the latest version of our MySQL2AppGini conversion tool (m2a.zip).
  2. Unzip the downloaded file (m2a.php) and copy/upload to your server.
  3. Use your browser to navigate to the extracted file and follow the steps from there.

Detailed instructions follow below.

Formatting a field as a phone number


Q: I need to automatically format data in a field as a phone number like XXX-XX-XXXX. How can I do so?

Tweeting from your AppGini-generated web application

The tweeting method explained here is obsolete and no longer works with Twitter. We'll be updating this page soon. Please accept our deep apologies for any inconvenience caused by this.

Download open source example web applications

All the applications listed here are MIT-licensed free open source web applications generated by AppGini. You can easily customize them by editing the source code, or by editing the accompanying project files in AppGini (both the trial and full version of AppGini can be used).

Online Rental Property Manager (ORPM)

Online rental property manager (ORPM) allows you to manage your rental properties, units, applications, leases and tenants.

Add all details related to the tenants, i.e. references, rental history, employment history and income overview. ORPM was creating using AppGini, so you can easily modify it without writing any code.

Download and more info Try the online demo

Online Invoicing System

Online Invoicing System (OIS) is a web application that can be used for simple invoicing needs.

To use Online Invoicing System, define your clients and items that you bill for or sell. Then go to the Invoices page to add a new invoice and define its details, after which the new invoice is ready for printing.

Download and more info

Northwind, company operations database

Northwind is a sample database that initially shipped with Microsoft Access. The database is an excellent example of a well-designed database that demonstrates normalization and referential integrity.

We have converted the Northwind database to a web application using AppGini. You can download the source code and use it as a learning tool to understand how to design and implement a database application.

Download and more info Try the online demo

RUView -- Resource Utilization Viewer

If your business is project-based, you typically have a team working with many projects.

Each project has a start and an end date, and each team member might be working on a project for a specific period then moving to another project, or even be working on multiple projects at the same time, dividing his/her time between them. It can get really tricky trying to figure out the schedule and availability of each team member.

RUView - Resource Utilization Viewer helps visualize all the resource utilization data in one simple chart that instantly shows you who's working on what and when.

Download and more info

Online Inventory Manager (OIM)

Online inventory manager (OIM) is a management application that gives you full insight on your inventory activity and keeps historical records of every single transaction.

It helps you track the inventory levels to avoid overstocks and outages. It’s easy to use, and makes you more productive.

Organize your inventory data, see where exactly each item is stored, all related actions and the most updated balance.

Download and more info

Online Training Center Manager (OTCM)

Online Training Center Manager (OTCM) is an application generated by AppGini that offers you a feature rich and user friendly training center database application.

It assists you in tracking your trainees, Instructors, courses and labs. You can also print training certificates, as well as easily customize the application to add reports and extra functionality.

Download and more info

Online Clinic Management System

Online Clinic Management System (OCMS) is a web/intranet application written in PHP that can be used as a database for storing patients data, history, documents, diseases, and symptoms.

Most of the code of OCMS was automatically generated by AppGini.

Download and more info

Creating customized search forms


This tutorial shows you how to create a customized search form that users can use to search a particular table in your AppGini-generated web application. This search form we'll create would replace the standard filters page for the concerned table.

Automatically calculated fields


Note: This tutorial applies to AppGini versions prior to 4.50. For similar modifications applicable to AppGini 4.50 and higher, please use hooks. Please see the documentation and examples of the tablename_before_insert and tablename_before_update hooks.


Which data type to choose for your fields?


Designing databases: Picking The Right Data Types is an article by Brandon Savage that provides useful tips on choosing the correct data types for your fields. A quote from the article:

Increasing the width of the rich (HTML) area


Q: How do I re-size the Rich(HTML)area in the detail view? It would be great if it could be large for easier editing.
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