Developer Guide

These quick starts will help you get started using the SDK for developing and working with Transact Applications:

  • App Package Quick Start shows how use the SDK Ant tasks to scaffold and deploy an application package into Transact Manager with a pre-built form.
  • Fluent Functions Quick Start shows how scaffold and deploy a fluent function to log messages in TM and return data to the form that called it. Fluent Functions are services that are called when selected lifecycle events occur in a form.
  • Form Functions Quick Start shows how to write a special type of Fluent Function that is called on-demand by code in a form, rather than in response to a form lifecycle event.
  • Object Mapper Guide shows how to use the ObjectMapper to marshal data between Form XML Documents and Groovy Value Objects.
  • Unit Testing Guide shows how to develop and run unit tests using JUnit and mocking and how to debug them in the SDK environment.
  • App Test Framework Guide shows how to use the App Test Framework to perform functional integration testing of Transact Applications.
  • Debugging Guide shows how you can use different techniques to help debug an application under development.

Development Process

The general development process using the Transact SDK follows this pattern:

  • Scaffold a new project using the main transact-sdk project - this creates a peer-level project to the transact-sdk project. At this point, the transact-sdk project is not required again until another new project needs to be scaffolded

  • Edit transact-auth.properties - provide appropriate server names and user credentials

  • Optionally edit build.properties in the new project - change any details you wish

  • If your project requires forms, create them in Maestro - Maestro is the only tool that allows you to create a new form from scratch:

    • Create and build a new form in Maestro
    • Download the TM Form Version from the Maestro Build dialog so you can include it in a form-def.json file after scaffolding a new form or in the first form included in the template by default
    • When you initially build the form in Maestro, ensure you check the Build Option 'Use Transact Functions' if you will be developing with Transact Functions

  • Open or import the new project - depending on your IDE, this might need to be in a new window

  • Add Ant dependency libraries to the new project - libraries from the main transact-sdk project need to be added to the new project's Ant configuration so Transact Manager classes can be resolved correctly

  • Add the project's functionality as required by:

  • Scaffolding an application package into the project

  • Scaffolding new connections, services, forms and functions into the application package

  • Developing the application code

  • Developing the application unit test code

  • Running the unit tests to validate the application code

  • Deploy the project - which builds and installs the project application package to the configured server

← Configure IntelliJ IDEAApp Package Quick Start →