A starting point for those who are about to discover the platform and its main features.
After reading this article you’ll know the following
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The main platform’s features
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How to apply these while building your application
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Additional tools and templates that help facilitate your experience
As a low-coding platform, Betty Blocks provides essential features and tools for citizen developers to be able to build different types of applications. The core functionality consists of the Pages, Models, Actions, Tools, and the Block Store.
When you start building an application, it is up to you to decide where you want to begin. One way is to create a front-end carcass (user interface) using the page builder (main tooling of Pages) in the first place before mapping out how you want to structure your data with Models; or if you feel like setting data configuration first, go ahead with data modeling, it is also a good idea to start with it in some cases.
Sometimes users might look for even simpler solutions while creating their applications. For instance, one needs a rather typical task management application to set up for their company. For these cases, we’ve developed a bunch of templates with a ready-to-use functionality that some might find really handy and useful.
Core functionalities
To make sure you are aware of the key features, let’s take a short guide into the core functionalities of the Betty Blocks platform.
Pages
The page builder is used to design the user interface of your application. New pages are designed using various components, one can drag and drop them onto the page canvas to construct the application’s layouts, add navigation, various data components, buttons, forms, etc. Citizen developers can choose the pre-defined page templates or use a blank page and start designing from scratch. In the process of building your application, you can always use the preview option to compile the front end and rebuild it as required.
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Example of the Dashboard, inspirational template in Pages |
Models
Models segment is a visually simplified representation of information stored in an application and its underlying database. It consists of:
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Models that represent a visual design for real-world objects that can be uniquely identified. There are three types of models: data models, remote and schema models.
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Properties describe the specifications of one object within a model. For example, if a data model contains information about users of a website, they will probably have such properties as: ‘First name’, ‘Last name’, ‘Email address’, etc
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Relations are connections between models. For instance, ‘Customers’ and ‘Orders’ are related models
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Canvas view of Models from Essential path template |
Actions
Actions are made to provide logic in an application. This logic is executed after a certain event called a trigger. For example, a user can trigger a certain order of events by clicking a button.
You can create your own workflow in the action builder by adding action steps.
Action steps will serve as a logical construction as the events will be executed on conditions that you set yourself. Within the Betty Blocks platform, actions are built using a visual interface instead of traditional programming.
You can quickly build and process easily complex logic into your application. Actions are initiated due to an event that triggers an action. This can be done automatically (after creation) or manually via buttons.
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‘Create new account’ action example from the Actions segment |
Additional features
Block Store is the ultimate storage of block components one can install to the application in order to extend its functionality. It can be employed to share and reuse page components, data sources, action steps (functions), themes, or widgets.
Tools are available for extending and customization of your application. These are, for example, the translation tool for providing translation capabilities; logs for tracking errors, warnings, and action events; public files, used for storing some important files for being reused, like the company’s logo.
