Sneaky Anvil Updates

I wouldn’t say sneaky, but I don’t check my email that much, and would like to see this information published to the main channel of announcements, or different channel.

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Whereas I have a different account for each of my clients, can’t remember which ones I’ve requested the emails be disabled and get “ahem” copies of the newsletters!

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Although to be honest, I don’t think I have ever received an email from Anvil until this September. Been here for more than 4 months

Here is my pleasant surprise of the day.

In the past, when a databinding expression failed, it used to be just that: a failure. Anvil wouldn’t tell you what failed or why. I sometimes didn’t even use databinding because it was difficult to debug.

Now there are nice diagnostics telling you which databinding of which control failed.
And you can even click on it and the form appears.
And the control is selected.
And the focus is on the databinding.

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They did not went very sneaky this time

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The new editor has adjustable width app browser! So many features!

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In Beta, the tabs names are shortened automatically. Love it
image

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I cloned the app, added a folder with some tests that I run on my computer using the uplink to interact with the database and other services, pushed and… it’s there!

Anvil says “Unknown file”, but… it’s there!

The new editor has a much more refined way to work with branches in the git repository than the old editor.

Here is an use case that was not the reason why it has been designed as it was, but you can do it and it just saved me some time and helped me not playing with fire. Hence I think it qualifies as a sneaky new feature.

I was working on the dev branch, modifying many forms and modules and didn’t want to merge to prod because I would have very likely broken the production app.

I also did a little and safe change to an http endpoint. The new endpoint was compatible with the production app, but was in dev, so I couldn’t test it because it was called by another application that I didn’t want to modify.

So I copied the http endpoint code, set the current branch to prod, pasted the code, set the current branch back to dev, and now I had the new http endpoint working in the old production app, without needing any merge or modifying the 3rd application that was calling the http endpoint or doing anything crazy like I used to do.

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I am not sure when this changed but I now see that errors in data bindings have a link in the output panel that takes you to the component with the error. I am sure it never used to be like this but definitely a nice little feature :slight_smile:

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New icons have been added to the component ‘icon’ property. I suppose they upgraded their font awesome version.

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When an event binding is registered to a component but the function doesn’t exist, there is now a nice output in the serial monitor telling you what failed. Has helped tremendously with some overdue code cleanup

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The little star icon next to your app will pin the app so that it always remains at the top of your list.

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Not sure if anyone has seen this - the Beta IDE checks the app and the database schema to see if there are any mismatches! It even helps you rectify what is not correct!! Nice additional Anvil Team :smiley:

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For anyone that missed this (like myself):
Excel import to data tables … the Docs now document this with code examples

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I just noticed a few UI changes to the Anvil forum. How long has it been like that?

Not sure when it changed but the IDE seems to be a lot smoother - no more text delays when typing. Nice work and Thank you Anvil Team

Also - I cannot overstate how cool the Beta IDE is!!

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Everytime I see those delays I open the Chrome Task Manager and the Anvil tab is consuming 1GB+ of memory. Stopping the process and THEN reloading usually works for me and for a lot of time until it happens again.

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