Scaffolding is the technique used to generate the presentation code that the application can use at run time. The generated code represents a useful starting point for your application that you may want to further modify to refine the application.

Refer to Overview of Scaffolding for more information.

To scaffold one or more data sources in your presentation project, do the following:

Dialog Fields

Following are the descriptions for each dialog box options:

Handling Lists for AB Suite/EAE Connections in the .NET Core Web API Environment

AB Suite/EAE can generate a list of information that is sent to the client in an Ispec response. These list details can then be used in the client application logic.

For an AB Suite data source project, the scaffolder in a .NET Core Web API presentation project will generate the following actions in the controller to assist the processing of lists through the Web API:

Generic List Action Method

For an AB Suite data source project, the scaffolder generates a default list action method called GetList, which allows you to retrieve a list that is already downloaded from the AB Suite application. The generic list action method uses the Get verb to retrieve a list resource with the details specified in the query string as follows:

Specific Typed List Action Method

For an AB Suite data source project, the scaffolder generates individual action methods for each list in the data source project. These lists have a unique type that is defined in the server message.

For example, CUSTOMER_ListType and SALESREP_ListType.

The .NET Core Web API enables you to request the list resource with a route to the specific list. This allows the client application to call the required list, which is returned with a model definition that was specified in the server message.

The following are the default values for the list model:

By default, generating actions for individual list types is turned off. To generate the individual list action methods, set the GenerateListActions Orchestration property to True. When GenerateListActions Orchestration is set to True, the scaffolder generates an action method for each list.

Using Public Methods for AB Suite Connections in the .NET Core Web API Environment

An AB Suite application enables you to expose public methods to an external client application using the RATL protocol and the Component Enabler API. The ePortal AB Suite Connector uses this capability to execute public method calls to an AB Suite application.

For more information on making a Public Method call from an ePortal Presentation project, refer to Controlling the Runtime Behavior for AB Suite and EAE .

For an ASP.NET Core Web API project, when an AB Suite application exposes one or more public methods, ePortal scaffolds an operation for each public method in the generated controller.

Artifacts Generated in the .NET Core Project

When an AB Suite bundle folder that generates ePortal metadata, contains public method definitions, some additional files are generated in the Component Enabler output directory.

The Component Enabler output directory has an ispecs sub folder, which contains the following two files that defines the composition of the exposed AB Suite public methods:

Where, <name> is the name of the project.

Using the PublicMethodList.dll assembly, the .NET Core Web API scaffolding process finds the public method calls that are available and generates an action for each method in the controller.

The following public method details are generated from an AB Suite application:

For each public method, an action method is created in the .NET Core Web API controller. The operation accepts a model that defines the parameters of the public method call and their values. This parameter model is passed to the operation using the FromBody directive. To facilitate this approach, the PublicMethodModels.cs file is created in the Models folder of the .NET Core Web API project.

The PublicMethodModels.cs file contains a class definition for each public method and it defines a corresponding data model for the public method and its parameters.

Sample Code

The following example shows a public method called PMTESTSTRING with the configurations defined in an AB Suite application:

This public method will have the following class generated in the PublicMethodModels.cs file:

// Model class for PMTESTSTRING public method call.
[DataContract]
 public class PMTESTSTRING
{
	[DataMember]
	public bool Param_1 { get; set; }
	[DataMember]
	public string Param_2 { get; set; }
	[DataMember]
	public string Param_3 { get; set; }
	[DataMember]
	public string Param_4 { get; set; }
}

The corresponding action method in the Web API Controller will have the following signature:

[HttpPost]
[Route("PMTESTSTRING")]
[ProducesResponseType(200, Type = typeof(PMTESTSTRING))]
[SwaggerOperation(OperationId = "CallPMTESTSTRING")]
public IActionResult CallPMTESTSTRING([FromBody]  PMTESTSTRING ParamData)

For example, if the public method call contains a date parameter, then the generated class for that public method includes a member called “DateFmt” that allows you to specify the date format used to convert a C# DateTime to the required AB Suite date format.