Enginio: Qt Backend as a Service Launches Tech Preview

You may have already heard of Enginio at Qt Developer Days 2012  or you may have stumbled across our site, http://engin.io. We are now ready to officially open up the doors to our Enginio Tech Preview and welcome you to test it out. We have already had some early adopters who have given us valuable feedback which we have used to develop the product.

Why Enginio?

When we had a look at the existing cloud solutions, we saw that there was room for improvement. They were sometimes difficult to get started using and required specific knowledge of certain infrastructures or platforms and in most cases did not have Qt/C++ APIs. Using the experience we have from building backend solutions for various kinds of applications, we decided to create a solution that linked applications with a backend cloud storage based on Qt’s intuitive APIs. With Enginio developers can concentrate on creating their application making it visually pleasing and performing and let Enginio manage the backend functionality, scalability, security and performance.

Our goal was to build upon Qt’s motto of making “developer’s lives easier” and so what we wanted to do was provide developers with an uncomplicated and stress-free development experience in the backend. So, we started to create a solution that was easy to use and value-adding for Qt application development and at the same time transmit that Qt effortless development trait to other platforms. We want to make sure that the value-adding benefits of having a Qt backends are available to all. Enginio will be commercially available for both open-source and enterprise Qt users. For enterprise Qt users developing with a commercial license, a few additional value-adding features and functions will be made available to them later on.

The Enginio Technology Previews supports:

• Web dashboard (UI for configuring & managing your backend)
• Schema-less data storage (Place to store your application data)
• Security model (Mechanism to control which end-users can access what data)
• File support (Save small or large files in the cloud)
• Full text search (Search stored data by its content)
• Qt/QML client library (Convenient way to create applications)

How to get started?

1. Sign up for an Enginio account

2. Setup your new backend

3. Develop your App

The latest release version of the Qt library is available from the Enginio dashboard.

Shared library and QML extension plugin are built and installed as usual with `qmake && make && make install`

Qt example:

I. In Qt Creator choose File > New File or Project... and create new "Qt Gui Application".
II. In the new project’s pro file add:

QT += network
win32:CONFIG(debug, debug|release): LIBS += -lenginioclientd
else: LIBS += -lenginioclient

III. In MainWindow.cpp:

// Include Enginio headers
#include <Enginio/Enginio>
// Instantiate Enginio Client
// Copy your backend ID and secret from Enginio dashboard
const QString backendId("YOUR_OWN_BACKEND_ID");
const QString backendSecret("YOUR_OWN_BACKEND_SECRET");
EnginioClient *client = new EnginioClient(backendId, backendSecret);
// Create new object to backend
EnginioJsonObject banana("objects.fruits");
banana.insert("name", QStringLiteral("Banana"));
banana.insert("price", 1.59);
EnginioObjectOperation *createOp = new EnginioObjectOperation(client);
createOp->create(banana);
createOp->execute(); // Initiates asynchronous operation
// Fetch objects from backend to list model
EnginioObjectModel *objectModel = new EnginioObjectModel();
EnginioQueryOperation *queryOp = new EnginioQueryOperation(client);
queryOp->setObjectType("objects.fruits");
queryOp->setModel(objectModel);
queryOp->execute();

QML example:

I. In Qt Creator choose File > New File or Project... and create new "Qt Quick 2 Application (Built-in Elements)"
II. In main.qml:

import io.engin 1.0 as Enginio
// Instantiate Enginio Client
// Copy your backend ID and secret from Enginio dashboard
Enginio.Client {
	id: client
	backendId: "YOUR_OWN_BACKEND_ID"
	backendSecret: "YOUR_OWN_BACKEND_SECRET"
}
Enginio.ObjectModel {
	id: objectModel
}
Enginio.QueryOperation {
	id: queryOp
	client: client
	model: objectModel // Query results are added to model
	objectTypes: ["objects.fruits"] // Get all fruit objects
}
Component.onCompleted: {
	// Create new object to backend
	var banana = {
		objectType: "objects.fruits",
		name: "Banana",
		price: 1.59
	};
	var createOp = client.createObjectOperation();
	createOp.create(banana);
	createOp.execute();
	createOp.finished.connect(function() {
		// Fetch objects from backend to list model
		queryOp.execute();
	});
}

Build and your connected application is ready.

We would like to invite more people to test and provide feedback. However, please bear in mind that the service is still under development and you may experience some bugs, changes and breaks. Go and check it out at http://engin.io. Let us know what you think!

You can reach the Enginio development team at mailus@engin.io.