web based application

[meysam_b]

hi friends

I designed a monitoring program for temperature and other sensors.
I want to run it on server and client control it from web browser now i try remote panel but this is not very good because we need send request control to server with right click (it is not good for operators) and i couldn't handle it for several operators, in additional we need setup Run time on computers (not good!)
now i need help for design a user friendly web based application with labview like asp.net.
what should i do?

thanks.

[mikeporter]

Does your company already have a web server online. If so piggybacking on that would be easy. Alternately, you can use the LV Web Services.

Personally, I would pick the first option if at all possible because it would be more scalable. In addition it nicely isolates the acquisition process (LabVIEW) from the presentation and display process (Web Interface). The idea is really simple: from the LV side, you insert data into the database the webserver uses, then from the web side the server pulls data out of the database and displays it in response to browser requests.

Are there any people in your organization (or random teenagers wandering through the building) who have done web design and whose talents you might be able to leverage?

Mike...

[meysam_b]

hi mike

I wana implement whole of the project with Labview. we don't want to use asp.net or others. i think labview can not work on web based application isnt it?

i think Web UI builder is alternative way. but it don't support database and other toolkites.

what shuld i do? i worked on labview 3 years and designed many project but i can't develop web based.

[mikeporter]

You are right, LabVIEW can not do web interfaces by itself (even the built-in web support requires knowledge of things outside LV) so like it or not, unless you have someone in your organization that can help you, you are going to have to learn to do the web stuff yourself.

The good news is that learning about the web and how it works isn't that hard really and can be a lot of fun. The key point is to leverage industry standards so you have a large base of people you can go to for help. For example there are active forums like this one for HTML/CSS, MySQL, PHP, Apache Servers, JavaScript -- and a bunch of others. And on some of them there are even some folks that are as nice as we are! 🙂

But again, your first goal should be to find internal support. What sort of organization are you associated with? School? Corporation? etc? Does your organization have an internal IT department? That is the place to start.

Mike...

[meysam_b]

thank mike for your friendly reply!

we are a small corporation about monitoring and control system in hardware and software.

in software part we have 2 programmer on labview and 1 on asp.net just 3 persons!

according to your reply we must add a person on HTML coding or we learn about that.

result : labview can not do web application.

thanks man.

[mikeporter]

One other option is to get some local talent that you contract with on an "as needed" basis to do the web development.

Mike...

[smithd]

This actually sounds like it *could* be a good fit for data dashboard:

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-19387

For background: The web server in LabVIEW allows you to host two types of resources -- static content, like web pages, and dynamic content, like web methods. For a simple comparison, google.com is static content, but doing a search will invoke dynamic content....basically. In a typical application, your server hosts both, and uses scripting on the server to tailor the content to your particular needs. This is generally the hard part.

Depending on the complexity of your application, you *may* be able to get by with the following:

• A web service with a static web page made to look like your front panel, with a few buttons linked to web methods. You could probably get this up and running decently quick, although you would still need someone who knows html and javascript. Someone in my group put this together, which is along those lines: http://lavag.org/topic/17787-feedback-requested-cvtweb-library-diagnostics-thinclient/
• >>Just implementing the web methods, and using data dashboard to invoke them. This works really well if you just want to transfer simple commands back and forth. Essentially data dashboard takes care of making the UI for you and actually sending the requests, and the main thing you have to do is write the methods on the server.

[meysam_b]

data dashboard is not good for my project we need controls, indicators, database connections and more in additional data dashboard run on android or ios.

i think we should develop our program locally and in future extend it with asp.net 

I'm so sad for it because I love Labview and I hoped that labvew help me stand alone in web based application.

[mikeporter]

I'm not clear on what you think asp.net is going to do for you that LV cannot. Regardless of the development environment, if you want to build a web application you will have to deal with the same issues and learn (or hire) the same skills.
The underlying point here is that you succeed when everybody gets to do what they are good at. You don't -- or shouldn't -- try to write a database in LV. You could, but there are folks like Oracle and Microsoft that have already done the work so you leverage their work. Same thing here. Given enough time you could probably write a complete web server in LV, but why bother? Apache already has a really great one, so you leverage their work.
And just like when you go to use a database within you application, there is a new programming language to learn (SQL), so it is with the web. There are new languages and concepts that have to be dealt with -- but if you want to play in that playground, it's the price of admission.

Mike...

[smithd]

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@meysam_b wrote:

data dashboard is not good for my project we need controls, indicators, database connections and more in additional data dashboard run on android or ios.

i think we should develop our program locally and in future extend it with asp.net 

I'm so sad for it because I love Labview and I hoped that labvew help me stand alone in web based application.

---

So, going back to my previous post, your database access would normally go through the web server, not directly from the client. The client can be a thin client like data dashboard. During development you would develop dynamic content in your service which converts HTTP requests into database requests in order to get the data you need. The same would be true of asp as I understand it. A big difference between the labview web server and anything else out there is that it has to be able to run on our embedded targets, and so it is pretty light weight.

Btw, it sounds like this isn't what you need, if I understand your request correctly, but I found out about it recently and its pretty cool, and it might meet your needs:
http://labsocket.com/index.html

My basic understanding is that its a new implementation of remote panels developed using modern web technologies.