Microsoft Azure Integration

Getting Started Newbie Questions
#1

Hi there.

I’m about as experienced in development as a toddler is in an aircraft cockpit looking at the instrument panel. My question though should be answered in a matter of minutes:

I’ve been tasked with putting together solution designs for a mobile app that integrates with Microsoft Azure.

The business problem: Users capture data through an app while out in the field using various mobile devices. The data is to be uploaded to Microsoft Azure for further processing. Users with mobile devices in the field may or may not have coverage depending on their current location. The solution is meant for 3rd world markets.

  1. I safely assume that I can put together an app using Corona that has form like functions that include radio buttons, check boxes, free text entry of data?

  2. Corona will have libraries/extensions to access a mobile device’s camera?

  3. When the data is captured it can be synchronized with Azure immediately or later when online?

Thanks for the guidance

#2

Hello and welcome to the Corona Labs forums.

For #1, yes we have support for all of those. See the widget.* library of features. Text input is done either with native.newTextField() or native.newTextBox(). Because of the OpenGL nature of our system, native.* API calls don’t interact completely with OpenGL, so they have some quirks that will need to be worked around, but they do work.

  1. Yes, we have features to access the camera, but they are objects that exist using the operating system’s native controllers. These controllers tend to be full screen and on top of your other app and when they close, if a photo was taken, you will get an object back in your app to work with.  

  2. I have no experience with Azure, but they do appear to have a REST based API that can return JSON data. We can handle XML with an extra library you would need to include, but JSON works way better with Lua’s table structures.  You can access REST based API’s using our network.request() API call.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/

Rob

#3

Hello and welcome to the Corona Labs forums.

For #1, yes we have support for all of those. See the widget.* library of features. Text input is done either with native.newTextField() or native.newTextBox(). Because of the OpenGL nature of our system, native.* API calls don’t interact completely with OpenGL, so they have some quirks that will need to be worked around, but they do work.

  1. Yes, we have features to access the camera, but they are objects that exist using the operating system’s native controllers. These controllers tend to be full screen and on top of your other app and when they close, if a photo was taken, you will get an object back in your app to work with.  

  2. I have no experience with Azure, but they do appear to have a REST based API that can return JSON data. We can handle XML with an extra library you would need to include, but JSON works way better with Lua’s table structures.  You can access REST based API’s using our network.request() API call.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/

Rob