Understanding General Concepts

Flectra Studio is a toolbox that allows you to add models or adapt functionalities on top of Flectra’s standard behavior without coding knowledge. You can also create custom views and modify existing ones without having to get into the XML code.

Even for experienced developers, typing out code requires time. By using Flectra Studio, you can quickly get your models up and going and focus on the crucial parts of your application. The result is a user-friendly solution that makes customizations and designing new applications easy with or without programming skills.

Getting started

One you start using Flectra Studio, you automatically create a new module that contains all your modifications. These modifications can be done on existing screens (views), by adding new fields in existing applications, or by creating an entirely new model.

What is a Module?

An Flectra Module can contain a number of elements, such as: business objects (models), object views, data files, web controllers, and static web data. An application is a collection of modules.

In object-oriented programming, models usually represent a concept from the real world. Example: Flectra has models for Sales Orders, Users, Countries, etc. If you were to build an application to manage Real Estate sales, a model that represents the Properties for sale would probably be your first step.

What is a Model (also called Object)?

A Model determines the logical structure of a database and fundamentally determines in which manner data can be stored, organized, and manipulated. In other words, a model is a table of information that can be bridged with other tables.

What are Fields?

Fields compose models. It is where a record (a piece of data) is registered.

Example: on the Real Estate application, fields on the Properties model would include the price, address, a picture, a link to the current owner, etc.

There are 2 main types of fields in Flectra: basic (or scalar) fields and relational fields.

Basic fields represent simple values, like numbers or text. Relational fields represent relations between models. So, if you have a model for Customers and another one for Properties, you would use a relational field to link each Property to its Customer.

Relational Fields in detail

Relational Fields provide the option to link the data of one model with the data of another model.

In Flectra, relational field types are: One2many, Many2one, Many2many.

An One2many field is a one-way direction of selecting multiple records from a table.

Example: a Sales Order can contain multiple Sales Order Lines, which also contain multiple fields of information.

A Many2one field is a one-way direction of selecting one record from a table.

Example: you can have many product categories, but each product can only belong to one category.

A Many2many field is a two-way direction of selecting records from a table.

Example: multiple tags can be added to a lead’s form.

Note

An One2many field must have a Many2one related to it.

What are Views?

Views define how records are displayed. They are specified in XML which means that they can be edited independently from the models that they represent. There are various types of views in Flectra, and each of them represents a mode of visualization. Some examples are: form, list, kanban.

What is a Menu?

A Menu is a button that executes an action. In Flectra Studio, to create menus (models) and rearrange their hierarchy, click on Edit Menu.

See also

• Studio Basics