Innovate, Don’t re-invent: Stay agile with component sharing

Low-code platforms have made it possible to build applications by visually orchestrating the required building blocks without the need for reinventing the wheel for every project. Enterprises expect low-code platforms to standardize those building blocks so that it can be used across the enterprise by different teams and different projects. This is essentially a shot in the arm for the developers by significantly accelerating their productivity through the reusability of their code. WaveMaker has found a way to do exactly this, by creating an Enterprise Artifact Repository as part of its Enterprise Developer Network (EDN) setup. EDN is an online environment that allows collaboration over projects, version control, and sharing of resources.

WaveMaker’s artifact repository is essentially a resource repository that standardizes on a collection of prefabs, project shells, templates, and themes. It lets the enterprise developers create, test, and publish useful app components to the repository for enterprise-wide access by other development and business teams alike. It also allows for easy exploration and discovery of resources to be made available to the developers. The EAR provides a range of artifacts starting from simple templates, themes, feature- specific prefabs to even project shells.

Reusable Artifacts in WaveMaker

Themes: Style elements that work at the widget or UI component level. Themes help provide a consistent look and feel to the applications.
Template Bundles: A collection of templates – a reusable arrangement of one or more widgets in the page content that together capture the purpose of the page.
Prefabs: A collection of one or more widgets that are bound to APIs or services. They usually pertain to a specific feature or solution like map/QR code integration, etc.
Project Shell: An app with functionality that is common to multiple apps across the enterprise. This can be used as a starting point in app development.

Artifact Features

All artifacts have a standard set of information either auto-generated or provided by the developer like tag, category, version no, and changelog.

Tag: This will be useful for searching; each artifact can have multiple tags.
Category: This will be used for grouping purposes. The category is defined or approved by the EDN Admin and assigned by the developer at the time of publishing.
Version Number: Each artifact is associated with an auto-generated version number.
Change Log: These include the comments that the developer needs to add before publishing the artifact.

Creating and Publishing Artifacts

Artifacts are created by developers using the project dashboard by invoking the create function of the respective artifact. The artifacts developed are published either:

To a specific project- to allow the artifact developer to send it to a specific project
To the individual workspace for a non-enterprise version- can be used for any project under development in the specific developer’s workspace
To Enterprise Developer Network for the enterprise version- make the artifact available for the entire enterprise for all applications to use

Artifact developers create the artifacts which are pushed to the EDN- pending approval of the EDN Admin. Each of the artifacts will go through the four stages: In Development, Unpublished, Rejected, and Approved which are self-explanatory.

The standard process remaining the same, each of the artifacts has a slightly different publishing flow as described here: Prefab, Project Shell, Template Bundle, and Themes. Once published, the artifacts can be viewed from the Artifacts Dialog and are available for use for the entire enterprise. The admins can manage the artifacts through the EDN dashboard itself. WaveMaker also allows EDN admins to import and export the enterprise artifacts using zip files.