Tag: javascript

Adding alternate state support to your Qlik Sense extension

One of the more advanced feature in QlikView is alternate state. It alllows you to have several different selections active at the same time. With set analysis expressions you can then combine your selection sets to gain valuable insights.

While alternate states are not exposed in the built-in Qlik Sense client, you can easily add them to your custom extension with just a few lines of code. Let’s see how.

Step 1: add a property panel field

The qStateName property already exists (check the Qix Engine API), so a first step is to map it to the property panel. Lets create a new section under “Addons”:

This assumes a HyperCube, $ is the default state which is always there. This is already enough for alternate state to work in your extension. If you enter a valid alternate state name in the property panel your extension will be connected to it. Problem is there has to be an alternate state in the app, and you need to know it’s name. Lets do something about that.

Step 2: add a listbox with existing alternate states.

Lets convert our property panel to a dropdown list, where the app developer can choose what state the object should be connected to. We do this by setting the component to ‘dropdown’ and adding a function to return the options:

Alternate states ar listed in the app layout structure, so we need to get the app layout and format the states in the format the property panel dropdown wants. The default state ‘$’ is not in the list, so we need to add that ourselves. For this to work you need to have the qlik module available in your extension.

Now you will have a dropdown list in your extension property panel, something like this:

Still doesn’t look much, does it… But it does it’s job. Now we just need a way to create those alternate states.

Step 3:Creating the alternate states

Well, actually you need to do this first. But there are different ways to achieve this:

  • there are extensions for this
  • you could do it in Engine API explorer, since its really a one-time thing
  • or, you could add it to the property panel.

The property panel is not really meant for this, since we are not updating the object properties, but the app properties, but still it’s pretty easy to do. You can add something like this to the property panel:

It’s really not more complicated than that. You will get an inputfield in the propertypanel. If the user writes anything in that field, an alternate state will be created. It will then show up in the listbox, so you can use it in your extension.

Conclusion

It’s really not at all difficult to add alternate state support to your extension. Probably you should do something to show the user that this chart belongs to an alternate state: you can use the header for that, or add some styling or an icon for charts that are in another state. I’ll leave that for you.

Exporting Qlik Sense extensions to Powerpoint and PDF

Update 2020-06-27: Qlik sense has changed since I originally wrote this, up to date version of using a Promise can be found here:

Printing Qlik Sense extensions

One of the great new features in Qlik Sense is snapshots and storytelling. It allows you to create a snapshot of your visualizations, with the current selection state, and then include the snapshot in a story. Behind the scenes Qlik Sense also uses snapshot for export to PDF, PowerPoint and image. This makes it even more important for you to make your extension work well with snapshots. Sometimes this is however not easy…

The basics

To turn snapshots on, you need to include a few lines in your extension:

This will give you a context menu in the client with alternatives to create snapshot and export the visualization. That might be enough, but it might not be enough. To verify it you should:

  • create a snapshot of your extension, include it in a story and verify that it works
  • export your extension to PDF and/or PowerPoint (possibly also image)
  • and export the story to Powerpoint/PDF

You visualization is actually used in three contexts, that are somewhat different:

  1. the normal analyse mode, with live data, affected by changes in selection state
  2. the snapshot/story mode with a snapshot of data and the selection state as it was when the snapshot was created
  3. the export mode, which is also based on a snapshot, but run in a separate service on the server

To make it actually work in all, you might need to do some more work.

Make Qlik Sense wait for your extension

One problem, mainly in export, is to let Qlik Sense know when your extension actually is ready with the rendering. You might get just an empty area in your powerpoint, or just the header but no content. This might be because the image is taken before your extension is ready.

The mechanism to fix this is a javascript concept called a Promise. Your paint method should return a Promise, that resolves when the rendering is ready. Qlik Sense will then wait until the Promise is resolved and then grab the image.

This is described where briefly in Qlik Sense help under ‘Set up “finished rendering” notification, like this:

This will return a Promise, that immediately resolves. This might not be good enough, since you might want to wait for something until you resolve. In my case, I used highcarts and highcharts has a callback function that will be called when rendering is ready. The final solution is like this:

So, I create a deferred object before calling the Highcharts rendering method. I can then return the promise that belongs to the deferred, but I do not resolve it until Highcharts tells me that rendering is complete, actually I had to add an additional delay of 1 second to make sure. There is currently no documentation of qlik.Promise in Qlik Sense help, but you can look in the angularjs documentation.

Turn animations off

If it’s still not working, you should take a look at animations. Animations in analyse mode are good (if used the right way…) and might help the user discover insights in their data, but in export they should be turned off.

In Highcharts there are actually two flags you should turn off to diable animations. It might be enough to turn off just one of them, but why not both:

The isSnapshot flag which I use to determine if we are in analyse mode or in snapshot (story or export) is undocumented, so this solution might break in future Qlik Sense versions, but in September 2017 it works.

Qlik Sense Generic Object IV: The lists

A Qlik Sense Generic Object can also be used to list objects in the Qlik Sense app to which it belongs. You can use it to list things like:

  • fields
  • dimensions
  • measures
  • bookmarks
  • snapshots
  • media (that is images controlled by Qlik Sense)
  • sheets
  • master objects
  • variables
  • stories

The javascript APIs provide the app.getList method, which is a wrapper that helps you get theses lists. It will create a session object for you with the list you are requesting, get that actual data in the list and call your callback function once the data is available.

List are live – your callbacks might be called several times

Just like with other Generic Objects the data might be invalidated. If you are using the javascript APIs it will then be automatically revalidated and your callback function will be called again, so you should be prepared that your callback might be called multiple times. But unlike the Hypercube and List Object the lists are not affected by the users selections. Instead they will be invalidated when the underlying data changes:

  • if the user adds a bookmark, you will get a new bookmarklist
  • if the user adds a measure, you will get a new measurelist
  • if the user adds a dimension, you will get a new dimensionlist
  • etc….

Configure the data you get in your list

The data you get in your lists is configurable. If you use the API method, you will get a default set of fields for each item in the list, but you can set the list up to suite your needs.

As an example, if you use the api method getList(‘measure’, callback), you will get a list where records look like this:

The first and second part, qInfo and qMeta, will always be there. They contain the id to use when refering to this measure and title and description use ful in a list of measures. The third part however, qData, is configurable. The default configuration just gives you tags and title one more time, but if you instead want more data about the measure, you can use your own measure list definition like this:

Under qData you provide your own mapping of the properties you want. In this case I have just specified that I want everything under qMeasure included. You can also specify individual fields.

And get output that includes more data for the measures:

And the same goes for the other lists, you can supply your own definitions and get more data included.

Run a reload from a Qlik Sense mashup

The main use of Qlik Sense mashup API is to visualize data from Qlik Sense apps and reuse visualizations in an app, allowing your users to interact with the data. But you can use it for other things to, like running a reload or interacting with Qlik Sense server.

But a Qlik Sense app can be used in two different contexts: desktop and server. While visualizations and interactions with those work the same in Server and Desktop, the server API (which is a REST API, unlike the QIX Engine API which works over the web socket. So the first thing we need to do is check our environment, are we in Server or Desktop. Luckily, there is a method for that, the isPersonalMode method.

Once we know if we are in Desktop or Server we can acct accordingly. If we are in Desktop, we can just call the doReload method. While this might work in Server too, we really shouldn’t use it. In a server environment you might very likely have different Qix Engines for interaction with the user and reloads. In fact it is very likely that the engine we are connected to does not have the right database connections for the reload, so running the reload there would fail. Instead we call the Qlik Server for the reload, and let it determine which computer should do the actual job. We can do this with the callRepository method.

This would look something like this:

You find a full working example in the Github repository.

This post is based on a session I originally held at Qonnections 2015, under the title ‘5 things you did not know you can do with the Mashup API’.

Get the selections in a Qlik Sense mashup

If you are using the Qlik Sense standard client there is a Selection toolbar displayed at the top of the page. It has lots of useful functionality, including search support, so in many cases you would want to use this in a mashup, which is perfectly possible.

But sometimes the selection toolbar does not fit in your web page or you want something more compact. In that case you can listen to selection changes yourself and visualize the selection state.

selections

The way to get the selection state is the getList method. An example:

The reply will contain a qSelectionObject with:

  • qBackCount and qForwardCount, the number of steps forward and backward that is possible
  • a qSelections array, with on entry for every field that is selected
  • the array entries will contain qField – the field name,  qTotal – total number of different values in the field and qSelectedCount – the number of selected values

Using this you can make your own visualization of selection state, or perhaps hide and show visualizations based on selection states.

Access the data in a Qlik Sense visualization

When you use the getObject. call of the Qlik Sense mashup API (also known as the Capabilities API or qlik.js) it works a bit like a black box: you just call it and it will inject some Qlik content into your page , you don’t have to bother about the content, it might be any type of chart, it might even be an extension. But it you want to, you can access the data of the visualization.

The key to this is the return value from getObject. The method returns, as it says in the documentation ‘a promise of an object model’. That means you can use the return value to get access to the data in the visualization, or even call some methods to modify the visualization automatically.

Only you have to understand:

  • how a promise works
  • and how to find data in the model you eventually get

Promise

The fact that getObject returns a Promise means that you will get an object with a then method. The then method will take a parameter, a function, that is called when getObject is ready, that is after a while, normally just some milliseconds, so to you it will look like immediately, but for the computer this is a long time.

What happens when you call getObject is:

  • the browser will call the QIX engine over the web socket for the definition of the object with the id you supplied
  • when the definition comes back it will call the engine to get the data

Only after these two calls will the promise resolve, and the method you supplied as a parameter to the then method will be called. That means that at this stage the object you get will be a model with valid data.

The model

A good way to find out the contents of model is to use the debugger in your browser and inspect it. Some important parts of the model:

  • layout: this is the data for the visualization. Expressions, hypercubes etc will be evaluated and contain data reflecting the current selections
  • events, most important is the Validated event, which will be triggered when there is new valid data in the model. a full list is here ( the page refers to AngularJS-based extensions, but this is general, the same events is used for all visualizations, whether they are extensions or not)

So, to sum this up, you can get the title of the visualization like this:

You find a full working example in the Github repository.

This post is based on a session I originally held at Qonnections 2015, under the title ‘5 things you did not know you can do with the Mashup API’.

Dynamically modify a Qlik Sense visualization

One of the really powerful features of Qlik Sense API’s is the possibility to dynamically modify visualizations. You can build solutions that allows the user not only to make selections and have them reflected in all charts displayed (that’s the default, you will get that automatically if you don’t turn it off) but also to dynamically change chart properties and do things like

  • change dimension from for example Product to Product Lin (or to Division)
  • change measure from Sales Amount to Quantity or Margin or Cost
  • add an additional dimension and make a barchart into a stacked bar chart
  • modify ordering
  • limit the chart to only show Top 10, or bottom 5
  • change the chart type from Barchart to Linechart or to an extension

And all of this can be done for both built-in visualizations and extensions in the same way. The key to all of this is the applyPatches method and soft patches.

Soft patches

A soft patch is a temporary change to properties for a visualization. The fact that it is temporary means:

  • it will not be persisted either in Desktop or Server
  • it will not affect other users using the same app
  • once the Qix engine session is closed it will be gone, so when the user reconnects, visualizations will be back to their original state
  • the user can make soft patches to visualizations that me does not have the right to modify

You make sure that its a soft patch by setting the second parameter in the applyPatches call to true. The first parameter is the list of patches you want to apply. Since you might want to apply several patches, it is an array, where each entry has three values:

  • qPath: the path to the property you want to change, with slash (/) where javascrip/json usually has a dot
  • qOp: the operation you want to perform, one of “add”, “replace”, “remove”
  • qValue: the value you want to set. This should be a JSON value inside a string, so a boolean value would be “true” or “false”, a numeric value something like “-1” and a string (this is the tricky part) “\”new string\”” (that is a string in a string). You could also set a javascript object, use javascript standard JSON.stringify method in that case.

Perhaps this is clearer if we look at an example:

What we do in this example is that we show a list of dimensions and measures to the user. When the user clicks on one of them, we move it to be the first one in the sort order, and use applyPatches to update the array and the chart will be resorted. Since it is all done with soft patches, it will not affect other users.

You find a full working example in the Github repository.

This post is based on a session I originally held at Qonnections 2015, under the title ‘5 things you did not know you can do with the Mashup API’.

 

Using tabs in a Qlik Sense mashup

The Qlik Sense Mashup API (also known as Capabilities API or simply qlik.js) allows you to inject Qlik Sense charts with full interactivity into your web page with just a few lines of code. It also allows you to dynamically define hypercubes, lists or simple expressions, send them to Qlik calculation engine and get results back, so you can visualize the data yourself. If you use the APIs all this would be well known to you. But there is more.. Let’s have a look at some more advanced things you can do.

Show visualizations in a tab

Sometimes you want a user interface that is a bit more advanced than just showing visualizations when the page is loaded. For example you might want to show the visualization in a tab, something like this:

visualization-in-tabs

This examples uses jQuery tabs, but you could use any tabs implementation, the basic ideas are the same. What you need to do to make this work:

  • when the user wants to add a new visualization, call the getObject method, with the html element and the id of the visualization as parameters
  • when the user switches between tabs, you need to call the resize method, to make sure that the visualization displayed is updated.

A code example. Note that much of this is actually more jQuery than qlik, the only part that is really qlik is the two methods calls:

You’ll find a working example in the Github repository. Note that the key to this is only two calls:

  • call getObject the first time the user wants to see a new chart, not when the page loads
  • call resize whenever the user changes tabs