Hello World Tutorial

Getting Started

If you haven't already, Sign up for an AppBuilder account. After signup, a confirmation will be sent to the email address provided. Clicking on the link will take you directly to the AppBuilder login page.

Building Your First App

In this section we're going to build a simple application that places an alert on an external web site whenever someone visits the site

1. Open AppBuilder and log in using the credentials you received when you signed up for an AppBuilder account.
2. Click the "New App" button in the upper left hand corner



3. Choose a name and description for your application. These fields are for your reference only and is not used in any way other than to provide a description for you to organization your Apps. The name and description can be free-form and does not have to be a valid KRL identifier.




4. Click on the "Create" button to generate your App.
   
5. Next, you'll be taken to the screen for editing the application meta data




6. You will see the name and description of the App that you entered on the previous screen inside the meta data editor:
   
7. Context sensitive help is available via the blue Help button on the right of the AppBuilder interface:
   
8. Click on the dispatch button on the left. A text area for editing the dispatch section of the application will appear. Add the following:

   domain "baconsalt.com"

   Your screen should look like this:
   

   Then press "Save". For more information on how the dispatch section can be used, visit this page.

9. We're going to create a simple rule that places a notification on the Bacon Salt homepage when we visit.
   1. Click on the "Rules" button on the left and click the "New Rule" button:
      
   2. Pick a rule name (say "my_first_rule"). This name must be a valid KRL identifier:
      
   3. Some text will already appear in the editor. It should look like this:
      
   4. Inside the quote marks that follow the words "select using," enter the following:

      http://www.baconsalt.com/

   5. Leave the parens next to the word "setting" empty for now, for more information on the select statement in rules, visit this page.
   6. Next, replace the "noop()" action with the following rule code:

      notify("Hello World", "Everything should taste like bacon!");

      If you're dying to find out more about the notify action right this minute, check out this page.

   7. Make sure the "Rule Active" check box is checked and press "Save". Your screen should now look like this:
      

      A brief note on rules:. Every rule must contain a selector and an action. For more information on rules and additional optional rule parts, see here

      Also note that the rule you just created has its own button on the left menu:
      

   Testing Your App

   Now that you have coded your first KRL application, let's proceed to testing it. The best tool to use for the testing of your apps is a bookmarklet, in this tutorial, we will be using a bookmarklet to test our app, and a browser extension for production.

   1. First, make sure your rule is saved, and then click on Test >> Test Bookmarklet. Drag the link that is titled "Hello World -Test", onto your browser's bookmark bar:
      
   2. Once you have put the link into your bookmarks bar, go to www.baconsalt.com and click on your bookmarklet. You should see a notification appear in the top right hand corner of the page:
      
      If for some reason, no notification appears, see the section below about when things go wrong. Otherwise, be extremely excited! Because you have just made your first working Kynetx application! But before you go off and tell all your friends how awesome you are, there are a few more steps to complete.

   Deploying Your Application

   
   

   Now that you have tested your application and found that everything is in working order, it's time to deploy your app to production, and create an endpoint, in this tutorial, we are going to create a browser extension as our endpoint. For more information on the various types of endpoints available in KRL, visit this page.

   
   

   1. The first step is to go to Deploy>>Deploy, and depending on how many times you have edited and saved your application, there are a varied amount of builds that have been created. We're going to deploy your most recent build. Click on the link on the right side that says "Deploy":
      

      After clicking on "Deploy", it should now say "Production" on the right side of the build details:
      

   
   

   2. Next it's time to actually create your browser extension. Click on Distribute>>Browser Extension and fill in the browser extension name, description, and the name of the app author. Then click the button of the respective browser extension you would like to create. Kynetx currently allows you to create extensions for the Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome browsers.
      
      After clicking the button, you will be prompted to download and install the browser extension, do so.

   
   

   3. Once you have installed the browser extension, just visit www.baconsalt.com, and your app will fire. If It did not, once again see below on what to do things go wrong.
   4. If your app is working, please jump here.

   When Things Go Wrong

   Debugging a rule that isn't doing what you want, requires understanding where things can go wrong and systematically eliminating each as a cause.

   Firebug

   Firebug, a Firefox plugin, is a valuable tool in debugging KRL. We'll assume you have it installed and at least have a passing familiarity with it's operation.

   The most obvious cause of a rule not firing is that it's not being called in the first place. Using Firebug, look at the bottom of the page source. You should see inserted tags at the bottom of the body of the page The first tag configures the call and then a call to the shared runtime on init.kobj.net. This should be followed by a call to cs.kobj.net for the actual ruleset evaluation. Here's an example:
   
   

   Logging

   You can change the statement logging off to logging on in the meta section of the ruleset and the Javascript returned from the ruleset evaluation will include debugging statements. You can change on to off when you no longer want the debugging data included. To view the ruleset evaluation Javascript, use Firebug to view the script tag from cs.kobj.net.

Congratulations

Congratulations, you have just made your very first Kynetx app! Your level of excitement is probably somewhere around here:

Thank you for developing with Kynetx and we invite you to keep developing with Kynetx, because with your brain and the power of the Kynetx Rule Language, anything is possible.