Today I fine tuned the new feature of Domino To Go to push new or changes documents back to Domino just via HTTP, without the need to modify the target NSF.

And I did the fine tuning by implementing the most requested feature of NotesBook: create new entries right on the iPhone or iPad. And here we are!



In the video you can see the new "New Entry" dialog and how the new entry is being saved on the device, displayed in the view on the device and pushed back to Domino in the background. Then it's visible in Lotus Notes, too.
And while I was at it, I moved the "settings" button down into the tabgroup, it feels more natural there.

There are a couple of notable things about this new feature:

• The NSF, that means your personal Lotus Notes Journal (Notebook) does not need to be modified at all. It just works.
• I tested the feature against a Domino 8.5.2 server, but I'm pretty sure that it will work with other 8.5.x servers, too.
• If your iPhone or iPad is offline, the new entry will be stored in a local cache.
• When the device gets a network, NotesBook will automatically upload the new entry in the background (when the App is visible).
• Otherwise, the upload is tried again when you resume the App or when you click the "sync" button.
• No, editing entries is not possible at the moment. See this blog post for details.

Again, the actual code in the iOS App to create a new JournalEntry document is very easy:

---
var doc App.notesdb.createDocument();
doc.replaceItemValue("form", "JournalEntry");
doc.replaceItemValue("subject", App.window_newentry.inputSubject.value);
doc.replaceItemValue("Body", App.window_newentry.inputText.value);
doc.replaceItemValue("webcategories", App.window_newentry.inputCategory.value);
var today new Date();
var todayString today.getMonth() + 1 + "/" + today.getDate() + "/" + (today.getYear()+1900);
doc.replaceItemValue("DiaryDate", todayString);
doc.save();
---

All the complicated stuff about storing the data in the local cache and uploading it to Domino is covered by YouAtNotes Domino To Go.

With this new feature in NotesBook I proved that the new code to upload stuff to Domino via standard Domino HTTP POST commands works. That was a big milestone for the upcoming beta.
Just to clarify for those who are interested in Domino To Go: the toolkit has two modes:

a) full functionality when you copied some XPages into the NSF
b) most functionality without any modification of the NSF

Details are documented here.

So we're coming closer to the beta release :-) I'll let you know when it's done.

The next version of NotesBook is planned for sometime in february, I'd like to add support for iNotes based journals/notesbook in this release, too.