Components

Optimize, share, distribute!

What’s a component?

• Creating and managing a component
• Creating and deploying a compiled component

A component is a library of code and screens that you can drag-and-drop into any of your applications.
Using this mechanism, you can create basic code building blocks, test them, then share them in collaborative development efforts or distributed to your customers.

Modular development

If you've wanted to do modular development in 4D, components let you do just that. There's a lot of ways that components can help speed development and deployment. Here's a few examples:

One developer builds a library of tools, like a file management command set. Every other developer on the team can then use this library as easily as they use the 4D language commands.
You built a vacation tracking application and you want to distribute it to your customers. Distribute it as a component and their application will automatically be enriched with the tables, fields, dialog boxes, and scripts that allow using this functionality.

Immediately operational

A component is a completely independent 4D database. No need for external tools to create one! You just have to select the methods that will be published and check the sharing option. That’s it!

Using a component is just as easy: drop the component in a dedicated folder and take immediate advantage of the new features.

As easy as hello!

Updating a component is easy – delete the old one and drop a new one in its place.

Save time, stay Zen

You don't need to update the entire application when you update a component anymore. Send the updated component to your customer and that’s it!

More security and performance

Components can be compiled to protect the underlying code. Since compiled code runs faster, this security step has added application performance benefits: faster launch time.