2. PHPRunner General questions
  3. Sync to offline database
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Sync to offline database

 		11/2/2018 3:43:01 PM
PHPRunner General questions
T
 taddmencer author

I'm newish to the PHPRunner world. I've been playing around with it for a few weeks when I can in the middle of millions of other things here at work.
Now, I've not really found anything in the documentation nor within the forums. Granted, I didn't read through every thread and maybe there is something. I apologize if there is.
BACKGROUND

The organization I work for helps people in a 3rd world country run programs to educate, etc. We get money from American donors and then that money goes to the people in that country in order for them to focus on the projects full time. In turn, those people report back to us based on certain metrics we provide. We create reports that go to the donors to see what their gifts have done.
Currently, they do this with excel spreadsheets and a really hacked up version of Sugar CRM when there was a community version. We're looking to do something ourselves to make things easier and more efficient. This will potentially allow us to report way faster than we currently do and provide more funds to the field.
One of the things I've been doing is rebuilding our web interface with PHPRunner. This is the easy part.
THE HOPE

We want to provide these people in the field with small laptops. On those laptops, I'd like to have a version of the portal in a standalone desktop app (exporting the app is awesome!). They're not always going to have web access while at remote villages, so we need a way to have an SQLite database that will sync to the SQL database out in the cloud.
I don't mind doing the work. But I don't want to bash my head up and down the PHPRunner road if that's not something PHPRunner can do itself.
I hope my query makes sense. Thanks in advance for any pointing and/or advice you may have.
Have a great weekend!
Admin 11/3/2018

Maybe they should use MySQL as a part or local XAMPP or WAMP or similar package. Then they can use MySQL replication to sync data.
T
 		taddmencer author 11/5/2018

The problem we'd run into is maintenance. All of these people are going to be 8000 miles away. So we need to set up the devices either locally and ship them out, or buy them and have someone outside of our main office install xampp to run. One of the reasons I was excited about the SQLite idea is, if I'm reading things right, you don't have to install anything extra for that to work.
We're trying to create something that is fluid in its delivery. The people we'd be handing these devices are not necessarily the most tech savvy. They can use a computer for data entry, but if there are any issues with the software then it's over and done.
But you're not saying "no this is impossible" which gives me hope. <img src='https://asprunner.com/forums/file.php?topicimage=1&fieldname=reply&id=86298&image=1&table=forumreplies' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />
Admin 11/5/2018

It is impossible with SQLite. It doesn't offer any built-in replication capabilities.
I understand you concern about installing something but someone needs to install PHPRuynner desktop app anyway, right? Installing XAMPP is also just another installation and end user just need to accept all defaults. Or you can be really smart about this and install XAMPP together with PHPRunner desktop app.
PHPRunner uses InnoSetup to create desktop app installation package and InnoSetup project file name is phprunnerapp-setup.iss.
M
 		Mark Kramer 11/5/2018

Have you considered a bootable flash drive with Ubuntu or Mint and "lamp"? It is easy to replicate/clone and is writable . Also if you sent the "Live" version on a CD, the OS could be installed from it and then the flash could update or the "Live" version could "Phone home" and update if needed. There are a few different ways to do this and Lamp with MySQL is free and very little overhead as compared to SQL. This is the back end for the web side not the PHPrunner Install side