Have Dovico Timesheet bring me to the last view I was in

Imagine that you've been asked to track your time on a daily basis so that the information you provide is as accurate as possible to help your managers run the company. You understand the importance of accurate information but tracking your time also takes you away from your work.

You've also been given security access to the Projects view in Dovico Timesheet because you occasionally need to adjust projects. Unfortunately, this adds to the delay of getting back to work because that's now the first view you're brought to when entering the software. In general, you only log into the system to track your time but now you're forced to expand and click a menu item to get to the My Timesheet view.

Wouldn't it be nice if the software would just bring you to the last view you were in?

What options are there to accomplish this?

Options

If you have access to the Projects view, you'll be brought to that view by default when you log into Dovico Timesheet. If you don't have access to the Projects view, however, you're brought to the last view you were in. What you need is a way to hide it.

There are two ways to hide the Projects view:

1. You can remove access to the view from the Security Group's settings that you've been assigned to. This might not be desired because, when you need access to the view, you'll now need to contact your Dovico administrator to have the permissions adjusted.
2. You can hide the view from yourself temporarily by editing the menu. This is the approach that I recommend for this use case.

Hiding the Projects view from the menu

As shown in the following image, to adjust the menu, hover over your name at the top-right of the screen and a drop-down will be shown. Click on the Edit Menu item.

(click to view the image full size)

The next screen displayed allows you to adjust the visibility of the menu items by checking or unchecking them. You still have security access to these items when they're unchecked but they're hidden from the menu. More information about the Edit Menu feature can be found in the following article: https://blog.dovico.com/how-to-optimize-your-timesheet-menu-d56320053541

As shown in the following image, under the Projects & Employees column, uncheck the Projects item and then click the Apply button.

(click to view the image full size)

The Projects view is no longer visible in the menu. If you need access to the view in the future, just edit the menu again.

Now that the Projects view has been hidden from the menu, if you go to the My Timesheet view, log out and then log back in, you'll be taken to the last view you were in which is the My Timesheet view in this case.

Summary

In this article you saw that by removing the Projects view from the menu you'll be brought to the view that you were in the last time you were in Dovico Timesheet.

You can remove the Projects view from the menu by either adjusting the Security Group's settings that are applied to you or by editing the menu. Editing the menu is more convenient than adjusting the Security Group's settings because you can just re-show the menu item when you need access to it without impacting your Dovico administrator's time.


Disclaimer: I was not paid to write this article but I do work for Dovico Software which makes the Dovico Timesheet product mentioned in this article.

The import statement with an Emscripten-generated WebAssembly module in Vue.js

Over the 2019 Christmas break, I helped a developer find a way to import an Emscripten-generated WebAssembly module into Vue.js. This article details the solutions found.

In my liveBook for WebAssembly in Action, I was recently asked how to use an Emscripten-generated module in Vue.js. In the book, I showed examples using standard JavaScript but didn't dig into JavaScript frameworks so I thought this would be an interesting question to look into especially because I've never used Vue.js before.

This article will walk you through the solution that was found.

The first thing that's needed is a WebAssembly module.

The WebAssembly module

The module is kept simple with just an Add function that accepts two integer values, sums them, and returns the result. The following snippet shows the C code that's saved to a file called add.c.

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <emscripten.h>

EMSCRIPTEN_KEEPALIVE
int Add(int value1, int value2)
{

return (value1 + value2);

}

With the C code created, the next step is to compile it into a WebAssembly module.

Generating the WebAssembly module

To import the generated module into Vue.js, we want to use an import statement similar to the following:

import Module from './TestImport';

By default, the Emscripten-generated JavaScript is not configured to be imported in this fashion. To tell Emscripten to create the JavaScript so that it can be imported using the import statement, you need to include the -s EXPORT_ES6=1 and -s MODULARIZE=1 flags.

The MODULARIZE flag will wrap the generated JavaScript code's Module object in a function. Ordinarily, just including the JavaScript file in a webpage triggers the automatic download and instantiation of the module. When using this flag, however, you'll need to create an instance of the Module object to trigger the download and instantiation.

The EXPORT_ES6 flag will include the necessary export object expected by the import statement.

As we tried to import the module, however, we received an error from Vue.js about the var _scriptDir = import.meta.url; line of code in the generated JavaScript file. To get around this error, we included the -s USE_ES6_IMPORT_META=0 flag to tell Emscripten to use the older form of the import.meta.url line of code for systems that don't recognize that code.

Bringing it all together, the following command line creates a module that can be imported into Vue.js using the import statement:

emcc add.c -s EXTRA_EXPORTED_RUNTIME_METHODS=['ccall']
-s EXPORT_ES6=1 -s MODULARIZE=1 -s USE_ES6_IMPORT_META=0
-o TestImport.js

Now that you have a WebAssembly module, the next step is to import it into the Vue.js application.

The Vue.js application

The following are two approaches that I came up with for loading a module in Vue.js:

1. Create an object on the Vue instance that is null by default. When the first component that needs the module is loaded, it creates the module instance and all components afterwards have access to the module.
2. The other approach is to have a local object in the component where only that component has access to the module.

The first thing that you need to do is copy the TestImport.js and TestImport.wasm files to your Vue.js solution. I placed them in the src folder.

The first approach that I'll show you is where the module instance is placed on the Vue instance.

1. Module instance placed on the Vue instance

In the main.js file, create a variable on the Vue object called $myModule so that the module is only downloaded and initialized the once. The object is null until instantiated for the first time.

The following snippet shows the change in the main.js file:

import Vue from 'vue';
import App from './App.vue';

Vue.config.productionTip = true;
Vue.prototype.$myModule = null; // Will hold the module's instance

new Vue({

render: h => h(App)

}).$mount('#app');

The next area that needs to be adjusted is the component.

Adjust the component

Adjust the Home.vue component with a template that has a button that will call the callAdd function. The result of the function call will be placed below the button as shown in the following snippet:

<template>

<div>

<button @click="callAdd">Add</button>
<p>Result: {{ result }}</p>

</div>

</template>

Within the Script tag, include the import statement for the module as shown in the following snippet:

import Module from '../TestImport';

Because the module was created using the -s MODULARIZE=1 flag, the module isn't downloaded and instantiated until you create an instance of the Module object.

In the component's export object, create a beforeCreate hook that checks to see if the $myModule object has been created yet. If not, create a new instance of the Module object. The download and instantiation of the module is asynchronous so a Promise is returned. When the Promise resolves, the module instance is assigned to the $myModule object as shown in the following snippet:

beforeCreate() {

if (this.$myModule === null) {

new Module().then(myModule => {

this.$myModule = myModule;

});

}

}

The callAdd function calls into the module using Emscripten's ccall helper function as shown in the following snippet:

callAdd() {

this.result = this.$myModule.ccall('Add',

'number',
['number', 'number'],
[2, 3]);

}

Putting it all together, the following is the content of the Home.vue file:

<template>

<div>

<button @click="callAdd">Add</button>
<p>Result: {{ result }}</p>

</div>

</template>

<script>

import Module from '../TestImport';

export default {

beforeCreate() {

if (this.$myModule === null) {

new Module().then(myModule => {

this.$myModule = myModule;

});

}

},
data() {

return {

result: null

}

},
methods: {

callAdd() {

this.result = this.$myModule.ccall('Add',

'number',
['number', 'number'],
[2, 3]);

}

}

};

</script>

<style scoped>
</style>

The source code for the example above can be found here: VuejsGlobalInstance

If you don't want the module available to all components, the following is how you can use a local variable to hold the module instance instead.

2. Using a local module instance in your component

In this case, no changes are needed to your main.js file.

In the Home.vue file, create a variable called moduleInstance after the import statement as shown in the following snippet:

import Module from '../TestImport';
let moduleInstance = null;

In the beforeCreate hook, you don't need to check to see if the object exists yet. All you need to do is create an instance of the Module object and, when the Promise resolves, assign the module instance to the moduleInstance variable as shown in the following snippet:

beforeCreate() {

new Module().then(myModule => {

moduleInstance = myModule;

});

}

The callAdd function calls into the module using Emscripten's ccall helper function using the moduleInstance object as shown in the following snippet:

callAdd() {

this.result = moduleInstance.ccall('Add',

'number',
['number', 'number'],
[2, 3]);

}

Putting it all together, the following is the content of the Home.vue file:

<template>

<div>

<button @click="callAdd">Add</button>
<p>Result: {{ result }}</p>

</div>

</template>

<script>

import Module from '../TestImport';
let moduleInstance = null;

export default {

beforeCreate() {

new Module().then(myModule => {

moduleInstance = myModule;

});

},
data() {

return {

result: null

}

},
methods: {

callAdd() {

this.result = moduleInstance.ccall('Add',

'number',
['number', 'number'],
[2, 3]);

}

}

};

</script>

<style scoped>
</style>

The source code for the example above can be found here: VuejsLocalInstance

When I was trying to run this on my machine, I was getting a content-type error in the console window of my browser’s developer tools. For some reason, my Vue.js dev server isn't using the proper media type for a WebAssembly module. It should be application/wasm.

The developer I was helping didn't have an issue with this so it's probably a configuration issue with my computer (Windows with Visual Studio as the IDE). I've included this just in case anyone else runs into this issue.

To get around this issue, I needed to modify the vue.config.js file by adding the following:

const path = require('path');
const contentBase = path.resolve(__dirname, '..', '..');

module.exports = {

configureWebpack: config => {

config.devServer = {

before(app) {

// use proper mime-type for wasm files
app.get('*.wasm', function (req, res, next) {

var options = {

root: contentBase,
dotfiles: 'deny',
headers: {

'Content-Type': 'application/wasm'

}

};
res.sendFile(req.url, options, function (err) {

if (err) { next(err); }

});

});

}

}

}

}

Summary

In this article you saw that it's possible to load an Emscripten-generated WebAssembly module using the import statement if you use the -s EXPORT_ES6=1 and -s MODULARIZE=1 flags when creating the module.

If the tool you're using has an issue with the import.meta.url line of code, you can tell Emscripten to use a different set of code for that line by including the -s USE_ES6_IMPORT_META=0 flag when creating the module.

When using the -s MODULARIZE=1 flag, importing the Emscripten-generated JavaScript file won't automatically download and instantiate the module. Instead, you need to create an instance of the Module object. The download and instantiation is asynchronous so you need to either wait for the Promise to resolve, as was done in this article, or implement a callback function for the onRuntimeInitialized Emscripten function.

In Vue.js, you can add an object to the Vue instance by adding it to the prototype. When adding something to the prototype, it will be available to all components.

If you don't want your module available to all components, you can place the instance in a variable local to the component.


For this article, Emscripten 1.39.5 was used to create the WebAssembly module. Visual Studio 2019 was used to create the Vue.js application with the following devDependencies:

"@vue/cli-plugin-babel": "3.0.4",
"@vue/cli-plugin-eslint": "3.0.4",
"@vue/cli-service": "3.0.4",
"eslint": "5.6.0",
"eslint-plugin-vue": "4.7.1",
"vue-template-compiler": "2.5.17"

Additional Material on WebAssembly

Like what you read and are interested in learning more about WebAssembly?

• Check out my book "WebAssembly in Action"
  
  
  The book introduces the WebAssembly stack and walks you through the process of writing and running browser-based applications. It also covers dynamic linking multiple modules at runtime, using web workers to prefetch a module, threading, using WebAssembly modules in Node.js, working with the WebAssembly text format, debugging, and more.
  
  The first chapter is free to read and, if you'd like to buy the book, it's 40% off with the following code: ggallantbl
  
  
• Blazor WebAssembly and the Dovico Time Entry Status app
  
  
  As I was digging into WebAssembly from a C# perspective for an article that I was preparing to write, I decided to use some research time that my company gave me to dig into Blazor WebAssembly by rewriting a small Java application that I built in 2011.
  
  This article walks you through creating the Dovico Time Entry Status app using Blazor WebAssembly.
  
  
• Using WebAssembly modules in C#
  
  
  While there were a lot of exciting things being worked on with the WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) at the time of my book's writing, unfortunately, it wasn't until after the book went to production that an early preview of the Wasmtime runtime was announced for .NET Core.
  
  I wrote this article to show you how your C# code can load and use a WebAssembly module via the Wasmtime runtime for .NET. The article also covers how to create custom model validation with ASP.NET Core MVC.
  
  
• WebAssembly threads in Firefox
  
  
  My book shows you how to use WebAssembly threads but, at the time of its writing, they were only available in Firefox behind a flag. They're no longer behind a flag but Firefox has added a requirement: To enable the SharedArrayBuffer, you need to include two response headers.
  
  Although the headers are only required by Firefox desktop at the time of this article's writing, this will soon change as Chrome for Android will require the headers when version 88 is released in January 2021. Chrome desktop is expected to require the headers by March 2021.
  
  This article walks you through returning the response headers and using WebAssembly threads to convert a user-supplied image to greyscale.

Disclaimer: I was not paid to write this article but I am paid royalties on the sale of the book "WebAssembly in Action" which I mentioned in this article.