A couple of weeks ago, we launched the closed beta of our new service StellarDS.io, short name for Stellar DataStore. StellarDS.io promises to be the fastest and easiest way to host your data in the backend for web applications as well as native cross-platform mobile and desktop applications. 

While the closed beta is ongoing and we got the first positive feedback from users, we are not only working hard on polishing the core StellarDS.io feature-set and finishing the features we have planned for public use, but our team is also creating additional tools to make you as productive as possible when starting with StellarDS.io.

We have introduced updates of TMS WEB Core and TMS FNC Cloud Pack with built-in components and classes to get started with the StellarDS.io service in minutes. Take our StellarDS.io dataset for example both in TMS WEB Core for web client apps and in TMS FNC Cloud Pack for native VCL and FireMonkey applications that allow you to seamlessly bind DB-aware controls to the data you have in your StellarDS.io service. Or take the TMS WEB Core IDE integration that allows you to edit your StellarDS.io metadata right out of the IDE, both Delphi and Visual Studio Code.

But we have also introduced an SDK for Python developers, allowing to access your data from Python Raspberry Pi apps with minimal effort. 

Evidently, SDKs are in development for JavaScript, TypeScript and C# developers. We'll make these freely available as soon as these are ready.

But today, we wanted to introduce the StellarDS.io import tool. This is actually a TMS WEB Core written web application that let's you connect to your StellarDS.io account, view and edit your data and more importantly, let's you import data from CSV and JSON files into your StellarDS.io tables. If you already have existing data, this should make it easy to load this data in your StellarDS.io account tables and start using it from TMS WEB Core web client apps or VCL and FireMonkey native apps.
First select a table, then just pick a CSV or JSON file with data and drop it in the app or pick it from the file system and then you will see a preview of the data and you'll be able to link the columns you want to import to the fields in your table. 

An interesting tidbit is that the full source code  of the import tool is included in the latest TMS WEB Core v2.5.2.0 release. We started out developing the import tool using plain TMS WEB Core code and of course the StellarDS.io classes and dataset we added to TMS WEB Core. As we realized this tool could be useful for anyone, not just TMS WEB Core users, we decided to convert this demo into a publicly available import tool any StellarDS.io can take advantage of. And in this process, we adapted the TMS WEB Core import tool demo to the look & feel of the StellarDS.io website by incorporating the HTML and CSS template used for StellarDS.io. Without changing code, but with just applying the correct CSS and using the proper HTML elements, we could transform the demo into something that fits nicely into the look & feel of the StellarDS.io website. It shows once more the versatility of TMS WEB Core to take advantage of existing HTML & CSS.