👋 Hello Builders! Version 18.5 of the Airkit platform is out! This release, we've got some miscellaneous improvements across the platform as well as the introduction of one major new feature: there's now a way to generate forms from a Data Model that not only automatically structures the input fields, but handles validation as well. This should make it much faster to build complicated forms!

Let's jump right in!

🎉 Added

Data Models and Form Controls

🎊 Introducing the Form Web Control, which generates forms out of Data Models! 🎊

Using Data Models to build Forms expedites the process of creating the form UI and streamlines the process of handling validation. Validation requirements, as well as the Failure Text that should be displayed to users when each requirement is not met, are configured in the Data Model and then automatically incorporated into the Form after it is tied to the Data Model. Pre-configured Trigger Form Validation Actions then generate appropriate user-facing error messages that display when requirements are not met. This is made possible in part by two new Airscript functions: RUN_VALIDATIONS, which references Data Models directly, and FIRST_VALIDATION, which defines the appropriate error message to display.

To learn more, check out Making Forms from Data Models.

Accessibility and WCAG Improvements

We are continuing to make improvements to the web accessibility features available to incorporate into our consumer-facing applications. More of our Controls have been updated with the proper Aria properties, keyboard controls, and voiceover capabilities.

For more on how to enable accessibility features on your apps, see Accessibility in Airkit.

Internal Support Access

There is now a mechanism to grant Airkit Support temporary access to your Organization without needing to create a full user account! You can find the interface for this in in the Console, under Settings > Organization.

Activity Explorer Improvements

There is new UI for Event Filtering when exploring application activity in both for published Sessionsand the Sessions emulated via App Preview. Depending on what aspect of an application flow you are trying to examine, this can help narrow down the Events you need to search through in order to find what you're looking for.

Other activity explorer fixes were performance and cleaning up the columns of data: we fixed some of the scrolling issues, and added more of the UUIDs to the view.

🚧 Deprecations

Custom Data Types

Custom Data Types have been turned into Data Models. Data Models can do everything Custom Data Types can do and then some, but they are edited in the Data Model Editor rather than the AirData Builder.

🛠 Fixes & Updates

AirData Performance Improvements - We've made improvements to the speed and reliability of manually supplying data to AirData. Copy/Pasting large quantities of data in to AirData will result in less lag.
We fixed a bug in the Theme Builder made it impossible to set a Background color when there was a Font Variable with the same name.
We fixed a bug where the Date Picker did not allow selection of a date more than 90 days in the future when selecting any calendar. The date picker now allows you to extend the days into the future that can be selected after choosing the necessary calendar.
We fixed a bug preventing copy/pasting in the platform when accessed through Firefox.