REQUIREMENTS

• Working from PHP 5.4 to 8.0
• If you are using the free version 2.2.9 or below and you cannot even install it properly, short_open_tag = on in PHP.INI
• MySQL - Any version, really

GENERAL INSTALLATION STEPS

1. Upload the abo.zip file to the root directory of your website (or wherever the index.php is)
2. Unzip the abo.zip file (if you do not have console access, the easiest way is to use cPanel/File Manager, right click on the file, decompress)
3. Configure all you need, going to https://www.example.com/abo_server
4. Erase the abo_server folder (or, better yet, password protect it, so you don't have to upload it again in case you want to modify the configuration)
5. Rename the abo_client folder to whatever you like. You don't have to, but it's just to make it look nicer for your final customer

DETAILED INSTALLATION STEPS

Please watch the 30-seconds video, or follow the steps below.

1. Upload the abo.zip file to the root directory of your website (or wherever the index.php is)
2. Unzip the abo.zip file (if you do not have console access, the easiest way is to use cPanel/File Manager, right click on the file, decompress)
3. Go to https://www.example.com/abo_server
4. Click on DB Settings and enter DB name, username, password and charset (if different from UTF-8), and click SAVE
5. Click on Table config and enable all of them at least for "view" (click on the switch on the top of the table), and click SAVE
6. You are done! Click on Open Client or go directly to https://www.example.com/abo_client

HOW TO UPDATE THE CONFIGURATION

IN CASE YOU DIDN'T ERASE/CHANGE THE FOLDER NAMES

1. Simply go to https://www.example.com/abo_server, perform your updates, and it's done, no need to recompile/upload anything!

IN CASE YOU ERASED/CHANGED THE FOLDER NAMES

1. If you changed the name of the abo_client folder, change it back to abo_client
2. Unzip the abo.zip file ON YOUR COMPUTER, and upload only the abo_server folder, to avoid overwriting your configuration
3. Configure all you need, going to https://www.example.com/abo_server
4. Erase the abo_server folder (or, better yet, password protect it, so you don't have to upload it again in case you want to modify the configuration)
5. Rename the abo_client folder to what it was

IN CASE YOU CHANGED THE DATABASE

1. Go to https://www.example.com/abo_server and click on Re-Scan DB
2. If you are happy with the default behavior, you are done!
3. Otherwise, go to the new fields and customize them. Keep in mind, if you added a table, you must go to Tables Config to enable them (view/edit/add/delete)

DETAILS OF THE CONFIGURATION

Fields configuration

Please watch a FULL CUSTOMIZATION in this walk-through tutorial, and after use the documentation as a reference.

DEFAULT VALUES

By default, ABO AutoBackOffice tries to adapt itself to the MySQL field type, and it will try both to print and to edit the field content in the best possible ways. In particular, these will be the defaults:

MySQL Type	Default View	Default Edit
GEOMETRY, POINT, LINESTRING, POLYGON, MULTIPOINT, MULTILINESTRING, MULTIPOLYGON, GEOMETRYCOLLECTION	The whole text value	Textarea
BINARY, VARBINARY, BLOB, TINYBLOB, MEDIUMBLOB, LONGBLOB	First 20 characters, base64 encoded	Encoded in base 64
TEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, LONGTEXT	First 20 characters	HTML Editor if enabled by default, otherwise textarea
DATE, DATETIME, TIMESTAMP	Text representation	Date/Time Picker
TIME	Text representation	24h format, HH:MM:SS
TINYTEXT	Text representation	Up to 127 characters long
DECIMAL	Text representation	Only digits and decimal point, up to the maximum length
INT, TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, BIGINT	Text representation	Only digits, up to the maximum length
BIT	Decimal representation	Only digits
FLOAT, DOUBLE	Decimal representation	Only digits and decimal point
CHAR, VARCHAR	Textual representation	Up to N characters long
ENUM	Textual representation	Combobox, must select one of the options
SET	Textual representation	Combobox, must select one of the option, or none of them

Customization

Every field can be configured differently, both for view and edit mode, or you can let ABO decide the best default values according to the MySQL type.

VIEW MODE

ABO tries, by default, to print a nice-looking content according to the MySQL type. Of course, you can always force ABO to show a different kind of format. In particular, you can force these types:

View Mode	What it shows
Nothing	It will fall back to the default, depending on the MySQL type
fullText	The complete field, in plain text. Be careful, because there is no limit: if the text is 10MB long, it will print 10MB of data!
img	The image, at the original, full size
img-xs	The image, with the width forced to 64 pixels, with proportional height
img-s	The image, with the width forced to 128 pixels, with proportional height
img-m	The image, with the width forced to 256 pixels, with proportional height
img-l	The image, with the width forced to 512 pixels, with proportional height
base64_full	Full field encoded in base64
base64_cut	The first 20 bytes of the field, encoded in base64

EDIT MODE

Edit Mode	What it shows
Nothing	It will fall back to the default, depending on the MySQL type
Textarea	Treated as text, in a HTML textarea
HTML	The final user will be able to use a WYSIWYG editor (quilljs.com). Keep in mind that this editor encloses ALL the text in a <p> element
Upload	to upload an image. The final user will be able to either upload a new one, or select one already from the same folder on the server
File	The user will be able to upload ANY file on the server. Be careful because of the security risks: while some common files are blocked by default (e.g. PHP), some others could harm the system!
Tinytext	text input up to 127 characters

UPLOAD DIR

The path to which the images/files are uploaded. It ALWAYS starts from the "abo_client" folder, so if your final folder is 'img/test', you should write '../img/test' (because it must go up one level, and then go into the folders). DO NOT ADD A SLASH AT THE END! It will be added automatically if/when needed, but if you do, don't worry, ABO will fix it for you :)

WIDTH / HEIGHT

The minimum/forced dimension of an uploaded image. If smaller, it will not be uploaded. If bigger, it will be resized and, when needed, cropped. The aspect ratio will ALWAYS be maintained.

STATUS

It can have 3 different values:

• Hidden: The final user will NEVER be able to see it (usually, primary keys are hidden)
• Read Only: The final user can only view the value, it cannot be modified
• Writeable: The final user can read and write this value

SYNTAX CHECK

Unused at the moment.

MANDATORY

Unused at the moment.

LINK TO TABLE

If this field represents the ID of another table, here you must write otherTableName/otherIdField. Be aware that there should be a slash in between the two values, with no spaces

LOOKUP FIELD

The field in the "other" table that you want to print. For example, you have a customer table and an invoice table. In the customer table, the field name contains the name. In the invoice table, the field customerId contains the customer id. In order to print the customer name in the invoice table, put customer/id in the "Link to table" and name here, in "Link to table"

DESCRIPTION

The pretty name of the field, e.g. if in the DB it's called catSec, you can write Secondary Category here, and this will be displayed to the final customer

HELP

Any text that you want to display near this field to the final customer. IMPORTANT This will be used in the automatic doc generation too, so if you want to help both the user online, and create a richer manual, please fill this field too.

Hints

1. SETUP A PASSWORD. The first thing you should do, is to set a password for ABO. Go to Customization and change "Login Type" to "Fixed password" and fill the corresponding fields below VIDEO
2. HIDE THE PRIMARY KEYS. You should go through all the tables, and hide the primary key. There is a useful shortcut when you press on a table name to do it with a single click.
3. CONFIGURE THE TABLES. Not all the tables are the same, so go to Tables config and configure each one. Some can only be viewed, some can be edited but you cannot add data, in some others you cannot delete the elements.

Special features

ABO has been written by developers for developers, and so we know very well the features that we were missing in all the other backoffice tools, and we implemented them!

• FIELD FORMAT COPY/PASTE: Let's say a user can upload 20 pictures per item. For each picture, you should set the view type (e.g. you want to see it as a small picture), the edit mode (upload the file), maybe you want to force the minimum width and/or height... So, it takes quite some time to change all the settings. All of this, for 20 times. With ABO, you can simply do it once, COPY THE FORMAT, and then "paste" the format onto all the fields that you want. Not only that, but ABO is smart enough to hide the fields with THE SAME format (useless to paste over those, since they are already identical), and it will show the fields which are not of the same type (usually, you do not paste a format over a different type, e.g. you would never paste the format of an image upload over a, let's say, INTEGER DB type). You need to create a specific format only once, and then you can copy it over all the fields that you want: faster, and no chance of making a mistake in applying the same format! VIDEO
• AUTOMATIC DOCUMENTATION: We all hate writing documentation, don't we? ABO comes to rescue! Simply press the Generate Automatic Doc option, and a rich PDF file will be generated for you! As per 2.2.9 version, the only available option is PDF, but we are working to provide a clean TXT export so that you can better customize it in your preferred word processor VIDEO