Preview & versions

An app in PhiWebs Studio exists in two places at once: the preview you build in, and the published app your visitors use. Nothing moves from one to the other until you press Publish.

The preview

When you open a project, the studio starts the app in a live preview. It runs at its own address, separate from your app’s public one, and it reloads every time the agent saves a change. You can click through it, fill in its forms and search its lists, just as a visitor would.

The preview has its own records: try-out data you and the agent can change freely. They start again from the app’s content and starting records when the preview restarts, and they never reach the published app.

The preview is forgiving in a few places where the published app is strict — most notably, a data model with no access rule. Before you publish, look at the Checks panel: errors there stop a publish.

The project’s history

Every change to the project — each turn of the agent, each pack or image you add — is saved in the project’s History. You can restore any earlier version from there. Restoring does not delete anything: it saves the old state as a new version, and your current version stays in the history.

History is about the project. It changes what you see in the preview, not what your visitors see.

Publishing

Publish puts the project, as it is now, live at https://<app>.phiwebs.app. Each publish:

checks the app — an app with errors is not published, and the studio sends you to Checks;
builds it and stores the result as a new version;
makes that version the live one;
writes the project’s content and starting records into the published app’s records (see Data & records);
if the app’s people list is still empty, makes you its first admin (see Sign-in & roles).

The address stays the same every time. Publish again whenever you want your latest changes live.

A stored version is never changed. Its pages, its access rules and its sign-in travel together, so the version your visitors use is always one consistent whole.

Going back

To put an earlier state of the app live again, open History, restore the version you want, then press Publish. Your visitors get that version. The records visitors made stay as they are; the app’s content records are written again from the version you publish, as on every publish.

Unpublishing

To take the app offline, open the app menu (the project’s name at the top of the studio) and choose Unpublish. Visitors then get “not found” at the app’s address.

Unpublishing deletes nothing. The app’s stored versions stay, and so does its address: publish again and the app is back.