We Keep Coding

Connecting DB with my Firefox OS app using JS

I'm developing an app for Firefox OS and I need to retrieve/sent data from/to my DB. I also need to use this data in my logic implementation which is in JS.
I've been told that I cannot implement PHP in Firefox OS, so is there any other way to retrieve the data and use it?
PS: This is my first app that I'm developing, so my programming skills are kind of rough.

You can use a local database in JS, e.g. PouchDB, TaffyDB, PersistenceJS, LokiJS or jStorage.
You can also save data to a backend server e.g. Parse or Firebase, using their APIs.
Or you can deploy your own backend storage and save data to it using REST.

You should hold on the basic communication paradigms when sending/receiving data from/to a DB. In your case you need to pass data to a DB via web and application.
Never, ever let an app communicate with your DB directly!
So what you need to do first is to implement a wrapper application to give controlled access to your DB. Thats for example often done in PHP. Your PHP application then offers the interfaces by which external applications (like your FFOS app) can communicate with the DB.
Since this goes to very basic programming knowledge, please give an idea of how much you know about programming at all. I then consider offering further details.

It might be a bit harder to do than you expect but it can be easier than you think. Using mysql as a backend has serious implication. For example, mysql doesn't provide any http interfaces as far as I know. In other words, for most SQL based databases, you'll have to use some kind of middleware to connect your application to the database.
Usually the middleware is a server that publish some kind of http api probably in a rest way or even rpc such as JSONrpc. The language in which you'll write the middleware doesn't really matter. The serious problem you'll face with such variant is to restrict data. Prevent other users to access data to which they shouldn't have access.
There is also an other variant, I'd say if you want to have a database + synchronization on the server. CouchDB + PouchDB gives you that for free. I mean it's really easy to setup but you'll have to redesign some part of your application. If your application does a lot of data changes it might end up filling your disks but if you're just starting, it's possible that this setup will be more than enough.

Best practice to store data locally for web

I'm working on some web application and we need to store number of javascript objects in local storage. Until now we did it using cookies but we want to use one of HTML5 storage solutions because cookies data is send to server on each server call and it is a waste of resources and also it's size is very limited. The data should be stored permanently, I mean it should be available after closing the browser and opening it again.
What is the best practice to do this? Is there any way to store objects in local storage. Thanks for the assistance

In my current project I'm using PouchDB library (http://pouchdb.com/). It is a lightweight javascript database which can store data locally in browser (string, int, object etc). All stored data are still available after browser restart.
You should use it with some JS framework, in my case it is AngularJS (very simple integration).

Have a look at this link: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#web-storage
It sounds like HTML5's Local Storage is definitely a great option for you. That presentation has a lot of great info in that should help you decide on the best form of storage.

IndexedDb is a good option for storing javascript objects.
I strongly recommend you to read this -> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/IndexedDB

Does Meteor retain reactivity when using a REST API

I am planning to use Qualtrics REST API, in order to get the data collected from a survey. Can i still retain Meteor's reactivity directly thru the rest api or should I save the data from the rest API into MongoDB to enable for real time updates within the app?
Any advice and further reading will be great.
This will sound like a noob question probably but I am just starting off with Meteor and JS as server side code and never used a web api before.

It entirely depends on what you do with the data it returns. Assuming you're either polling periodically or the API has some kind of push service (I've never heard of it before, so I have no idea), you would need to store the data it returns in a reactive data source: probably a Collection or Session variable, depending on how much persistence is required. Any Meteor templates that access these structures have reactivity built in, as documented here.
Obviously, you will probably need to be polling the API at an appropriately regular interval for this set up to work though. Take a look at Meteor.setInterval, or the meteor-cron package, which is probably preferable.

Optimistic synchronization of replicated objects in javascript

I'm programming a browser application (html5+websockets+css3+js preferred) that enables users to concurrently access (read, write) attributes of the same object. To create a real-time experience I'd like to use optimistic synchronization. I read about Timewarp and Trailing State algorithms and I wonder if there is a javascript library, which already implements these or similar algorithms.
I found this question, but unfortunately it was not answered yet. XSTM only supports pessimistic synchronization as it seems.
Do you have any idea for me?

I am working on a realtime HTML5 web browser application now too. Maybe my choice of weaponry could inspire you...who knows, so I am using:
Frontend:
KnockoutJS -it takes care of displaying data which I send to every connected client in JSON(view models), you can easily subscribe to changes in the client data and push the changes back to server, though I am having problems displaying pages with knockoutjs on mobile browsers
on serverside I run custom made server based on Fleck
Since JSON is my favourite data format, I ditched SQL databases in favour of [RavenDB][2], which stores data almost exactly as they are sent via websocket protocol and also it is pretty quick

Sencha sqlite example

I would like to see a decent example of a mobile web app using the Sencha framework with a client side DB accessed with SQLite. I'm currently digesting JqTouch and kinda get the binding method used there from reading Jonathon Stark's "iPhone apps" book, but cant find any examples of accessing Senchas features ie listed elements with SQLite. The DB will be small; 30 records, with about 5 fields, mostly numeric, a few of them calculated. All the math is done in javascript and I have that part working (in dash code). I need to add, delete, and edit the records.
Any pointers or examples would be very much appreciated. I'm an old dog trying to learn new tricks. Thanks

Sencha is client-side Javascript, so your application actually runs on top of Safari. That means you can forget about accessing (or installing) your own SQLite database from within the browser sandbox.
Having said that, you want to learn some new tricks, so why dont you read up on localStorage and DOM Storage. Basically the HTML5 specification allows for offline database storage based on SQLite (imagine relational database cookies). There is 1 per domain and they can be up to 5MB in size. I believe the iPhone supports this as well.
Here are some links: Introduction some API Information and a nice little blog entry by a chap called Ben Lister

Your client side code (i.e. Sencha/Javascript) would not access the SQLLite database. It will either need to read JSON or XML from the server. You'll need server side code to read the data from the database and format it in a way that your Sencha data readers will understand.
What are you using server side? If it's PHP you should look into MDB2

I had very good experience integrating Lawnchair library with Sencha Touch. Take a look at their guide, it's very easy.

Looks like there is a SQLite proxy available for sencha 2 now. http://market.sencha.com/addon/sqliteproxy-

Check out this thread on the Sencha Forums - it's a user created proxy for SQLite which I've successfully used to put data into a SQLite DB. The proxy comes with an example, but I might try and make a slightly more complicated one at some point.

Sencha's local storage doesn't take advantage of SQLite via the JavaScript API in the browser, but does use local key:value storage and has it's own way of referencing data to make it pseudo relational. This is still part of the WebDB spec, which is probably still SQLite under the hood if I had to guess. It's more persistent than a cookie or session, regardless.
You can also receive XML/JSON from a server over JSONP or Ajax if you're on the same domain, create a model to handle that data as well and bind it to a local store so that your data is available offline.