Offline development

Develop with no instance connection at all — feed data via a per-widget fixtures.json, or snapshot real data once.

To iterate with no instance connection, drop a fixtures.json in the widget folder and turn on snWidgetKit.offlineMode:

// widgets/<id>/fixtures.json — keyed by table name
{
  "sc_request": [
    { "sys_id": "1", "number": "REQ0010001", "active": "true", "sys_created_on": "2026-05-20 10:00:00" }
  ],
  "sc_req_item": [
    { "sys_id": "a", "request": "1", "short_description": "Adobe Creative Cloud" }
  ]
}

new GlideRecord('sc_request') then iterates these records offline. In offline mode the preview never calls the instance.

Rendering a widget with no instance connection

Even easier — Snapshot

While logged in, run SN Widget: Snapshot Widget Data. It executes server.js live and saves the resulting data to snapshot.json. With Offline mode on, the preview renders straight from that snapshot (real data, zero instance calls) — no need to hand-write fixtures.

How the preview chooses its data source

Logged in, online — GlideRecord/GlideAggregate run real queries via the Table API.
Offline mode on — data comes from snapshot.json (if present) or fixtures.json / demo-data.json; the instance is never called.

Related runtime details

The full list of emulated server- and client-side APIs lives in server.js running locally.

server.js Locally

The Glide API emulation in detail.

Configuration

offlineMode and related settings.