PhoneGap CRUD examples - iphone

Im new to iPhone development and I find PhoneGap suitable for me for i am a web developer. I'm into practicing database using SQL. because of HTML5 support built into safari browser they support database natively into the browser.
I wonder if theres a good example that is easy to follow of using CRUD into SQL database in iPhone.

After reading your question, I think some points need to be explain:
phonegap
Official documentation & description can be found on : OfficialWebSite
Phonegap is an open source framework / tool to develop cross mobile application. It allows to create mobile applications using only web technologies like html, css, javascript (ajax philosophy mostly used) and get access to APIs & app store.
It provides a wrapper for javascript to access to core mobile technologies like sensor or gps...
You write your web application with phonegap functionnality, and after compilation for each plateform you obtain an native application (webview inside the application runs the application...)
To write the application, you can take advantage of HTML 5, javasvript
The obtained app can be deployed on the application store.
actual supported plateform iPhone, Android, Blackberry, webOS, Symbian and Bada
html5 & storage
One of the functionnality introduced by html 5 is the local storage which permits to manage local storage in your browser with a key-value approach. it could be considered as a super cookie (too much resteictive) and permits to speed up treatment or have an off line access to the application.
Refence
good introduction
for example:
you can write a rss reader which download the news locally and store them tx to local storage. next lanch you just have to do the rotation with old news and if phone is out of network it works always but no update...
CRUD
the html 5 storage could be manipulated with javascript
manipulation sample

Related

Cross-platform mobile app & RESTful web service & scoring algorithms - architecture & technologies

I am planning to create a cross-platform mobile app that has native-like versions for most mobile platforms, maybe Windows Phone, Android, iOS. It's supposed to store data in DB on server, and the mobile app is mostly for visualizing that (numerical) data.
Basic usage scenario
User opens the app
App data is refreshed via internet connection
User inputs new data
New data is sent to server, handled and DB updated
User's app data is updated according to DB data (ANIMATION!)
User updates settings on his app that alters it's behaviour.
I'm a noob when it comes to designing and programming mobile apps + web services alone, so I'm hoping you could help me with the following questions. Technologies I'm most familiar with: Java EE, Python, HTML/CSS/JS, MySQL, Graphics. Maybe I should go for PhoneGap? Thanks a lot!
1) What cross-platform mobile technology you would recommend?
2) What kind of solution would be most suitable for server/app server? (Estimated code lines < 5000)
3) What's a good place to start learning scoring algorithms?
Please respond if you have answers to any of the questions asked.
EDIT: found a similar question: Cross-Platform Mobile Application Solution
#thevangelist: It's a very good question you have raised, all mobile developers face the same problem when we start writing an app. Today there are multiple Open Source Frameworks available in market which are trying to solve the same problem but in different manner.
Based on my research and experience, I would like to recommend below technologies which we can consider while building an mobile apps.
View: View is an important part of any mobile apps. When we start building UI/UX we also have consider it's platform design principles. Looking these points I would like to recommend React Native for the same.
React Native: It is a Facebook, and Instagram developed JavaScript library used in creating native mobile applications. It allows us to write iOS and Android applications using JSX, a known HTML look-a-like code, and JavaScript. It is based on “Learn once, write anywhere” methodology.
Pros
Renders native views with a native behavior and interaction … you’ll end up with a real native application
Has a paradigm of “Learn once, write anywhere” where developers only need React and JavaScript to create better application for Andoroid, iOS.
Uses native architecture and concept
It does not require a WebView
CSS Flexbox is used for layout design
Cons
Code abstraction leads to bugs and memory leaks
Cannot work without the API, which is provided by React Native, technically there’s no fallback like with classic hybrid mobile apps
When creating proper native applications, a developer will have more power and control regarding performance tuning
React Native is still a new framework so we can’t predict possible problems and downsides
These cons are somewhat negligible, especially if we consider that React Native is empowering more and more native applications with each passing day.
Data in Transit: If your app sync data from web services, then there are multiple frameworks available in the market to make our job easier. Please find below some of the most popular JavaScript RESTful Frameworks:
ACTIONHERO, StrongLoop
Data at Rest: You would also be needing offline storage for the sync data. Since we do not have direct support for native SQLite in JavaScript, we need to use some of the React Native SQLite Plugins. Please find below plugins which are available in the market:
almost, andpor, jbrodriguez, ramsundark5, remobile
For Data at Transit/Data at Rest, I would like to recommend Siminov Framework which is available on all the major platforms (Android, iOS, Windows). It also supports hybrid technologies such as React Native, Cordova, Xamarin.
Pros
Available on all the major platforms (Android, iOS and Windows)
Easy to configure, it provides standard xml based structure using we can easily configure our app database
It allows developers to bind ORM with remote RESTFul web services too
Also have support for SQLCipher on all the platforms
Cons
Lack of community: Recently they have launched their products on all the major platforms, not many people are using it.
Since the configuration is based on XML structure which looks pretty old to me. But based on their documentation it was done to support all the major platforms
Algorithm: I have found this link nurlybayevaAMS9 related to algorithm, hope this may help you.
Try avoid writing cross platform application. It is doable using HTML5+jQuery. But you can never get the same look and feel as native app. secondly windows, ios and android have their own look and feel and will come up with their own elements. You can never cater to all three having same code base. Better is to code using native sdks.
1) Never used PhoneGap, although aware of it, but don't forget to consider a simple HTML5 application. If possible, this would save you lots of work and maximize compatibility.
2) You can develop great RESTful webservices with both Java EE (see JAX-RS/Spring) and Python (see django). The choice is really more a matter of personal taste.

How to gain direct access to the hardware capabilities of mobile devices from mobile browsers

We are developing web browser application for mobile phones and I am trying to figure out a way that I can gain access to the camera and take a photo and then upload it to the internet. But so far what I was suggested is to use phonegap and create native application. Phonegap is fine but it is not what I am looking for because my client wants to design forms and these html forms somehow will be able to trigger the camera and take photo and upload it to a server. Do you think developing a native API for every platform and having access to its functions from the web browsers is possible? What your suggestion would be?
(Note: My customer only want application that can run on mobile web browsers no native application runs on I-Phone, windows mobile, Blackberry and Android)
Thanks a lot...
Web apps (not wrapped in native code as Kumar details) cannot access all device hardware and sensors. Location support is available on iOS and Android, but camera access is only available on Android (via JavaScript). Similarly, device motion APIs are not accessible on Android, but are on iOS.
As you can see, support is sketchy and if you are truly looking to use such features, you are better off (and in many cases, realistically looking at) writing native apps for each platform you intend to support.
HTML5 is not yet at the point where it can replace native apps. It can do some of the things that native apps can, but even then performance is suboptimal. Currently, native apps may be more difficult and time-consuming, but they are necessary.
Calling android native APIs from javascript functions of embedded WebView
Use JS to call Java code which will in-turn call the Camera API or whatever else you are looking for.
It's not going to be possible to do it on iPhone, the only known way of accessing the camera is through the Cocoa layer.

What is a Hybrid App for mobile?

What is a hybrid app for mobiles? What is basic architecture to follow while developing? What are the components? What will be the back end and what will be the UI? Is it for only iPhone or can be for any mobile device?
With iOS, you can create an application that combines features of native applications and webpages.
A hybrid application is a native iPhone application that provides most of its structure and functionality through a web viewing area, but also tends to contain standard iOS user interface elements.
A hybrid application gives users access to web content with an element called a web view (described in “Web Views”).
Precisely how you use a web view in your application is up to you, but it’s important to avoid giving users the impression that your application is merely a mini web browser.
A hybrid application should behave and appear like a native iPhone application; it should not draw attention to the fact that it depends upon web sources.
You can create Phonegap app and still using native controls of cocoa for powerful features like Mapkit api, UIWebview (Childbrowser plugin) etc
A hybrid app is a mobile application in which the same app can be worked in different mobile operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows, etc…, and even in browsers (Mozilla, Chrome, IE, etc.. ). It is the same as mobile applications for users, which can be installed from App Store or Google Play store. But technically it’s different, its works with a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
More read-: http://webduratech.com/what-is-hybrid-app-how-it-can-help-small-scale-business/+
A hybrid application blends web views (loading a webpage into the app) and native code together to create a single seamless application. In most cases it is faster than developing the entire app in native code, because developing for the web is easier (there are tons of web frameworks and it is just easier to develop good looking content on the web vs via native code, such as swift).
Ex: Amazon uses web views for the products page on the iOS app, being able to reuse the code on iOS, Android and the web saves them a ton of time.
In a hybrid app, the core of the app (navigation, location) are normally done in native code and stuff such as showing images and information is generally done via web views.
Since web views are a web page, you can develop them in any HTML 5 framework you would like to use.
The most important part is to have an app that works and runs super well for your users, and having web views in the app is very tricky, but a huge time saver.

How can I develop an iPhone app in HTML5?

I have seen a blog which claims that we can develop iPhone applications in HTML5. Untill then I was aware about Objective-C on Mac.
Can we develop an interface with backend support application in HTML5 on iPhone? Will it be secure and scalable?
If HTML5 is a markup language, then how can I make conditional statements in it? Would it be via jQuery or Javascript?
Which IDE should I use to develop an iPhone app in HTML5?
A great place to start when developing an iPhone app in HTML5 is PhoneGap.
You could either go the full-blown app route by developing an iOS app using PhoneGap, or only selecting certain tools/frameworks to help build a web-based app for mobile devices.
And very much like how it works with websites, HTML is used for the structure, CSS for presentation and JavaScript for behaviour. So yes, JS is used for conditional statements, etc.
Yes.
You can develop an HTML5/CSS3/Javascript app, then wrap it in PhoneGap or Apache Cordova to make it native and put it in the App Store (or Android Market...), as well as publish it on the web. You can do this with whatever tools you're comfortable with.
Using a tool like PhoneGap has many benefits over browser-based Mobile Web Apps, such as allowing you to parse iPhone contacts and access the local hardware.
It's great in combination with jQuery Mobile, but since performance is a MAJOR issue you must be very cautious to really streamline your images, CSS, and Javascript.
See this link to learn more about Mobile Frameworks.
I have seen a blog which claims that we can develop iPhone applications in HTML5. Untill then I was aware about Objective-C on Mac.
If you want to write a native iPhone application, then Objective-C is your only option. However, as the iPhone’s web browser has a lot of capabilities (e.g. offline caching), you can develop applications that run in its web browser, as opposed to natively. They can’t access all the features of the iPhone, and they are simply websites (so you need a server to serve them), but before the iPhone SDK was released, Steve Jobs himself described web apps as the way to write software for the iPhone.
Can we develop an interface with backend support application in HTML5 on iPhone? Will it be secure and scalable?
I have no idea what that means.
If HTML5 is a markup language, then how can I make conditional statements in it? Would it be via jQuery or Javascript?
Correct: JavaScript. (jQuery is just a JavaScript framework, and it’s probably a bit heavy to use on current iPhones.)
The HTML5 spec blurs the distinction between HTML and JavaScript by defining the DOM interface for the HTML elements it specifies, and defining new DOM features (e.g. offline caching) that aren’t technically part of HTML. Apple (and other people) have further blurred the term “HTML5” by using it to encompass various CSS features like animations and transforms, which you’ll probably find very useful for making web apps feel more like native apps.

Iphone App vs. Offline Web App. Which way is the smartest?

I think about starting from scratch building a small application fullfilling two technical requirements:
should be usable on iPhone
should work offline
There are two obvious alternatives here to choose between
A real iPhone application with offline capabilities
A web app using HTML5 offline, Google Gears or similar
Having no iPhone app development experience (I don't own an iPhone), i wonder which way would be the easiest to go?
What are the learning curves for building offline HTML vs building an iPhone app?
Honestly, it depends what your app is going to do.
MobileSafari supports all the HTML5 offline stuff, so you could store data in a clientside SQL database, cache the application clientside, etc... The mobile Gmail app is probably the most notable example of that, giving you full-featured access to your Gmail even when offline. You can also use geolocation through JavaScript APIs that were added in 3.0. Web Clips let your web app share the home screen with native applications too. There is more on using web apps on the iPhone on this Stack Overflow post.
Obviously, doing a Web app will be of interest to people who like dealing with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (and possibly whatever language is running server-side). It is possible to do really neat stuff with offline Web apps, but its performance won't be as good as that of native apps, especially on pre-3GS devices.
Developing a native application will require you to learn Objective-C (or C# as soon as Mono Touch is available to the masses) and pay a $99 fee to be allowed to test on-device and deploy to App Store. A lot more of the system is exposed to you through the various APIs, such as the camera, compass, multitouch, and so on.
Objective-C is pretty simple to pick up if you're familiar with Java; you only really need to get used to the square bracket syntax and memory management and then it's pretty straight-forward.
Then there are the hybrid systems, like PhoneGap, which expose more of the device's APIs, provided the Web app runs in a special container app. It is also crossplatform, so you could also deploy the app on Android and BlackBerry if you wanted to. This still requires you to pay the App Store fee, but if you're more familiar with Web development, this gives you the best of both worlds.
I can't tell you too much about HTML apps in general, but I can tell you that the API for the UIWebView is extremely minimal, and of course there is much less you can do than in a native iPhone application.
An HTML5 offline app would have security issues as you would have to hard code your oauth secret into code that anyone could see ( by clicking view source, or inspecting in Firebug ). You could simply use http auth, but then you get the ugly "from API" credit with every tweet sent from your app, and also that ugly http auth popup from the browser.