Cross-platform Mobile Development With Open Source

FrameworksJohn M. Wargo

Microsoft

Agenda

• Introduction

• Native mobile development is hard

• Introducing cross-platform open source mobile development frameworks

• A bunch of demos and code

• Wrap-Up

Me: Software Developer, Writer, Presenter, Husband, Father, Geek• Principal Program Manager @ Microsoft

• Part of the Azure team working on Visual Studio Mobile Center MBaaS capabilities

• Responsible for Microsoft’s JavaScript Mobile tooling:Visual Studio Code Extensions for Cordova and React Native

• Contributor to the Apache Cordova Project

• Author of a few books

Publications

Native Mobile Development Is Hard

• No common language across popular platforms

• No single IDE that can be used for all popular platforms

• Requires different skills for each target platform

• Hard to be an expert on more than one platform

• Requires a Macintosh computer, which, surprisingly, most enterprises don’t have or support

Mobile Development Is Expensive

• Fickle and finicky users drive dev organizations to deliver frequent updates which forces a furious pace of development leading to the requirements for:• Continuous Integration

• Automated testing (manual testing can no longer keep up)

• Testing that never ends

• More to test than just whether the code ‘works’

• Device farms

• Web

• Native

• Hybrid

• JavaScript-driven native

• Adjacent native

• Mobile application development platforms

Available Approaches

Cross-Platform, Open Source Mobile Frameworks• Hybrid Apps

• Apache Cordova*

• Ionic*

• JavaScript-driven Native Apps• NativeScript*

• React Native*

• Tabris.js

• Titanium

• Adjacent Native Apps• Microsoft Xamarin

Hybrid Frameworks

Apache Cordova

An open source framework for building cross-platform mobile applications using

History

• Started at the 2008 iPhoneDevCamp by Nitobi

• Started with iOS, quickly added Android and BlackBerry support later

• In 2011, project was donated to Apache Software Foundation• First as Apache Callback

• Then as Apache DeviceReady

• Finally as Apache Cordova

• Very quickly thereafter (the next day), Nitobi acquired by Adobe

• Expectation that Cordova will become obsolete over time as mobile browsers become more capable

You May Have Heard of Adobe PhoneGap?

• PhoneGap is merely a distribution of Apache Cordova with some extra stuff bolted on

• Think Ubuntu vs. Linux – one is simply a distribution of the other

• More: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2478076

Consumers & Supporters

• IBM MobileFirst Platform

• SAP HANA Cloud Platform mobile services

• Oracle Mobile Platform

• Salesforce App Cloud

• Alpha Software Alpha Anywhere

• and many, many, many more!

Apache Cordova

An open source framework for building cross-platform mobile applications using HTML5

WebView

• Web application content is rendered within the native application window using a native WebView component• The content is NOT converted in any way

• Pretty much allows ANY web content to run (just like a browser)

• On older devices, the WebView is not always exactly the same as the browser (for older Android devices, look at the Intel Crosswalk project)

Supported HTML & JavaScript Frameworks

• All of them (pretty much)

• There are even Hybrid-specific frameworks:• Ionic

• Onsen UI

• Framework7

Application Architecture

Cordova Tooling

• Cordova Command Line Interface (CLI)

• Use whatever tools you want to design & code your applications

• Use the native SDKs or the PhoneGap Build service to ‘build’ your applications• Can use the CLI with either

• Microsoft Tools:• Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (TACO)

• Visual Studio Code with Cordova Extension

Installing Apache Cordova

• Install NodeJS (https://nodejs.org)

• Install one or more target SDK’s (Android, iOS, etc.)

• Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following command:• npm install –g cordova

Creating a Cordova Project

Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type a bunch of commands:

cordova create HelloWorld com.johnwargo.helloworld “Hello World”

cd HelloWorld

cordova platform add android ios

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-device

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-device-orientation

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-file

Creating a Cordova Project (simplified)

To simplify this process, I published a Node module called cdva-create(https://www.npmjs.com/package/cdva-create)

To install, open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following command:

npm install –g cdva-create

With that in place, create a complete Cordova application project using the following command:

cdva-create HelloWorld com.johnwargo.helloworld “Hello World”

Configuring cdva-create

{"platformList":[

"android","ios"

],"pluginList":[

"cordova-plugin-console","cordova-plugin-dialogs","cordova-plugin-device"

],"enableDebug":false,"copyFrom":"","linkTo":"","createParms":""

}

Ionic Framework

• Originally a UI framework on top of Apache Cordova

• TypeScript, relies heavily on Angular

• Adds Angular components that give a web/Cordova app a native look/feel

• Provides wrapper around common Cordova plugins

• Started with SPA (single page app), expanding into PWA (progressive web apps)

• Migrating to Web Component standard (http://blog.ionic.io/the-end-of-framework-churn/)

• Channeling React Native (JSX) in their component compiler StencilJS(stenciljs.com)

Installing Ionic

• Install NodeJS (https://nodejs.org)

• Install one or more target SDK’s (Android, iOS, etc.)

• Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following command:• npm install –g cordova ionic

Creating an Ionic Project

Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following command:

ionic start myApp blank

Start live browser preview with:

cd myApp

ionic serve

Easiest Way to Learn?

Josh Morony: https://www.joshmorony.com/category/ionic-tutorials/

JavaScript-driven Native Frameworks

NativeScript

• Open source project started by Telerik (now Progress Software)

• Create native mobile applications from a JavaScript codebase

• Supports JavaScript and TypeScript (TypeScript with or without Angular)

• Consider themselves “React Native for the Enterprise”

• Cross-platform UI abstracted through UI definition in an xml file, can also be built using code

Installing NativeScript

• Install NodeJS (https://nodejs.org)

• Install one or more target SDK’s (Android, iOS, etc.)

• Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following command:• npm install –g nativescript

Creating a NativeScript Project

Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following commands:

nativescript create HelloWorld --tsc

cd HelloWorld

nativescript platform add android

nativescript platform add ios

* Can also use the tns command instead of nativescript

Easiest Way to Learn?

• Free NativeScript book @ https://www.nativescript.org/get-the-nativescript-book

React Native

• JavaScript-driven Native implementation of Facebook’s React framework (https://reactjs.org/)

• Supports Android and iOS

• JavaScript code ‘renders’ native UI components

• Separate APIs for Android vs. iOS platforms

• License/Patent concerns

Installing React Native (#1)

• Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following command:• npm install -g create-react-native-app

Creating a React Native Project (#1)

Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following commands:

create-react-native-app myApp

cd myApp

npm start

Limited approach; uses the Expo app to deliver the Reactive Native native runtime

Installing React Native (#2)

• Install NodeJS (https://nodejs.org)

• Install one or more target SDK’s (Android, iOS, etc.)

• Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following command:• npm install -g react-native-cli

Creating a React Native Project (#2)

Open a command prompt or terminal window, and type the following commands:

react-native init myApp

cd myApp

Device Information & React Native

• Access to device information is not built-in to React Native.

• Sample application uses react-native-device-info (https://github.com/rebeccahughes/react-native-device-info)

• Need to execute some additional commands:• npm install --save react-native-device-info

• react-native link react-native-device-info

What Does All This Mean?

• Arguments against using Hybrid apps due to performance issues (for most apps) are moot, those issues were mitigated years ago• The web is still not native, from a performance standpoint, but its usable for most

enterprise and many consumer use cases

• Expect enterprises to continue to use hybrid approaches for their internal apps

• As there are more web developers than native mobile developers in the world, JavaScript-driven Native, especially due to Facebook’s involvement, will become the de facto approach for cross-platform mobile development

• Enterprises will want licensing changes before you’ll see widespread adoption of React and React Native there

Resources

• This presentation: http://bit.ly/ncdevcon17-preso

• Project source code: http://bit.ly/ncdevcon17-source

Source CodePresentation

John M. Wargo

• Twitter: @johnwargo• Blog: johnwargo.com• Github: johnwargo.github.io

Download Visual Studio Code https://code.visualstudio.com/Cordova Extension:https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vsmobile.cordova-toolsReact Native Extension:https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vsmobile.vscode-react-native