My client has a requirement of making native android and ios app for the e-commerce store based in opencart cms.
My question is, how can I dynamically load the main screen content in the app like banners, sliders etc which are subject to change every day.
I am new in the app development. Please suggest any ready to use CMS for delivering dynamic content to the app. Otherwise, please guide me on how should I approach with building this app.
P.s. I am an experienced web developer with basic android app building knowledge.
I'm not that experienced with android but here are some wild ideas, maybe it will be useful.
You can build a REST API which would return JSON, for example:
[
{
"sliderIMG":"http://yourwebsite.com/image.png",
"sliderTITLE":"Your title!"
},
{
"bannerIMG":"http://yourwebsite.com/image.png",
"bannerTITLE":"Your title!"
}
]
And then your mobile app upon launch would connect by using some REST API Library (Volley or Retrofit) and scrape data as well as display it.
You could make a mobile version for website and just iframe it in the app by using webClient. (However if you already are capable of this, using an app to open a website kinda defeats the purpose of having mobile app in the first place)
Related
Is it possible to create a mobile app for both Andriod and iOS which will display the same data as on a website written in HTML CSS and js?
The site only displays information but this info is used regularly by users. I have been asked if it's possible to create an app that the same info would be available on? Ideally, any changes made to the website would be reflected in the app without having to change the code for the app as well.
edit - The page on the app will still need functionality i.e being able to open modals when a button is clicked.
You could embed your site in a native app using a WebView. Nowadays you have several technologies as React native and Flutter that could help publishing your site as a multiplatform app.
I have just created a website based on prestahsop template (PHP + SMARTY), and I have made it work online.
Now I want to migrate the project on mobiles. I searched for several means of doing that, finally I am about to use PhoneGap for my solution.
But I have no idea if that can encapsulate the whole project on the mobile platform, and ideally be launched on Apple store. If not, I would like to get some advice to make changes.
Anyone having former experience can come to help? Thanks so much!
In addition to andre3wap response, you can use Prestashop Webservice API to link your application to your website. I've already done this in the past, the tricky part comes when you need to create an order in your Prestashop website from your application. But it's completely doable.
You will have to create an HTML + Javascript application with PhoneGap, that calls Prestashop via Ajax requests. If you want your application to work offline (and only create the order when the customer is back online) you will have to load every products on installation and sync when the app is online.
It's a lot of work.
EDIT related question: How to integrate prestashop with android?
If your web site only consists of HTML pages, yes; PhoneGap will be able to do most of the work(Just upload your HTML pages in a folder to build.phonegap.com for the conversion), there are other methods that can do the conversion, but that one is easier to me. (Read their documentation)
If your web site was created from a server side language, NO, phoneGap will not be able to fully convert it into a full fledged HyBrid App.
It gets very tricky when it comes on to Server Side scripting + phoneGap. What you can do is build html pages, and create "APIs" to load the data in the APP and use JavaScript to parse the data respectfully. (That phoneGap can handle)
You can read this article for an even more detailed explanation:
Usefull Article
It's my first posting on here (although I've been using this site for reference for quite some time).
I've been trying for several days now to find or dream up a way to use Facebook's "Single Sign On" from within a mobile web app (not a native iOS or Android app) to automatically sign a user into a web app if they are already logged into Facebook from the native Facebook app on their mobile device for example.
My limited knowledge is telling me that it can't be done since the mobile browser and the 'system' (iOS for example) are too separated (I can't, I don't think, have my mobile web app use or access the native Facebook app on a mobile device in any way).
I have found and read the iOS, Android AND Mobile documentation provided by Facebook (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile/) which all seems to make enough sense, but after days of trawling through everything else I could find on the subject there doesn't seem to be a way to use, for example, the Facebook app on an iPhone or Android device to automatically log a user in to my web app if he/she is already logged into Facebook.
I've read lots about doing this from within 3rd party native apps and also other people trying to achieve a similar thing from within Desktop apps but I'm trying and hoping to be able to achieve this from a web app running within a mobile web browser.
I'd be very grateful for any help, opinions or pointers in the right direction since I think this would be an excellent step forward in UI for mobile web apps to have (not just the native apps).
Many thanks in advance...
Probably a bit late to the party but in case anyone else is wondering yes it's possible with Cordova/Phonegap and the Facebook Connect Plugin: https://github.com/davejohnson/phonegap-plugin-facebook-connect/
Using the FB.getLoginStatus() method at startup allows to check if the user is already signed in with the native Facebook App and retrieve its profile. More details in the examples provided in the repo.
I have not yet implemented it myself, but seems possible according to:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/mobile/web/build/#login
Can a custom FB web app be used inside the iOS / android FB apps? Docs are not very clear on that. You can create Bookmarks for native apps, but I want to have a bookmark pointing to our custom FB web app canvas. The goal is to develop an app that's usable on all platforms.
I've been making some test and I could'n execute a non native app from facebook app or web page, and it's not easy to load facebook web page in PC mode from a mobile device.
The official Facebook documentation for iOS says:
When a user does a search in the Facebook app your app will be visible if it passes a usage threshold. The search results will display apps that have been configured for SSO support. When the user selects your app from the search results they will be directed to your app. If the user had previously authorized your app they will be authenticated when your app is launched.
I guess that for Android will be pretty like this. So if you develop a native app that only shows a WebView pointint to your web (pretty simple by the way in iOS and android) must work with no problems.
Usually Facebook APPs are on Flash, so I don't think that it will work on iOS (Please correct me if I'm wrong with the Flash issue).
On Android, it would be extremely easy, having in mind it works with Flash with 0 problems. You'd just have to implement a WebView on your layout and point to the url of your facebook app.
In general, you can really create applications that work on both systems, iOS and Android, playing with the webView's. However, you have to know that they will never work as if they were written on native code in terms of performance.
From what I've seen, if a developer already has an existing mobile version of their app which is also on Facebook, they are able to create a tab for it that will appear on Facebook for iOS and Facebook for Android. I don't think you can create a bookmark to the webapp version to be seen on a mobile phone. Users can of course bookmark your webapp on their browsers, though.
BackGround:
There are Facebook APIs(and SDKs) available to develop applications for other Mobile devices like iPhone, BlackBerry etc, but it seems there are no official ones for Android(?).
People have ported Java APIs to work on Android and have written FaceBook Client applications(FaceBook dev: Wiki Page). Apparently, there is also a light weight FaceBook SDK in alpha release for Android(a la FBRocket). But it is not avised to be used in Production.
Since these FaceBook functionalities have been exposed as REST based service, most of work would invove sending requests in desired format over Http. So, writing a FaceBook client app for Android certainly is doable.There are similar applications already in market e.g.: Bloo.
Questions:
When asked to write a FaceBook client application what approach should one undertake? Should we choose the SDK or invoke the services over Http?
If there is already a Web application that integrates with FaceBook, can we just browse to that Application from inside a WebView and be done with this?
Thanks!
I would use the Java APIs. You mention they were "ported" but were they? You develop Android apps in Java, you can often just include .jar files and use them in your Android app without any sort of "porting". REST access to FaceBook would also work fine too.
Are you talking about a custom application that you've built on top of FaceBook? If you already have a webapp that works fine in the Android browser then it would be fine to just have your users go to that site by giving them the URL. If the WebApp is only part of your application then you could pop open the browser with that page open, or you could load that page in a WebView as part of your larger application. However if this is all your application is doing, then it's not really an application, it's just a glorified browser bookmark and I would strongly recommend against releasing an app like that to the Android Market unless you like getting horrible ratings.