Android Cross-Platforming - android

I want to know more about Cross-Platform. I'm currently working on my thesis and decided to make an Android Application but not all target users uses Android device. So, We've come up with an idea to Cross-Platform the android application.
I have read the same topic but it didn't get to me too well. iOS / Android cross platform development. I want to know if there is another way than using the frameworks discussed in the link.
I want know what is the best/shortest way to cross platform a Android Application?

Cross Platform tools are in my opinion not a good idea at all. Android is Java, and iOS is Objective C. Android can use NDK to use a C/C++ library so theoretically if you did most of your code in C/C+ it could be used on both sides. I think two natives is more in order. Study NDK to see what could run on both devices. Lets say you built your app as a C++ Library except for UI interactions. Then in theory the library should work on both sides. C/C++ a lot easier on iOS than android however.
Also it really depends on the dependencies your app will have. Lets say you want to use a library but its only available in Java or C++ how does this effect your decision.
You might also consider designing your app so that it just captures data on the devices and the actual processing of the data takes place in a web service.

Another way is use Mobile Web HTML5 Framework like Phonegapp, Sencha touch and more.
Although web technologies don’t perform as well as native, but it is a useful thing that you can try.
See Choosing Mobile Web HTML5 Framework and http://operationproject.com/2011/adventures-in-html5-part-one/

Android application are apk files that are basically zip file that contains dex/odex files and all other resources that you may wish to add.But I think you can use any coding language to develop as long as you have IDE that converts your code to apk and dex .And most important of all your programming language must support corresponding api or must have something similar to cross compile.The reason Google used Java for Android was they felt it is convenient to do it(read it during case Google v/s Oracle)
Personally I feel cross-platform is good since it increases the developers base and understanding of the System (here Android).And I think the same analogy would go with other Systems as well.

Related

Multiplatform app development with individual guis

I am currently planning the development of a multiplatform app, and I am not sure wich way to do it fits my requirements best, since all possibilties I could think of failed to satisfy me.
First I want to write an app for android, which should feel like a normal typical android app. So I want to use the standard actionbar and android design look and feel in my other gui elements. After finishing the android app I am planning on developing an ios app, which should have a different design, so i am going to redevelop the gui for this anyway.
But I don´t want to rewrite the other code wich represents the intelligence of the app, independent from the gui. I came up with the following possibilities:
1. Java GUI With native library
Here I abstract all the code of my app in a C++ library (since as far as I know ios supports the usage of c++ libraries too) and develop the gui android typically in java. The library would than have a function to start and would inform the gui about every change via callback functions.
Pro
I can reuse all the code that would be the same on both platforms. I just would implement the gui seperately
The design of the android gui is straightforward as I want it to be. It looks like typical android because it is typical android.
Cons
I dislike the usage of JNI very much. Especially the signature and names of the callback functions (calling java functions from c++) are not checked at compile time and require a lot of manual work. If I rename a function and forget to rework the native part I only notice this mistake at runtime.
2. Build the GUI on the native side
Here I had difficulties finding out what is possible, especially for 2.2
2.1 Use Qt
I have only a few first step experiences with Qt in general but as far as I understood i would have the following pros and cons:
Pro
Reuse most parts of the code for ios and Android. I would than redesign the gui for each platform to make them feel natural. I can´t evaluate how much qt may even assists me at doing that
Cons
I have to copy the android gui by using other qt widgets. This is more effort and I don´t know if one can replicate the android gui elements (like the actionbar) so that the user wouldn´t notice it.
2.2 Using the android framework from the native side
I dont know if this is possible at all, I wasn´t able to find this information. Can I use the class "NativeActivity" and use the android framework to build the gui and use e.g. the actionbar? If this is possible somehow it would have the pros from 1. and maybe wouldn´t have it cons?
Do you have any feedback to my ideas or maybe even new approaches I didn´t think of? How do other multiplatform apps like WhatsApp solve this problem? Do they have redundant code for each platform?
Thank you,
Tobi
I would say that it depends very much on your application requirements. By my opinion, a better solution is to develop a separate application for each platform using recommended SDK's for that platform, and implement in native C++ only the time consuming data processing algorithms.
Application runtime on mobile platforms is not so straightforward as on desktop platforms. You should take into account background and foreground processing, specific application life cycling, accessing system resources such as network, file system, etc. And all these issues do differ on iOS and Android.
Regarding possibilities that you listed.
Qt/QML is ok only in case two requirements are met:
1.1 Your application is a foregroud application without any background operations.
1.2 You purchase a commercial Qt license because only commercial Qt can be submitted to Apple iTunes app store (even GPL apps are under
question).
Using NDK Native Activities on Android with cross-platform C/C++ backend. Android NDK API offers much less API then Android Java SDK, so a lot of things you will have to implement or wrap manually. It is a hard road.
Mixing Java code and C/C++ using JNI gives you more of Android SDK API. But you should remember that an Android activity's life cycle is not somewhat that you're used to deal with when developing on C/C++.
Approach that we are using
We've been developing an application with a huge amount of cross platform functionality that should work on Windows/Linux/Mac OSx/Android/iOS. We're using the approach as follows.
Cross-platform core is written in pure C++.
We have adaptors to GUI interface for each platform.
On desktop we use Qt as it reaches all desktop platforms with minor adapting to each platform.
On iOS the GUI is built using iOS SDK with Objective-C and C++ core is linked as a Framework. Still, we had to patch our core in some way for iOS background requirements and so.
On Android we wrap our C++ core in a background process and build all the GUI using only Android Java SDK. Foreground GUI activities interact with the core via local sockets, so we don't need to bother with activities life cycling in our C++ core. But the adaptor is a litle bit complicated.
Nevertheless, both mobile platforms often require workarounds and adaptations in C++ core which add a number of #ifdef'ed branches in code for each platform.

What should i select for my mobile applciation development? Native way or cordova or react,Node.js like things

I want to develop application in android and iOS both.
But i am confuse between native development and development using react and node.js etc.
Please help me to choose (If possible specify reason).
P.S Here cost is not an issue.
If you need high performance and attractive UI and don't want to be blocked by some functionalities that may not br provided by cross platform, I recommend you to use native platform. But if your app doesn't need to be very attractive and doesn't need too much processing, then you can use cross-platform. Actually for many features you need to add plugins if you are building cross platform app and adding number of plugins makes your application slower.
OK, well there isn't much data to go on, but there are several options if you want to write cross platform apps.
There is:
Sencha Touch - HTML and JavaScript
PhoneGap - HTML, JavaScript and CSS
QT - C++ and QML
Appmethod - C++ and Object Pascal
Xamarin - C#
Visual Studio - looks like you can do C# or C++, or Unity for games.
and probably a lot more...
Why would you choose one of these instead of writing in the native language for the platform?
Well, the pros seem to outweigh the cons. If you are targeting several platforms, I would choose one of the options above, simply because you only have to write everything once. If you did it native for each platform, you would write everything twice or maybe three or even four times. Using one of the above tools will be much easier and save you time, and they might be just as seamless and workable as native development.
To simply answer your question, If you would like to be able to write your app once, and be able to manage all future updates by managing only one code base, do cross platform using one of the above tools. The only downside is that you might have to learn a new language (but with a place like Stack Overflow, learning new languages is pretty awesome). It will save you time in the long run.

React Native & Android?

I'm contemplating on using React Native for a new web app. Is it possible to ship both iOS and Android apps using it?
I know that it's on the roadmap, but it's unclear to me whether it's going to be a separate open-source project (e.g., React Android vs React Native), or just one (e.g., React Native).
TLDR: Most likely you can. But it depends on your use cases.
You can aim for about 80~99+% code reuse (depending on how much Android/iOS native views/modules you use eg. Do you have custom graphics code or low-level TCP networking code; Those can only be done in native code; And expose as API to your JS code. The amount of the platform-specific JS code is actually minimal. Plus you can also use platform check like if (Platform.OS === 'android'){} to solve that) of code reuse, which is pretty nice. Dropbox and other companies have done similar projects: using c++ to build a 'shared' component between iOS and Android project, while implementing most of the UI code in native iOS(Objective-c or swift) and Android(java). But now you are doing C++ with Java and Objective-C or Swift, more language to master, more complexity and more brain juice went down the drain. And it probably took some super tough gymnastic move to make different native code work in both iOS and Android, plus debugging...
React Native just makes it a lot easier to write almost everything in JavaScript. But there is a catch, only about 80% of the JS code could be shared. In the foreseeable future, you still need to write 'platform-specific' JS code for Android and iOS versions.
That's why FB said they aim for 'Learn once, code anywhere' instead of 'run' everywhere.
But it's still very nice other than code reuse(80+% code reuse is still a big improvement comparing to maintaining 2 entirely different versions: Android and iOS ya?)
Cmd +R to refresh the app is a GREAT boost for development speed. Waiting for a big project to compile just makes you felt you were dying inside.
Declarative UI you get for free, because of using React. This is another great plus! As you don't need to 'dig' into your specific UI code that often anymore. Data changed? Just 'flush' it and UI just update accordingly. No brain juice wasted.
I just ported my not so complicated Android React Native App to iOS. And it took me 3 days. The request for and iOS version for the App came as a rather abrupt and unplanned move. So could definitely be even faster had I built the Android with a plan for iOS too. Huge win:)
Another great benefit is able to do hot code push without going through the hellish 1 week app store review process. So no more, "YAY, our app is approved. Let's release. Oh Shiiit. Critical bug and our app keeps crashing(that's gonna keep happening for at least a week before your fix is live). And you have to beg Apple to speed up the process". This is possible because the major part of the code base would be written in JS and with tools like AppHub or CodePush, you could almost instantly deploy code to your users. This is conditionally allowed by Apple.
3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code, and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.
Lastly, as an open-source project, project longevity tends to be a concern. Not an issue for React Native. Internally used by(FB Ads Manager) and backed by FB(a dozen FB Engineers?) by Facebook, with close to 500 contributors and 25k Stars, React Native is full of life. Seeing is believing :) (https://github.com/facebook/react-native)
EDIT 1
I realized that I am apparently a bit biased and only talked about the good stuff about React Native. So do checkout https://productpains.com/product/react-native/ and Github issues to have a full picture. It's definitely not silver bullet. That being said, it satisfies most of my use case and I couldn't see me use native iOS or Android anytime soon.
EDIT 2
The Facebook F8 conference app released by Facebook (duh..) is 100% open source and they have a really nice tutorial to show you how you could have both iOS and Android native experience(90% as good as native ?), and at the same time, achieved 85% code re-use. check it out --> https://makeitopen.com
EDIT 3
You may also want to checkout Flutter and its pros & cons :)
It doesn't make sense to have a single codebase if you want a truly native experience. At the moment we have things like NavigatorIOS in React Native which provides an iOS-style UI for navigating between app screens, but if we were to just start using that on Android it wouldn't feel like a true Android app.
Therefore I'd expect to see a NavigatorAndroid component or similar when the time comes, and the same for various other components that behave differently between the platforms.
One benefit that you would get is that any application logic - maybe a store, or your backend interactions - could be written in a JavaScript file and then included by both iOS and Android.
So while you won't get that write-once run-everywhere developer experience from React Native I would expect to see a solution that gives first-class UI on both platforms while encouraging as much reuse as possible. I personally also hope to see strong build tools to help develop and ship on multiple platforms.
React Native for Android has just been released, Android folder will be creating along side with iOS folder upon creating a new project.
Just another tip as NavigatorIOS was mentioned. Facebook are not really maintaining the code for NavigatorIOS. Instead they are focusing on Navigator.
Yes. We're running it in production with about 5m registered users.
Some things are a little behind iOS but catching up quickly. It's a good wagon to be on.
React Native is designed so that you can deploy to both iOS and Android. There is a caveat, of course.
React Native has supported iOS for much longer, coming to Android only recently. So, there are some differences in terms of what is supported on each platform.
For example, if you place borders on Text, they will show up on iOS, but not on Android. In order to overcome this, you need to place a View around the Text, and apply a border to that. Luckily, React Native makes it easy to integrate separate stylesheets for each platform (or even platform-specific styling on a single stylesheet).
Support for Android is continuously evolving, so it will only be a matter of time before React Native for Android is on par with iOS. Nevertheless, this shouldn't deter you. In my experience, it's a great way to quickly develop for both platforms, and it does save some headaches.
you don't need to maintenance separate code base for android & ios. Actually you can use same code base for build android & ios. I recommend to read the react-native documentation(according to react-native version you are using) before using any inbuilt component in your code.
Eg:- TextInput component onKeyPress function supports for ios only.
if ur are using external lib check these lib support for both ios and android.
Anyway you have to configure external lib separately(install) both android and ios.
hope this will helpful.

how to use mono in my cross platform project

I've been searching solutions for my enterprise apps, at least 3 platforms need to be supported, which are iOS, Android and Window Phone. After a whole day's search, I finally set my eyes on 2 promising cross platform solutions, one is monocross and the other phonegap.
monocross seems to use c# and .net at all, is it possible to access native libraries and languages? I read somewhere it's compiled directly into binaries that can execute on target platforms.
And about phonegap, it uses webviews on each platform to provide the capabilities of presenting user interfaces to final users. As it's implemented via interpreted language and high level apis, the performance may not meet our needs.
Finally, we(my team) decide to give it a try with mono, the architecture is illustrated as bellow:
+++++++++++++++++++++representation layer++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[monotouch,monodroid,silverlight]or [native gui calls] or [html5/js/css]
+++++++++++++representation controller/business logic layer+++++++++++++++
[ mono/c# ]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++server side+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[ the cloud ]
I want to use mono/c# to write some common purpose business logic and data structures, and when it comes to some common platform features, like storage service, notifications, I'd like to wrap them up on each platform and expose uniform apis for c#(business logic layer) to use. As to the representation layer, we decide to choose from the 3 optional solutions listed above.
To make this happening, first I have to figure out if it is possible to call native frameworks.
So, my questions are:
1, How does mono work, I mean, are the c# codes compiled into binaries that can be executed directly on iOS, Android and Windows Phone?
2, Is there a mechanism to make native invocations? Like in cocos2d-x, I can call java methods via JNI, and in iOS, c++ can call oc directly. Can I call cocoa touch stuffs in mono with c#?
3, Is it possible to manage all these stuffs in one single project, and how to build them?
4, Are there any better solutions?
Any suggestions will be appreciated, thanks for your patience!
I wonder why Xamarin does not land on the first page of your search result,
http://xamarin.com/features
But that's what the Mono guys created for the C# developers that want to target mobile platforms. MonoTouch and Mono for Android are there each featuring a common library base with Microsoft .NET, and also platform specific bindings.
Your non-UI code should be able to be used in portable libraries and share among them. Microsoft's portable library is Windows specific, and right now I am not sure how much Mono guys can embrace that, but even if PCL fails, you can create multiple platform specific projects based on the same copy of source files (which I did in #SNMP). The remaining task is to develop platform specific UI for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android.
There are tons of articles showing the features,
http://docs.xamarin.com/
and also many successful apps
http://xamarin.com/apps
The best way to learn a product is to try it out (for free in Xamarin's case). This also applies to MonoCross (which is a framework built upon Mono).
I am not familiar with PhoneGap, so you need someone's advice on that.
Disclaimer: this is not a complete answer - but I do hope it answers at least part of your question
I encountered a similar problem when I started cross-platform dev using the Mono products 18 months ago.
The approach I've built since is called MvvmCross - it forked off of MonoCross a long time ago - now shares no code with it (but maybe we'll team up again one day!).
The approach uses PCLs to share code. This is not entirely painless, but is easy after you've done a few setup steps - http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/cross-platform-winrt-monodroid.html
You can learn more about this approach on this video: http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/mvvmcross-video-presentation-xaminar.html

Building Peer to Peer photo sharing on Android

I am planning to do a project on Peer to Peer photo sharing on Android. My professor wants me to do that using some language other than Java or C/C++. Is any of Erlang, Haskell, Ocaml,
Scala, Go helpful to build an android app with following functionality?
Ability to design a GUI for android to view the pictures to be shared
Support for socket communications to transfer the pictures?
Since Android relies heavily on Java, Scala would be a good choice here. Scala makes interoperating with Java code easy and runs on the JVM. On top of this, it is a nice functional language with an interesting type system, so it will be a good learning experience. (So will your other languages, but Scala is probably easier to use on Android.)
Check out Scala Programming for Android, which describes how you can make Android applications in Scala.
You can compile and execute Go programs on Android (or ARM in general), but you can't actually use the Android libraries. So, writing services or GUI applications for Android in Go is currently not that easy. I am not sure about the other languages, but I think Erlang, Haskell, Ocaml, etc. have similar problems (if they even provide an ARM compiler).
Therefore it's probably best to focus on a JVM based language. Most of the examples and other applications are written in Java, but Scala is also able to access all those APIs. So, I would either use Java or Scala.
There's also this JVM-based functional, dynamic, lisp-like language Clojure, which some people seem to like a lot. It should be possible to use it to write Android Apps.
Well, in my view, it depends on what you want to really use the language for as regards your project. Photo Sharing: are you planning on using Web based tools for the client, i.e. JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery Mobile (http://jquerymobile.com/), sencha Touch (http://www.sencha.com/products/touch), Phone Gap (http://phonegap.com/),Titanium Appcelerator OR you want to use native stuff like Java, J2ME, e.t.c. Then if its web based (which would make things easier in my view), the language you are referring to in this case would be on the Server side. So in my view if you just need the language to web-serve photos and stuff, then it would not matter which one you use: really depends on your liking. I am pretty sure that Erlang, Scala, Java and the others all have capability for developing great web services. However, the conditions you put as below:
1) Ability to design a GUI for android to view the pictures to be shared 2) Support for socket communications to transfer the pictures?
Suggest that you were referring to a Front-End technology to use. You cannot use Erlang to create GUIs on Android, if i am right, you may not also be able to use Haskell and OcamL as well because these technologies cannot run on the device. For GUIs on Android, you can only use Java, OR you can use Widget Technologies like Opera Widgets OR you use Web based stuff like i mentioned above. However, you should know that using JavaScript Libraries, HTML5, CSS3, e.t.c. is the quickest and more manageable way of developing Apps on any Device. I even wonder why you are talking of Socket Communications !! Am i getting you right ? you want to develop a Photo Sharing App which transfers Photos over raw Socket Communications ? Well, i am NOT sure how many apps out there for Android are doing raw Socket stuff, but i am pretty sure that many (http://androidapplications.com/) are using HTTP Protocol, as in Web Services. Consider looking into web services than raw Sockets. I am pretty sure that even apps developed using native Java, uses HTTP (Web Services like SOAP) to communicate with a remote Server, be it weather apps, location-based stuff e.t.c. Otherwise i guess you should concentrate on Java, for now.

Categories

Resources