I am interested in supporting a few different platforms, like Android, iOS, Windows, and I was interested in Rhomobile might help? However, I am concerned about not being able to use any device specific syncing capabilities. Has anyone worked with PhoneGap/MoSync combo and what has been your experience?
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "not being able to use any device specific syncing capabilities" with Rhomobile. You can always create your own syncing mechanism using the network libraries as described here:
Connecting Directly with Web Services
You can also create native extensions and use them inside your Rhodes project so no native capability is impossible to access. Of course you would have to replicate this extension for every platform you are targetting or manage the differences in implementation in your code in a platform specific way.
Regarding the comparisson with the other multi-platform frameworks, we evaluated using PhoneGap but ended up deciding for Rhodes because of the development tools. Having a development tool that has integrated step-by-step debugging and the Rhodes simulator that allows you to test and manipulate your style sheets and works 100 times faster than the android emulator is a major advantage.
Related
I figured this would be an easy answer to find, however, I haven't had much luck.
I've heard of services such as Phonegap and others where the developer can develop a web app and it gets wrapped and deployed to the Windows, iOS and Android platforms. However, is there a method that you can build native to Java/Android and then wrap it to run on another mobile device platforms?
Using Google's java2objc code conversion tool you can generate Objective C code from Java code. Google has used it to generate ~40% of the code used in their new email app Inbox so it's a reasonably proven technology.
With that said, it will not generate any UI related code nor should it be, as each platform has its own UI standard. What it can do is to allow you to write the business logic once and reused it for iOS.
I ended up discovering the ionic framework found here. I found it the best (and by far the easiest) route to go for cross platform development. It uses angularJS and web based implementation that wraps content for ios, android, blackberry and windows mobile devices.
I have one simple question, that is can I convert my android .apk app into ios using any software? If yes, then please give me the name of that software. If any alternative method for that please guide me.
Google has a tool to convert the back-end, nothing for front-end though
http://www.xda-developers.com/google-tool-helps-developers-port-android-apps-to-ios/
There is a new startup that clains to convert the APK to IOS.
It's called MechDome.
The goal is very simple and attractable:
Reduce time to market by eliminating cross-platform development. Automatically convert your existing Android apps to high-fidelity, native iOS apps.
There is nothing out there that would convert apk into ios app. To my knowledge there is also nothing out there that could translate android code to IOS. The operation is simply too complex for a simple tool to manage.
However, there are tools you could use to make your apps (developed by you) work across multiple platforms. I'm sure there are more, but here are 2 of them I found in minutes (look into them if you are interested): Apportable, Phonegap (discontinued as of 2020/03. It was made obsolete by ProgressiveWebApps - PWA).
In past decade or so WebApps have been picking up for anything that is not too graphically demanding as they can run on anything that has a Web Browser. With this style devs pretty much open their website in a platform-specific executable and it looks like an app.
As for your existing app depending on complexity of your software you have to rewrite from a little to a lot of code to adapt to IOS APIs.
In short: No. Unless your app is build on multiplatform framework, converting means manual adaptation.
There is no known way to convert an android app to iOS. MechDome which is a Developer Tool that Automatically Converts Android Apps into iOS Apps seems to have stopped as of 30/03/2021. link
However if it is your plan to launch android and iOS app from one coding project, use Flutter which allows you to launch on both platforms simultaneously.
Flutter is Google’s mobile UI framework that provides a fast and expressive way for developers to build native apps on both iOS & Android, using a single codebase.
Get started here link
I'm a web developer in ASP.NET, C# and looking to start some mobile development. I'm aware Apple uses Objective C and Android uses Java, is there a way to create an app for both platforms or do I need to buy a Mac and some books on objective c and Java?
Thanks
You can use http://phonegap.com/ or http://www.appcelerator.com/platform to write cross-platform apps.
Rumour has it that Delphi XE3 (Due to come out soon) can be compiled onto Apple, Android, Windows 8 etc.etc. so if you can hold out a little longer that should be good!
For now, you are better using a mac (with XCode) to program for IOS or OSX as Apple is very particular and you need certificates for devices, projects, development and distribution etc.etc.etc.
Android i believe you have a bit more play with, but at the moment it is 2 seperate languages. Check out the DEV centres:
https://developer.apple.com
developer.android.com/
There are ways to create apps for both platforms, especially if you know web technologies : PhoneGap and others.
But like specified in the doc, you will most probably need an actual mac if you want to build to iOS
Although there are workarounds
You could use PhoneGap or Appcelerator. Haven't tried them myself, though. But with those tools you could build for both Android and iOS.
Since you are a .Net, C# developer, i recommend you to use Mono for Android, it comes with cost but will save you time and easy to deploy
http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid
The best way to be truly cross-platform is to develop for the web. I would include this in your consideration of development strategies, in addition to PhoneGap and Titanium, as Peter mentioned. You do not have as much access to core OS features, but that is improving all the time (see http://mobilehtml5.org/). Whether or not this is feasible depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
We will develop a, social network integrated mobile application which will need to access native device capabilities but 90% of the logic will be implemented in the HTML5/Javascript code posted by Ruby back end to the device. Thus, we would like to update or change the logic/GUI of the app without user involvement. We have strict deadline and have to support iOS, Android and Blackberry.
In this case, what approach would you recommend us? We considered the approaches below but could not decide since we do not have any experience with mobile development even if we are experienced in Ruby, C/C++, Java, Javascript, Flex.
Our considerations:
Develop native apps for each platform and embed the native browsers
to implement our logic, which can take too much time.
Use one of the frameworks for cross-platform development such as
PhoneGap or rhomobile. In this case, we are afraid of facing some performance issues. We would love to hear the experience of developers with those frameworks.
Use Adobe Air for accessing the device and its WebKit component for the rest.
First, I hope you understand that there is no simple answer. At this junction, having been looking at cross-platform solutions for mobile development for two years, I feel that in order to get fully native UI look, and to access all the device and UI features, one is forced to produce native application on each platform.
But, since you asked about cross-platform tools, here's a list of the main contenders:
Sencha http://www.sencha.com/products/touch “Sencha Touch is the world's first app framework built specifically to leverage HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript”
Dojo http://dojotoolkit.org “Dojo saves you time, delivers powerful performance, and scales with your development process”
Phonegap http://www.phonegap.com “PhoneGap is an open source implementation of open standards”
jQuery Mobile http://jquerymobile.com “Touch-Optimized Web Framework for Smartphones & Tablets A unified user interface system across all popular mobile device platforms”
Rhomobile http://rhomobile.com “Free and open source mobile application framework”
Titanium from Appcelerator http://www.appcelerator.com
There are plenty of comparisons online, including on SO, and this fellow actually tried to use several platforms, code included.
Anecdotally, I have seen Phonegap produce a rather iPhone-centric look, that may not mesh well with Android, plus showing performance problems when loading screens (there may be workarounds via pre-loading). Also, access to more complex devices was limited, or at least lagging. Rhomobile is a good fit for data-driven apps (simple display of large databases), but architecturally could show performance issues, so check for yourself. Personally I did not get into Sencha, Dojo seemed a little small, and Titanium showed dated architecture. So next time I'm attempting a cross-platform app, I'll give jQuery Mobile a serious try.
Let us know what you pick and how it works out.
Iam using this rhomobile rhodes for my cross-platform development App which will run in Android, Blackberry and iPhone.
We have developed application and sucessfully runned in all devices without any issues. we used ruby for backend webservice call, And remaining app is constructed with HTML5 and java Script. I didn't face any issues regarding rhomobile.
intially we faced memory issues, But later on we resolved this issue by implementing local storage for our App. For android it wont supports local storage so we used Rhom Storage only for Android Device.
Sounds like a project doomed to fail.
If I were you, I'd build a mobile-friendly site for all 3 platforms if deadline is tight. What native features do you even need, first off? If it's something like a camera, you're better off just build a native app for all 3.
I'm searching for a framework to create apps for both Android and iOS from one codebase. I'm aware of Appcelarator and PhoneGap etc. However I need a different kind of product. I'm not sure if it exists. I can't find it here or on google.
We are a team of Android and iOS developers and aren't afraid to build natively. What I want is a tool to help me jumpstart development. Preferably a tool where I can create the basic UI and Models and generate native code to use as basis for further development.
Does such a tool exist?
Have you seen Mono??
iOS
Note: Make sure you following the instructions on the MonoTouch website re installation
Development tools (Free): XCode + Interface Builder (http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios)
MonoTouch ($399USD): http://monotouch.net/
Register for developer program/app store ($99USD): Register
Android
Note: Make sure you following the instructions on the MonoDroid website re installation
Development tools (Free): Java JDK, Android SDK
MonoDroid (public beta): monodroid-download
Register for developer program/market ($25USD): Register
Don’t forget for the iOS component you’re going to need to go buy a Mac to use.
Have a look at LiveCode 5 from RunRev.
http://www.runrev.com/
Have you checked out DAPP? I like it quite a bit.
http://dapp.kerofrog.com.au/
Yes you can Generate the code for both Android/ios and many more languages using the Tool Swagger
Please Check the tool,this tool gives the basic UI and Models and generate native code to just like your Requirement.
But You have to right the Swaggger Specification file(it will be on Json or Yaml) for that. And after Writing Swagger Specification file You can downlaod the code for Android/ios and other language as well. So kindly follow the document of swagger. You will get clear idea about that.
Here i list down usefull links of swagger :
https://swagger.io/
https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-codegen
https://editor.swagger.io/
https://swagger.io/docs/
There's a tool called Genexus for Smart Devices, which is a code generator that supports iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows 8.
However, you need to learn the tool, and I've found it useful only for simple CRUD apps. It does enable extremely fast development of said apps, it's a good fit for simple LOB apps. I've tried it and deployed to Android (haven't tested on iOS or other platforms).
http://www.genexus.com/SD/mobile-application-development?en
If you're experienced with iOS and Android, you'll probably get frustrated though (and I'm sure the code it generates isn't pretty).
I've used the generator for desktop and web .NET and Java, and works reasonably well (with those caveats), so I'm sure the Smart Devices generator will continue evolving.
Take a look at Flutter, from their docs:
Flutter transforms the app development process. Build, test, and deploy beautiful mobile, web, desktop, and embedded apps from a single codebase.