Book Image

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook

By : Boydlee Pollentine
Book Image

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook

By: Boydlee Pollentine

Overview of this book

<p>Appcelerator Titanium Mobile allows developers to realize their potential to develop full native iPhone and Android applications by using free Titanium Studio tools without the need to know Objective-C or Java. This practical hands-on cookbook shows you exactly how to leverage the Titanium API to its full advantage and become confident in developing mobile applications in no time at all.<br /><br />Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook offers a set of practical and clear recipes with a step-by-step approach for building native applications for both the iPhone and Android platforms using your existing knowledge of JavaScript.<br /><br />This cookbook takes a pragmatic approach to using your JavaScript knowledge to create applications for the iPhone and Android platforms, from putting together basic UIs to handling events and implementation of third party services such Twitter, Facebook and Push notifications. This book shows you how to utilize both remote and local datasources using XML, JSON and the SQLite database system. The topics covered will guide you to use popular Titanium Studio tools effectively and help you leverage all the advanced mobile features such as Geolocation, Accelerometer, animation and more. Finally, you’ll learn how to register developer accounts and how to publish your very own apps to the Android and Apple marketplaces.</p>

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Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook
Boydlee Pollentine
Dec, 2011 | 308 pages
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Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook
Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Building Apps using Native UI Components
Building Apps using Native UI Components
Introduction
Building with Windows and Views
Adding a TabGroup to your app
Creating and formatting Labels
Creating TextFields for user input
Working with keyboards and keyboard toolbars
Enhancing your App with Sliders & Switches
Passing custom variables between windows
Creating buttons and capturing click events
Informing your users with dialogs and alerts
Creating charts using Raphael JS
2
Working with Local and Remote Data Sources
Working with Local and Remote Data Sources
Introduction
Reading data from remote XML through HTTPClient
Displaying data using a TableView
Enhancing your TableViews with custom rows
Filtering the TableView using a SearchBar component
Speeding up your remote data access using JSON and Yahoo! YQL
Creating an SQLite database
Saving data locally using an SQLite database
Retrieving data from an SQLite database
Creating a "pull and release" refresh mechanism
3
Integrating Google Maps and GPS
Integrating Google Maps and GPS
Introduction
Adding a MapView to your application
Getting your current position using GeoLocation
Converting addresses to latitude and longitude positions
Adding annotations to your MapView
Customizing annotations and capturing MapView events
Drawing routes on your MapView
Monitoring your heading using the device compass
4
Enhancing your Apps with Audio, Video, and the Camera
Enhancing your Apps with Audio, Video, and the Camera
Introduction
Choosing your capture device using an OptionDialog
Capturing photos from the camera
Choosing existing photos from the photo library
Displaying photos using ScrollableView
Saving your captured photo to the device filesystem
Capturing and playing audio via the audio recorder
Capturing video via the video recorder
Playing video files from the filesystem
Safely deleting saved files from the filesystem
5
Connecting your Apps with Social Media and E-mail
Connecting your Apps with Social Media and E-mail
Introduction
Composing and sending an e-mail
Adding attachments to an e-mail
Setting up a custom Facebook application
Integrating Facebook into your Titanium App
Posting on your Facebook wall
Connecting to Twitter using OAuth
Uploading an image using PHP and HttpRequest
Sending a tweet through Birdhouse and OAuth
6
Getting to Grips with Events and Properties
Getting to Grips with Events and Properties
Introduction
Reading and writing app properties
Firing and capturing events
Passing event data between your app and a Webview using custom events
7
Creating Animations, Transformations, and Understanding Drag-and-drop
Creating Animations, Transformations, and Understanding Drag-and-drop
Introduction
Animating a View using the "animate" method
Animating a View using 2D matrix and 3D matrix transforms
Dragging an ImageView using touch events
Scaling an ImageView using a Slider control
Saving our "Funny Face" image using the toImage() method
8
Interacting with Native Phone Applications and APIs
Interacting with Native Phone Applications and APIs
Introduction
Creating an Android Options menu
Accessing the contacts address book
Storing and retrieving data via the clipboard
Creating a background service on the iPhone
Displaying local notifications on the iPhone
Displaying Android notifications using intents
Storing your Android app on the device's SD card
9
Integrating your Apps with External Services
Integrating your Apps with External Services
Introduction
Connecting to APIs that use basic authentication
Fetching data from the Google Places API
Connecting to FourSquare using OAuth
Posting a check-in to FourSquare
Searching and retrieving data via Yahoo! YQL
Integrating push notifications with UrbanAirship.com
Testing push notifications using PHP and HTTP POST
10
Extending your Apps With Custom Modules
Extending your Apps With Custom Modules
Introduction
Integrating an existing module—the PayPal Mobile Payment Library
Preparing your iOS module development environment
Developing a new iPhone module using XCode
Creating a public API method
Packaging and testing your module using the test harness
Packaging your module for distribution and sale
11
Platform Differences, Device Information, and Quirks
Platform Differences, Device Information, and Quirks
Introduction
Gathering information about your device
Obtaining the device's screen dimensions
Understanding device orientation modes
Coding around differences between the iOS and Android APIs
Ensuring your device can make phone calls
12
Preparing your App for Distribution and Getting it Published
Preparing your App for Distribution and Getting it Published
Introduction
Joining the iOS Developer Program
Installing iOS Developer Certificates and Provisioning Profiles
Build your app for iOS using Titanium Studio
Joining the Google Android Developer Program
Creating your application's distribution key
Building and submitting your app to the Android Marketplace

Gathering information about your device

The majority of information about the current device is available through the Titanium.Platform namespace. It is here that we can determine a host of device-specific data, including the battery level, device OS and version, current device language, the screen resolution, and more. Knowing this information is important, as it will give you a series of clues as to what is happening on the physical device. One example is that you may wish to back up a user's application data if the battery dips below a certain percentage, in case the device was to shut down and data was lost. More commonly, you will use device properties such as Titanium.Platform.osname to determine what operating system your app is currently running under, such as iPhone, iPad, or Android.

Getting ready

To prepare for this recipe, open up Titanium Studio and log in if you have not already done so. If you need to register a new account, you can do so for free directly from within the application...

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