Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

Overview of this book

This book will take you through the process of building cross-platform, native UI applications for the mobile from scratch. You will learn how to develop apps, how to use GPS, cameras and photos and how to build socially connected apps. You will also learn how to package them for submission to the App Store and Google Play. This cookbook takes a pragmatic approach to creating applications in JavaScript from putting together basic UIs, to handling events and implementation of third party services such as Twitter, Facebook and Push notifications. The book shows you how to integrate datasources and server APIs, and how to use local databases. The topics covered will guide you to use Appcelerator Studio tools for all the mobile features such as Geolocation, Accelerometer, animation and more. You’ll also learn about Alloy, the Appcelerator MVC framework for rapid app development, and how to transfer data between applications using URLSchemes, enabling other developers to access and launch specific parts of your app. Finally, you will learn how to register developer accounts and publish your very own applications on the App Store and Google Play.

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

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 and switches

Passing custom variables between windows

Creating buttons and capturing click events

Informing your users with dialogs and alerts

Creating charts using Raphael JS

Creating an actionbar in Android

Working with Local and Remote Data Sources

Introduction

Reading data from remote XML via 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 with Yahoo YQL and JSON

Creating a SQLite database

Saving data locally using a SQLite database

Retrieving data from a SQLite database

Creating a "Pull to Refresh" mechanism in iOS

Integrating Maps and GPS

Introduction

Adding a MapView to your application

Getting your current position using GeoLocation

Converting addresses to latitude and longitude locations

Adding annotations to your MapView

Customizing annotations and adding events to your MapView

Drawing routes on your MapView

Monitoring your heading using the device compass

Enhancing Your Apps with Audio, Video, and Cameras

Introduction

Choosing your capture device using an OptionDialog modal

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

Connecting Your Apps to Social Media and E-mail

Introduction

Composing and sending e-mails

Adding attachments to an e-mail

Setting up a custom Facebook application

Integrating Facebook into your Titanium app

Posting to your Facebook wall

Posting to Twitter in iOS

Posting to Facebook in iOS

Sharing on Android using Intents

Getting to Grips with Properties and Events

Introduction

When should you use app properties?

Reading and writing app properties

Firing and capturing events

Passing event data between your app and a Webview using custom events

Creating Animations, Transformations and Implementing Drag and Drop

Introduction

Animating a view using the Animate method

Animating a view using 2D Matrix and 3D Matrix transformations

Dragging an ImageView using touch events

Scaling an ImageView using the slider control

Saving our funny face using the toImage() method

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 an iPhone

Updating data using background fetch

Displaying local notifications on an iPhone

Displaying Android notifications using intents

Storing your Android app on the device's SD card

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 Parse.com

Testing push notifications using PHP and HTTP POST

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!

Platform Differences, Device Information, and Quirks

Introduction

Gathering information about your device

Obtaining the device's screen dimensions

Understanding device orientation modes

Coding around the differences between the iOS and Android APIs

Ensuring that your device can make phone calls

Preparing Your App for Distribution and Getting It Published

Introduction

Joining the iOS developer program

Installing iOS developer certificates and provisioning profiles

Building your application for iOS using studio

Joining the Google Android developer program

Creating your application's distribution key

Building and submitting your app to the Google Play Store

Implementing and Using URL Schemes

Introduction

Detecting whether another iOS app is installed

Launching another iOS app

Passing parameters to other apps via a URL

Launching Apple Maps and Google Maps with route directions

Opening URLs in Chrome for iOS

Setting up your own apps to use URL schemes

Receiving URL commands in your own app

Transferring binary data between apps using a URL scheme

Introduction to Alloy MVC

Introduction

Installing Alloy and creating an Alloy project

Building views and windows

Creating Buttons and Labels using Events

Changing the look of your app with styles

Working with Navigation and TabGroups

Adding an Alloy widget to your application

Creating your own Alloy widget

Integrating data using models and collections

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Updating data using background fetch

The release of iOS 7 added a new background service called background fetch, which allows an app to poll for new data, updates, or changes at regular intervals. For example, a weather app can update itself during the day, or a news app can fetch new articles throughout the day.

The interval for background fetch can be set. However, this is not recommended as setting an interval that is too short will cause iOS to ignore it in order to save battery life. So, in this example, we will be using Apple's default settings. Typically, background fetch runs by default, in the morning, evening, and periodically in between.

Note

Note

Background fetch will also run a few minutes after a device is restarted, due to any of these reasons:

A crash causing a reboot
A restart because of low battery
The user has turned the device off and on

In these instances, background fetch will run soon after the device is restarted. However, if the application is killed by the user and the...

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

Overview of this book

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Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

Updating data using background fetch

Note