Book Image

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

By : Jason Kneen
Book Image

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook Second Edition

By: Jason Kneen

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.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
15
Index

Creating a background service on an iPhone


Since iOS 4, Apple has supported background services, which means your apps can now run code in the background, much like Android apps (however, there are some limitations as well as workarounds). In this recipe, we are going to create a background service that will execute a set piece of code from a separate file called bg.js. We will also log each stage of the background service cycle to the console. Thus, you will understand each part of the process.

How to do it…

Open your project's app.js file and enter the following text (deleting any code that exists):

//create root window
var win1 = Ti.UI.createWindow({
  backgroundColor : '#fff',
  title : 'Background Services'
});

//register a background service.
//this JS will run when the app is backgrounded
var service = Ti.App.iOS.registerBackgroundService({
  url : 'bg.js'
});

Ti.API.info("registered background service = " + service);

//fired when an app is resuming for suspension
Ti.App.addEventListener...