Book Image

Getting Started with NativeScript

By : Nathanael J. Anderson
Book Image

Getting Started with NativeScript

By: Nathanael J. Anderson

Overview of this book

NativeScript allows you to build a fast cross-platform application that has a native UI. NativeScript is a true cross-platform framework that generates native speed applications using the native components of the host platform, all using JavaScript. Although NativeScript allows you to build your application in JavaScript, you have full access to the host OS from your code, allowing you to easily tweak or use new platform features instantly at native code speeds. Whether you have already developed multiple applications or zero applications, this book will help you to develop your next application in a cross-platform framework quickly, saving you a massive amount of time and money. This book concisely shows you NativeScript’s built-in framework that allows you to rapidly develop a fully-working compiled cross-platform application in just a few chapters. It starts by laying the foundation of NativeScript and working through the fundamentals to create a basic shell of the application. Moving on, you’ll see how to build a full-fledged application step by step. We’ll show you how to use plugins, and how to communicate with the native OS libraries easily so that you can customize your application as if your app was created in Java or Objective C. We then deal with the issues that arise from being cross platform and compensate for the different screen sizes, screen resolutions, and device abilities. Finally, we progress to testing and deploying your app.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Getting Started with NativeScript
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Building our featured application


We will now build a full-featured cross-platform communication application. This application will ultimately allow you to have real-time communication with any other people connected to the same server. The application will run the exact same way on each of the platforms. By the time we are done, the application will look like this:

The first thing we will work on is the settings screen, as we need some place to put in the server address and your name. Then, we will begin work on the main application screen. Let's get this show on the road!

Nonvisual components

In the prior chapters, we started to create a page called settings, but now, we actually need to convert it from that simple demo test screen into a real settings screen. For this screen to work properly, we need a component that we can use to store information when our application is no longer running. The best component for this is the application-settings component. This is a nonvisual component...