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

Trying out our application


Are you ready! Our application is now fully ready for you to actually test its functionality. It not only has a settings screen, but also has the ability to communicate with a server to exchange messages. So, the only piece missing is a server. Guess what, we have one of those too. Let's check out the next piece and get the communication server up and running.

The server

The server code itself won't be discussed in this book as it is not relevant to learning NativeScript. It is in JavaScript, so feel free to look at it. It is downloadable from the same example repo that contains all the example in this book, located at https://github.com/GettingStartedWithNativeScript. In the event you want to run your own server or, for some reason, the test server on nativescript.rocks:3000 is not running, the following instructions will help you set up and connect to your own server.

Setting up your own server

To set up the server follow the given steps:

  1. Once you have downloaded...