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

Declarative UI


You have several ways to deal with platform specifics in your Declarative UI files. We will look at each way and examine the pros and cons of each method.

Declarative UI properties

The first way is for properties. You can use the following line of code:

<Button ios:text="iOS is Awesome" android:text="Android is Awesome"/>

As you can see, we prefixed the text property with a ios: or android: prefix, so on their respective platforms, they will declare that the platform is Awesome. If you only have a couple of properties to change, this is the easiest method to use and maintain. It does not allow you to change any platform-specific components though. If you have a lot of platform-specific properties or you need to use a different component on the platforms, then you will need to use Declarative UI platform qualifiers.

Declarative UI platform qualifiers

A Declarative UI platform qualifier allows you to qualify a whole group of components or properties to a specific platform like...