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

Testing your app on a device or emulator


Now that we looked at how to do different types of unit testing on your local machine and on the device, the next step is to actually have tests that run your actual app on an emulator or device. Nothing can beat an actual test of your full application on the device that you are using and targeting. The more automated the testing is, the easier it is for you to detect issues in your code while you are developing and enhancing your application.

There is an open source project called Appium that we will use. It is located at http://appium.io. This project supports iOS and Android, which makes it a perfect fit to do all of our on-device testing. To install it globally, you need to use npm install -g appium command. Then, in your main project folder, you need to also use npm install --save-dev wd, which will install the JavaScript driver that you can use to drive your application from your developer machine in JavaScript. We will continue to use Mocha...