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How to Play a Custom Sound in Your Mobile App

Audio_with_JS

To make your app more interactive and stand out from the competition, one nice option is to play a nice sound file in the background when an event occurs.

You can easily add a custom sound to an app you are building in Appery.io and play it using the standard HTML5 Audio component. As you can always customize any app with custom JavaScript, you can start and stop playing the sound via JavaScript. I’m going to show you how to do this in your Appery.io app.
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Mobile Dev. Tip: Geolocation Plug-in for AngularJS Apps

geolocation-plugin

Geolocation functionality is one of the most popular features in mobile development. In Appery.io, a geolocation plug-in is available out-of-the box and can be configured in minutes to use in your mobile app. Recently, we’ve updated the geolocation plug-in for AngularJS apps (both Ionic and Bootstrap) and now it is even more intuitive and faster to use. In the geolocation plug-in docs you can find out how to add the plug-in to your Appery.io app, so you can retrieve the current position and start\stop watching position.

Make sure to check out all our mobile development tips.

Do you want to build apps fast? Start developing with our free plan.

Mobile Dev. Tip: Update Apps without Going through the App Store

apperyio_app_auto_update

Appery.io recently announced another great feature that significantly simplifies app versions publishing. By using the AutoUpdate feature, you can make changes to the published app without submitting it to app stores. Go to EXPORT > Auto update after you’ve made changes, and Appery.io will generate a bundle with the updated resources. Apps installed on devices will automatically download the updated bundle, so users don’t need to do anything for the update. You can read more about the AutoUpdate feature in our documentation.

Make sure to check out all our mobile development tips.

Do you want to build apps fast? Start developing with our free plan.

Quickly Visualize Enterprise Data with the New Chart Plugin

apperyio_angular_charts

Appery.io Charts plugin

From talking with developers who are building business and enterprise apps, we’ve heard that displaying data visually with charts is one of the highest priority requirements. To make it easy to visualize data, Appery.io has introduced a lightweight plugin that has everything you need to add pretty and inform-dense charts to your mobile app.

In this post we’ll show you how to do exactly that.

The Appery.io Charts plugin is available for AngularJS types of apps – both Ionic and Bootstrap. It’s built on the popular Chart.js library and consists of two JavaScript and one CSS asset. It can be added to your app the same as any other Appery.io plugin:

  1. Open your Appery.io app and go to CREATE NEW > From plugin.
  2. Choose Appery.io Charts and click Import selected plugins.
  3. All the assets and the charts page will be added to your app.

Now you can go to Project > Routing and set the Default route for charts page to make this the initial page for your app.

There are three type of charts implemented in this plugin – Line, Bar and Radar. Switch them and see the animation by clicking the appropriate buttons.

Chart.js supports many other chart types, you can learn about the other charts here.

In this plugin, charts are displayed based on the data stored locally, in the scope variable. However, you may want to use a database as the data source for your charts. It will take less than a minute to configure the plugin in this way. Read the plugin documentation to see how.

Hopefully you will find this easy-to-use plugin useful. If you have any suggestions on how to make it better – feel free to contact us!

Mobile Dev. Tip: How to Use a Custom Sound for Push Notifications

placeit

Would it be nice to have unique push notification sounds for your app? When you have a unique sound, users can quickly differentiate it from other notifications. Adding custom sound is really easy with Appery.io – upload a custom sound file to your Appery.io app and then specify its name on the push notifications page. Currently, the feature is available for iOS apps only. You can find more about the custom sounds and a lot of other useful information on push notifications in our documentation.

Check all the mobile development tips.

Do you want to build apps fast? Start developing with our free plan.

Build Apps Faster with Automatic App Update, Visual API Service Designer, Angular Visual Binding Editor, and More Security Options

Update fast without going through the app store

Wouldn’t it be awesome to update your app without having to resubmit it to app stores? Now you can! With the new Appery.io AutoUpdate feature, you’ll only have to submit your app to the app stores once. You’ll use EXPORT > Auto update to build a new bundle with updated resources. Apps installed on devices will automatically download the updated bundle, meaning users won’t need to do anything for the update.

However, there are some restrictions due to security policies:

  • Only web-resources: HTML/JS/CSS resources could be updated with this feature;
  • Cordova and Cordova plugins couldn’t be updated with this feature;

The updated release bundle is the same for all platforms, so all mobile devices (Android and iOS) are updated simultaneously. See the documentation for more about this feature.

New API Express capabilities

Quickly create services with new visual builder

API Express, which allows you to use external relational databases with Appery.io, was updated with powerful visual tools. Now it’s really easy to build complex algorithms by combining multiple queries into one endpoint.

flow_builder

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Tip: Keep Data in One Place to Use Anywhere in Your App

Icon for a tipAre you looking for a convenient place to keep data that may be accessed from any screen of your app? Appery.io has you covered. Use the Settings Service to keep any data you need to quickly access from anywhere in your app. The Settings Service has its own API. so it’s easy to manage programmatically. Use it for static values such as URLs and IDs and for dynamic values such as device language or dates. But, beware of keeping sensitive information there such as session tokens.

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Tip: Make HTML Do New Tricks with AngularJS Directives

Icon for a tip AngularJS provides many useful tools for easy app development, including the concept of directives. When building an AngularJS mobile app with Appery.io, you can easily write any custom directive you want to extend the behavior of HTML. Appery.io even provides two of it’s own built-in directives you can use: navigateTo and backButton. The first one helps navigate between app pages; the second one helps manage your browser history including making the back button behave more intuitively.

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New Webinars and Office Hours Coming Your Way

An image of being "webinared"

Appery.io is the best mobile app development platform out there, but, with so much in Appery.io, it’s important you get the help you need to take full advantage of the platform. One way we do this is through frequent webinars and now with our office hours. We’ve lined up a bunch into December. Next office hours: this Thursday; next webinar (Testing and App Sharing Using the Appery.io Tester App): September 23rd.

What time? All webinars start at 11am US Pacific time. Where are recordings of previous webinars? On this YouTube playlist. More questions? E-mail me.