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This short video shows how to run and test your hybrid app without going through the app store.

In this video you will learn:

• How to extend your app with plugins
• How to add a plugin that uploads a photo to a database
• How to run and test the app using the Appery.io Tester app for iOS or Android
• How to do remote debugging with Weinre
• How to share your app with anyone without the app store — even if they don’t have an Appery.io account

If you like this, start building apps fast with Appery.io, it’s free.

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.

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If you signed up for Appery.io before September 2014, you might have used our old App Builder. If your app uses the old App Builder, then you will see a message like this:

Upgrade message if your app uses the old App Builder

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When you are building a mobile app in Appery.io, you are starting with HTML/JavaScript app which then can be packaged as a Cordova (PhoneGap) app, published and installed on a device. You can also use any Cordova APIs in your app and add any 3rd party Cordova plugins.

Everyone knows that testing is one of the most important steps when building a mobile app and also the part that usually takes the most time. Luckily there is a very fast way you can test your app, and I’ll show you how to do it.

When you are working on an app inside the Appery.io App Builder, you are seconds away from testing your app. Simply click the “Test” button in the toolbar:

App Builder for Ionic

When you click the “Test” button, a new browser tab will open where the app will be loaded. It looks like this:

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Are 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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Last week we blogged about an AngularJS issue that breaks some APIs when you upgrade to iOS 9. We showed you how to create a patch. Today, we have added a plug-in that makes fixing this even faster and simpler. Import the plug-in, and you’re done. I’ll show you how to do that.

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If your users upgrade their Apple device to iOS 9, you could run into a problem when working with the window.location API. The Ionic team found this issue (thank you) and posted a workaround with this patch. Adding this patch to an Appery.io Ionic (or Bootstrap) app is very simple. Let me show you how.

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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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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.

In this post you are going to learn how to access images uploaded to a cloud database via REST APIs and display the images in the app. This is the second post about working with images. You can read the first post here:

Quickly Upload, Display, and Customize Images from the Database with the Built-in Files Collection.

Let’s say you have a list of images, icons, or avatars that you have uploaded to a database. Maybe you are building a contacts app and would like to display employee head shot or just a list of products. Now you would like to display them in your app. In this tutorial we are going to show you how to do that — it’s fast and simple.

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