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If you plan to use MongoLab database in your app, it’s now even simpler with our new MongoLab database plug-in. Here is how to create one.

Click to import a plug-in:

then select Mobile and click MongoDB Database API:

next you will be prompted to enter database API key and database name. Both values can be found in your MongoLab account:

If you don’t set these values during import, don’t worry. You can also set them in Services/MongoLab_Settings after the import.

In addition to API key and database name you also need to set the collection name (as we don’t have that information). The collection name is defined and set in Request Parameters panel:

In the Default Value column enter the collection name. You may also set the collection name directly in the URL. The reason collection name is set in request parameters and not in the settings file is because it will change often while the other values are most likely going to stay the same.

Once the service is imported, you can test the service and automatically create the response structure from it.

We were getting a lot of questions how do you send email from your mobile app? We would always tell user to use SendGrid, a wonderful cloud service that provides REST API for sending out emails. Today we released SendGrid Mail API plug-in in Appery.io. All it takes now is a few clicks and you are ready to send emails from your mobile app.

To import the plug-in, click the block button in Project view:

Open Communication category and select SendGrid Mail API:

Click Import selected plug-ins button. You will be prompted to enter api_user and api_key values. Before being able to send out emails with SendGrid you need to sign up for an account (they do offer a free plan). You will then get a api_user and user_key. You may skip entering these values right now. You can always set them in Project/SendGrid_Settings.

Once the plug-in is imported, you will have page called Sendmail that looks like this:

The UI is built with jQuery Mobile.

You can also open the REST service (SendGrid_MailSend). The URL is defined here:

Request parameters:

{api_user} and {api_key} are set in SendGrid_Settings.

And finally the service mapping (UI to service):

This REST service has additional option parameters which are described here. You may modify the service as you need. SendGrid provides other API’s that you can find here.

Have fun building apps in Appery.io, now with SendGrid email API.

Check out other Appery.io videos.

Appery.io Mashable coverage:

• New App Bridges Communication Gap Between Devs and Small Biz

Also check out recent Appery.io coverage by TechCrunch and Technorati.

Today and tomorrow Appery.io will be at the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon, NxNE Interactive Festival, in Toronto.

Appery.io was covered by two very popular technology sites:

• Drag-And-Drop Mobile App Builder Appery.io Makes Building Native And Web Apps Easier, Adds SMS and mHealth Plugins (TechCrunch)
• Appery.io: Making Mobile App Building Easy (Technorati)

In addition to AT&T SMS API Plug-in, we just made available AT&T mHealth API Plug-in in Appery.io app builder.

mHealth gives you control over your health and wellness data and makes that data more accessible than ever before. With a rich ecosystem of supported devices and applications, mHealth enables you to manage your personal health and wellness from the palm of your hand, anytime, anywhere

Source: https://mhealth.att.com/what

In addition to REST services, the plug-in has two pages. On the first page there is a button to connect to mHealth. When you click on the button, mHealth login page will be opened. Once you login, you will be redirected back to the app and shown the second page. On the second page a simply REST service is invoked showing to what data access is available. The plug-in is set up with three scopes (/read/health/data/fitbit /read/health/data/poke /health/read/user). mHealth docs shows more available scopes.

To add the plug-in to your app:

1. Create a new app, make sure to create Mobile App (not Mobile Web)
2. Inside the builder, click on the “blocks” button in Projects view:
   
3. Select Fitness category, then check the plug-in
   
4. Click Import selected plugins. You will be prompted to enter the client_id and client_secret information. This information can be obtained from mHealth app settings. You may skip it and enter it later
5. Enjoy the plug-in!

The plug-in is just in time for AT&T Education Hackathon happening today and tomorrow in Palo Alto, CA. Appery.io team will be there.

Check out this really nice blog/tutorial on how to use Appery.io to build a mobile app connected to cloud-based MongoDB, written by Ben Wen from MongoLab.

Cloud Services

In the past year or so, we have witnessed a major shift from client-server to client-cloud. This shift is primarily fueled by two factors: mobile devices exceeding desktop computers and the thousands of different APIs available on the Internet today. What started in early 2000 on eBay and Amazon has become a real revolution in 2012 with thousands of companies, from Twitter and Facebook to AT&T, offering cloud-based services.

REST API
One of the most common ways to access private or public service APIs is via REST requests.

In the client-server approach an organization builds applications that consume its own internal content and resources. However, even large IT organizations such as AT&T, Verizon and Amazon have come to realize that they are no match for the social consumer and social enterprise developers out there. By making APIs publicly available, these organizations hope that developers and “citizen developers” will come and build applications and mobile apps on top of their services.

Citizen developers at work
Analysts at Gartner see a trend toward app creation independent of IT. They predict that by 2014, citizen developers – employees outside of IT and software development – will build 25% of new business applications. In 2007, they built less than 5%.

One of the best-known API success stories comes from Amazon: Its cloud service APIs let outsiders access the company’s massive data centers. Twitter, with its deceptively simple 140-character message model, exploded thanks to its API. In fact, you probably read and write tweets via a Twitter application or mobile app rather than going directly to Twitter’s Web site. Facebook’s Graph API has spawned a whole industry of apps to support its hundreds of millions of users.

Continue reading →

In our May release we upgraded to jQuery Mobile 1.1. This means that the app that you build in Appery.io is using jQuery Mobile version 1.1. You can always check the version by going to Project view > Projects > Project Profile > Built-in resources:

As you probably know you get jQuery Mobile components in Appery.io, plus some HTML5 components such as audio, video. There is also Google Maps component. Every jQuery Mobile component comes properties that can be configured. When building an app int Appery.io, you simply select the component and can see all the properties which can be configured in the Properties view:

For some UI components, not all available properties are available in Properties view. For such cases, Appery.io comes with a special More Properties button (at the very end):

Via More Properties, you can add any attributes supported by the selected component. In fact, you are not limited to just setting properties which are not exposed in Properties view, you can set any properties. For example, adding these two properties:

will result in this:

Have fun building apps, you now get the full power of jQuery Mobile.