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When it comes to creating mobile apps, Appery.io is a name you need to know. In this article, discover how our latest features can transform your app development process. Appery.io is all about making app building easier and faster.

Enjoy our Search

First, let’s talk about our new search functionality. This tool lets you find anything in your project, whether it’s code, styles, or components. With a quick search, you save time and avoid frustration. You can focus on the creative aspects of your project.

Methods ngOnInit and ionViewWillEnter are now at Hand

Next, our editor now includes hot adding of the methods that are common in app development: ngOnInit and ionViewWillEnter. Previously, setting them up took time. Now, Appery.io has automated this. You can set up your project with one click on the needed method. This means less manual work for you.

Using Alerts is Simpler Now

Another exciting update is in user alerts. Handling these interactions used to be tricky. Now, our system streamlines the process. The code is clear and easy to read. Managing user prompts is now a breeze, enhancing your app’s user experience.

DB Queries Caching is Here Too

Performance is key in any app. That’s why our caching feature is a game-changer. For this, two new parameters have been added to our arsenal: cache and saveInCache.

This feature stores database queries so apps run smoothly, online or offline. It improves speed and ensures data is always there, even when the internet connection isn’t.

With these tools, Appery.io empowers developers at every level. You’re free to focus on what matters. The platform is evolving. Our commitment is to support your creative journey. We provide the tools you need to build apps that stand out.

To learn more about these new features, see our detailed Youtube video:

You’re not alone. Join the Appery.io community. Together, let’s bring your app ideas to life. Explore our tutorials, templates, and intuitive editor. We’re excited to see what you will create!

Geolocation is one of the most widely used APIs in mobile apps today. From weather to Uber and Lyft, the device location is crucial information and many APIs use it to determine what services and products are available in a given location. When building a mobile app in Appery.io, using the Geolocation API is simple. Apache Cordova library is built-in in every new Appery.io app. Invoking Geolocation will return the latitude, longitude (and other) information which can then be passed to any REST API. The following two short videos show how to use and invoke Geolocation in an Ionic and jQuery Mobile apps:

• A Quick Guide to Using Geolocation API (Ionic App) 
• A Quick Guide to Using Geolocation API (jQuery Mobile App)

Looking for more videos like that? Check out our YouTube channel for many more videos.

Internationalisation is one of the must have feature when building global reach mobile apps. An Angular Translate module can be really helpful in translating your app UI. It can be included into an Appery.io app in a few quick steps:

• Go to the Angular Translate page and download the latest release bundle. Inside this bundle you’ll find angular-translate.min.js file – the one that you need to upload.
• Open your AngularJS Appery.io app, click CREATE NEW > JavaScript. Type angular-translate.min for the name and select Upload from file, and browse for this file on your PC. Also, change its Type to Angular module, check the Use shim check box and finally, type pascalprecht.translate for Shim exports: input. Click Create JavaScript once the file will be uploaded.
• Now, another module should be created. It will be responsible for the Angular Translate configuration. Perform CREATE NEW > JavaScript, type AngularTranslate for the name, and choose Angular module for Type. Click Create JavaScript.
• You’ll see an Angular module template and a lot of commented configuring options. First, this module requires pascalprecht.translate as dependency, so add it  to square brackets. Here is how it should look:

  var module = angular.module('AngularTranslate', ['pascalprecht.translate']);

• Configuration logic should be added to the module.config function. Here is how your whole module should look when the configuration logic has been added:

  define(['require', 'angular'], function(require, angular) {
      
      var module = angular.module('AngularTranslate', ['pascalprecht.translate']);
      
      module.config(
          
          ["$translateProvider", function($translateProvider) {
              $translateProvider.translations('en', {
                  TITLE: 'Hello',
                  FOO: 'This is a paragraph.',
                  BUTTON_LANG_EN: 'english',
                  BUTTON_LANG_DE: 'german'
              });
              $translateProvider.translations('de', {
                  TITLE: 'Hallo',
                  FOO: 'Dies ist ein Paragraph.',
                  BUTTON_LANG_EN: 'englisch',
                  BUTTON_LANG_DE: 'deutsch'
              });
              $translateProvider.preferredLanguage('en');
          });
      
  }]);

• The last step is to create a simple UI and check the translation engine. Go to any page in your app, place a Button on the page and provide {{ 'TITLE' | translate }} for its Text property. Launch the app!
• If you see Hello on the button – you’re done.

One option is to customise the translation mechanism to initiate the language based on the browser or device language. For example, you can get the browser or device language like this:

$translateProvider.determinePreferredLanguage();

Try Ionic app backup with Angular Translate included if you facing some issues.

Read more Angular Translate possibilities in its docs, and make sure you check out all of our mobile development tips.

Popular Bootstrap Grid is available in Appery.io’s Bootstrap project as an UI component that can be dragged and dropped to the page. The following steps show how to change grid cell sizes for different screen resolutions:

1. First open the AngularJS / Bootstrap project and place the Grid component to the page.
2. Now, if you will look at top right corner of the grid you’ll see a green plus button, this button will add a new row to your grid. If you don’t need to add a new row, but want to add new cells to existing row click on one of the grid cells and then choose GridRow through the breadcrumbs:
   
3. A green “+” sign now will add a new cell to an existing row.
4. You can configure the size for each cell for the four screen sizes. Click on the grid cell and the expand Columns properties in the PROPERTIES to the right of the screen. Type a number from 1 to 12 to define how it will look on the screen:
   

Don’t forget that you can emulate page size directly inside the editor, and when testing the app in browser by clicking XS, SM, MD and LG buttons.

Make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

AngularJS provides a powerful and convenient way to organise your code via services, factories, directives and more. Here, at Appery.io, we call them AngularJS resources. As usual, in best traditions of Appery.io, we’re making complex stuff easier. So, to create a preferred resource perform, CREATE NEW > JavaScript. Then choose what type of resource you want to create by selecting the needed option from the type drop-down. When clicking “Create JavaScript”, new custom JavaScript will be added to your project with a ready-to-use template of the chosen resource. Inserting a few useful comments in each template will help you to start coding quickly. Afterwards, you can simply use the created resource in scope functions by calling it the Apperyio.get() function:

var my_service = Apperyio.get("service_name");

To help developers with uploading their files to the Appery.io backend, we have just released the Files Upload plug-in for AngularJS (both Bootstrap and Ionic).This process uses the Input component with afile type. You can click Choose File to select the needed information to enable it appear as list on the page at the end. To upload all files click Upload all, or for single files select Upload selected.

A quick note about configuring the plug-in: the Appery.io database requires a sessionToken for uploading files to the database. To make the plugin simpler to use, use the Master Key.To configure this plugin you should provide the ID of the database that you will be using to store the files, and select the Master Key instead of sessionToken.

However, please keep in mind that for security reasons, we recommend you use sessionToken instead of Master Key.  This plug-in is configured to work with the Appery.io database, but it can be modified to work with any other API provider that allows for file uploads. You will need to change the upload REST API and update any parameters.

As usual, we’ve prepared a detailed tutorial for this plug-in, which you can find here.

If you have any problems with this plug-in or with file uploading in Appery.io, contact our support team for assistance.

Snippet to invoke a REST API

A snippet is a pre-made and reusable section of code that can be quickly inserted into your own code. It is a convenient and time-saving way to pull frequently used Appery.io functions.

A recent update has introduced a new snippet – Invoke REST API ($http).  Invoke REST API ($http) is a wrapper for Angular’s($http) and can be used to send AJAX requests. This snippet is described in more detail here.

Shortcuts, like snippets, can save you time. A shortcut allows you to type a few characters that expand into the corresponding code. For example, type $Cg and then press Ctrl+Space or Cmd+Space to quickly add the Config.get function. The shortcut will be translated into:

Apperyio.Config.get( expression/*, default*/ );

You can find the whole list of shortcuts here.

Make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips. Do you want to build apps fast?

Start developing with our trial plan!

The Appery.io team is starting 2016 with new and exciting updates and improvements to the platform!

App Builder enhancements

The latest Appery.io update brings some cool features to the visual App Builder.

New Ionic components

Two new UI components for Ionic were just released: Card and Text.

The Card can be used to visually separate information on a page. It allows for more control and flexibility, and can even be animated. This new component is based on Google’s Card UI design.

The Text component can be used to conveniently place any custom text or AngularJS expression (wrapped with {{...}}) on the page.

The Ionic Button has obtained new property – Icon Only. It makes a button look like an icon. This property converts a button to an icon by changing Icon Style and Style properties, and ignoring the Text property.

It’s now possible to copy and clone components in the App Builder. To create a full copy of a UI component with all nested children, (including other components), click the clone icon on the top right of the component:

Cloning a component

Ionic page templates

When creating a new page in Ionic, you can choose a blank page or a page with ionContent. The blank page is a simple page without any extra components. Use it when you don’t need to make any special adjustments to the scroll or scrollbar settings. The page with ionContent is a multi-tool page with a ion-content directive and many settings provided by Ionic. Use it when you need to make flexible adjustments to page scroll behavior.

You can find more detailed templates description in our docs.

Read the rest of this entry »

When building AngularJS apps (with Ionic or Bootstrap frameworks) using Appery.io, you can easily extend app functionality by adding native device features. Features such as push, geolocation, camera, etc., can be added by importing the appropriate plug-ins. To do this, go to CREATE NEW > From plug-in and select the appropriate plug-in. The native features come from the Cordova library, which is automatically installed in every app.

For each plug-in we have documentation as well as detailed tutorials on native device features. You can find the docs here.

Make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

Do you want to build apps fast? Start developing with our trial plan!

In the “Appery.io under the Hood” series, we’ll be explaining in detail how Appery.io works. We hope that this information will give you a deeper insight into how to make better apps by giving you a deeper understanding of the platform.

Loading resources when needed

When developing big scalable web apps, the question of how to manage tons of libraries and services arises pretty quickly. There are a few key reason why a powerful and flexible dependency management tool becomes mandatory:

• The vast majority of libraries dictate their own requirements for dependencies. This makes it critically important to load and launch resources in the appropriate order
• Loading all the libraries and other resources at once increases network traffic and should be avoided when possible. This is even more important for mobile apps
• App loading time can be significantly decreased when loading only the required libraries:
  • A ready event will be fired only once for all the required resources
  • For mobile devices and apps, page size can be optimized as much as possible to prevent browser or OS failures
  • Overloading the device CPU by loading unnecessary libraries will decrease battery life
• The bigger the development team, the more complicated library dependency management becomes

This is why Appery.io has chosen RequireJS to solve the cumbersome process of dependency management. Let’s see how RequireJS is used in Appery.io apps.

RequireJS

RequireJS implements an AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition) approach and allows the declarative description of dependencies among app modules. RequireJS also guarantees that all module dependencies will be resolved before module execution. In the AMD pattern means each module has its own isolated variables area. This makes your app more stable by reducing the possibility of namespace conflicts. 

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