Blog

We are super excited the announce the availability of Appery.io Database (beta). Appery.io Database is a cloud database that provides a backend and storage for your mobile app. You already know that any using 3rd party REST API is very easy in Appery.ioapp builder. Every REST API provides some specific functionality. For example, if you use Facebook API you can easily post a message to the timeline, but what happens if you need to store data specific to your app? Let’s say you are building a todo app – where can you store the list of things to do? That’s exactly where Appery.io database comes in. It comes with elegant REST APIs so you can easily show, create, edit, and delete app data. Appery.io database comes with built-in User Management. It’s powerful, scalable and easy to use. It works seamlessly with Appery.io app builder.

You can access Appery.io database today at https://appery.io. From appery.io, go to My Account, then click on Database.

On the first page you can see a lit of all your databases, you can also create a new database:

Once you select a database, you will see all the collections in the database:

A very nice feature is that you get curl command hints. This will enable you to define a service in Appery.io app builder very quickly:

In Appery.io app builder, defining a service is as simple as this:

Keep in mind that this service is still in beta. We got a lot more features we want to add, such as push, analytics and server-side code. Database docs are here. We also would love to hear your feedback. Let us know of the forum, email, Twitter or Facebook.

Check out other Appery.io videos.

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.

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.

Appery.io mobile app builder got some new and cool stuff in May release.

jQuery Mobile 1.1

jQuery Mobile was updated to the latest stable version 1.1.

Windows Phone Export

We just added Windows Phone code export.

We are also planning to add binary build. For now, once you export the project you can jump to PhoneGap Build and get the binary there. Or, you can always build it yourself.

UI breadcrumbs, plus easier delete

A really nice feature in Appery.io visual builder is the ability to have containers such as grid and place other components inside. To make it super easy to select a particular component we just added breadcrumbs. It makes it very easy to navigate the UI by clicking the component id in the breadcrumbs bar.

In addition to breadcrumbs, we made it very easy to delete an element. Simply click on the red x icon. Clicking on the e icon will open Events view for the component.

Plug-in Properties

With new Plug-in properties, any service information such as API keys can be entered in one place and reused by any number of services. A small but nice feature to save time.

Code generation update

OK, the was requested for a long time. If you name your page MyCoolPage, in the resulting app it will be MyCoolPage.html. If you upload an image called MyCoolImage.png, in the resulting app it will be MyCoolImage.png. Yes, as simple as that, but a very important feature.

In our April release we introduced two new mobile components: Datepicker and Carousel.

Datepicker

Datepicker has been requested by our users and allows to select date from a calendar popup. This is how the component looks when displayed on the page (not activated)

and this is how it looks when activated:

The component comes with a number of useful options such as setting the earliest and latest date you can select. This is great for validation. Setting the Sunday or Monday as start day of the week as well as being able to edit months and days labels.

Note that Datepicker is a plug-in and not yet an official component in the jQuery Mobile library.

Carousel

Carousel consists of one or more panels which can be switched with a swipe (left or right).

The three dots indicate the number of items in the carousel. This component is best tested on the actual mobile device. Also note that only Webkit-based browsers support this component (Android and iOS).

Both components are available in any project (old or new) in the Mobile UI palette.

Last week we released a number of small but very useful features.

To delete any component from a screen is now incredibly simple. Select the component and click the red x icon:

When you click the e icon, it will take you to events for the component. You no longer need to open the actual action to see what it does. We have added a tool tip that shows what a particular action does:

Small, but very useful features.

We are also working on breadcrumbs inside the visual builder, to make it even simpler to select components.

The Appery.io team keeps making the great even better, as you can see in this latest release of Appery.io Mobile App Builder. New features include everything from iOS binary builds to updated support for jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap. Read on to find out more. Read the rest of this entry »

We got some cool stuff planned in our April release. Check it out:

• New components
  • Date picker
  • Carousel
• iOS binary build
• Ability to add any property to a UI element (without JavaScript)
• Data mapping improvements. We are working on adding mapping support for all jQuery Mobile components
• PhoneGap, jQuery Mobile updates to latest (stable) versions

You can always check the roadmap here: http://docs.appery.io/roadmap

In case you missed it, here is what we released in March.

Last week we had our March release. Here is what’s new and cool.

Really Awesome jQuery Mobile Themes

We just added a bunch of new and awesome jQuery Mobile themes and swatches. Here is how the new Appery.io dark-gray theme looks:

Check out the rest here

Plugins

Plugins make it possible to package services, screens, images as a “plugin” and then add the plugin to any other project. You can even create custom project templates from plugins. A plugin is created by selecting Export > Appery plugin:

To learn more, read plugins documentation.

Panel – add any custom HTML code

The Appery.io visual editor is pretty cool but we know very well that being able to insert any custom code is a must have feature. In this release we added a new Panel component which can be.

• div
• html (any custom HTML code)
• span

Create Custom CSS

Staying on the topic of customazing your app, in addition to being able to add any JavaScript you can now also create a custom CSS file:

Visual jQuery Mobile-JSON mapper improvements

A number of improvements were were do the visual data mapper. Once a connection is mapped, a grey dotted line appears to indicate to which variable the connection is made.

Documentation updated

We spent the last couple of days updating Appery.io documentation with all the new features. We’d love to hear your feedback. One thing we are definitely going to add is more tutorials!