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For years, developers had to make a choice: build a single hybrid app with a so-so user experience, or build a native app for each platform with a great user experience. Developers don’t have to make this choice anymore. By integrating the Ionic SDK into Appery.io, developers can build enterprise HTML5/hybrid apps on a single code base that offer a native experience across all platforms. The Appery.io platform’s visual tooling lowers the skills barrier, empowering a broader base of developers and business analysts to create effective and intuitive mobile applications.

In this tutorial, you will use the Appery.io platform to build a mobile app. The tool set includes:

• Ionic – native-like UI components
• AngularJS – UI logic/binding
• Appery.io App Builder – cloud-based drag and drop designer
• Appery.io Backend Services – API backend for the app

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The debate between developing hybrid vs. native apps has been going on for a long time, and while it’s sure to continue long into the future, the argument for the hybrid model is getting stronger every day.

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One of the core benefits Appery.io platforms provides is the ability to customize any app with custom code. While the visual builder offers speed and simplicity, being able to write code, add 3rd party libraries gives you the flexibility you need to customize the app as much as you need. In this example we are going to show you how to build an app with infinite scroll feature — as you scroll down, list data will be automatically loaded.

You will create an app that loads a list of dog breads. As you scroll in the app, the data will be loaded automatically. The app looks like this:

App with infinite scroll

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When you build an HTML5 mobile app in Appery.io you can instantly publish the app to a URL. You have three options for hosting your app.

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Enterprises are adopting mobile technologies at an unprecedented rate. As Business News Daily recently reported, 1.3 billion workers will go mobile by 2015, and with that massive number, the need for enterprise mobile apps can only skyrocket.

With that increase, many mobile app developers will be called upon to create internal mobile enterprise apps. These apps have many requirements and considerations that differ from the typical app destined for the public app stores. In this article, we will take the top three challenges and share some tips on how to meet these challenges:

1. Security
2. User Interface
3. Choosing a Development Technology

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This video shows how to build a mobile Todo app in Appery.io with cloud database and deploy the app to BitBalloon.com – a very nice and easy to use HTML5 hosting service.

When you build an HTML5/jQuery Mobile app in Appery.io, you can instantly host the app. Every plan gets hosting. Yes, even the Free plan.

Simply go to Hosting tab.  You can use app-name.appery.io domain or a complete custom URL if you own a domain.

You can also publish the app right form the builder. If you don’t see that option, go to Hosting tab and convert the app to mobile web type (the default new app comes with PhoneGap. Such app cannot be published as it might be using native device features).

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.

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Kinvey is one of those services that makes building mobile backend way too simple. If you combine Kinvey with a cloud-based app builder Appery.io, you get everything you need to build an awesome mobile app using cloud services. Let me show you what I mean.

To start, sign up for Kinvey, it’s free and then create your first app backend. We re going to create a backend for beers(!).

Next, create a new collection where we are going to store names of beer we like:

Open the collection. When you open it for the first time it will be empty so we need to define at least one column and enter some data. Click on +Col, and add Name column. Then add a few sample entries by clicking +Row. You can simply double click in Name column to enter values (you don’t need to enter anything for _id or _acl).

That’s pretty much all you need to do. Simple, right?

Let’s now go to Appery.io app builder and create a jQuery Mobile app.

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We just published a very nice hands-one tutorial on how to build HTML5/jQuery Mobile app connected to StackMob API. StackMob is super easy to use service for creating a mobile back-end for your app. Everything you create is instantly exposed as REST.

Give it a try!