Unlock App Potential: 5 Essential, Innovative Tools for Success

As we approach the exciting innovations of 2024, mobile app development is brimming with new possibilities.

Appery.io, a no-code platform, offers 5 essential app building features that can simplify your development process and bring your creative ideas to life more efficiently.

Appery.io is perfect for those looking to innovate without the steep learning curve of traditional coding. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced developer, these features empower you to focus on what truly matters: building exceptional apps. Our latest YouTube tutorial explores these features and how they can transform your project workflows.

Why Focus on These 5 Features?

1. Bulk Image Replacement: Seamlessly update app visuals without manual repetition. More details can be found here.

2. Effortless Error Handling: Navigate debugging with user-friendly error handling tools.

3. Enhanced Loading Management (CODE panel): Organize and streamline your code using advanced loading integration options.

4. Added Form Validation Check (CODE panel): Integrate form validation checks to ensure data integrity.

More information on the CODE panel new features can be found here.

5. Automatic Variable Addition (CODE panel): Reduce time spent on repetitive tasks with automated variable handling.

These capabilities are designed to help developers prioritize creativity and user experience, significantly reducing technical barriers.

Why Watch the Video?

Our YouTube video tutorial offers a closer look at each feature, demonstrating their practical benefits and applications. This video is an excellent resource for anyone looking to elevate their app development skills using Appery.io‘s no-code platform.

For a detailed exploration of these features, check out our video. You’ll gain valuable insights and tips that can enhance your approach to app building.

Stay Connected with Appery.io

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for ongoing tutorials, updates, and innovations in app development. Appery.io is here to support you on your journey to mastering mobile app development as we step out of 2024 and beyond.


Watch the full video now to explore these 5 essential app building features and start creating amazing apps with ease!

Development Tip: New ClientSDK Methods For Better Offline Apps

appery

One of the new key features of API Express is that you can build apps offline with the synchronisation functionality so when you go online all off your changes have been synchronised. The ClientSDK library has a set of methods, which when you execute can you build more powerful apps offline. The last Appery update bought us the ClientSDK library of API Express’ new methods to work with action histories made offline:

  • revertLocalChanges – reverts all local changes made in offline mode without clearing the cached data.
  • getDeferredActions – returns the iterator, which you can use further to iterate through the history array items.
  • saveDeferredActions – saves changes to a history, if there was any changes.

ClientSDK will automatically detect the network state and when a device is connected to the internet the ClientSDK synchronises with the server, and sends all offline changes (actions history) made by the user. You can find more information here.

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

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

Development Tip: Internationalisation In AngularJS Apps With Angular Translate

angular-translate

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.

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

Development Tip: Using The Bootstrap Grid In Appery.io

grid

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:
    new_cell
  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:
    cell_sizes

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.

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

Development Tip: Adding Custom Logic to REST API Invocation

editing_mapping

This blog post shows how to add a custom logic to a REST API invocation for jQuery Mobile apps.

You may often need to modify data for a services request or a services response. You may want to launch a dedicated JavaScript function to do this. This is useful when you need to rewrite the response data with filtered/edited values, instead of doing this each time for each mapping. For example, your service response has an unneeded first value that you want to remove from the response:

  1. Add new Run JavaScript action for Success event of your datasource.
  2. Using the drag and drop, move this action to the very beginning, so the Mapping action will be right to the Run JavaScript. This way, it’s guaranteed that the JavaScript code will be executed before the mapping.
  3. Click on Run JavaScript action and write your code. You have a data parameter in this JavaScript function – that is your response value.
  4. Write your custom logic to modify the response data. For example, to remove the first item of the response array (works only for arrays, not for JSON objects) use the following code:
    data.splice(0, 1);

Read more about Mapping in jQuery Mobile projects here and make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

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

Development Tip: Quick Android App Debugging On The Device With Chrome

chrome-debuggingDebugging your JavaScript apps that are made with Appery.io can be performed in a several ways, but today we would like to share with you another method. This approach has been available before, but for a some reason not many people know about it. The flow is looks really simple:

  1. Connect the device to a PC with a cable.
  2. Export the Appery.io app as an Android binary (.apk).
  3. Scan the QR code to install the app.
  4. Launch Chrome and open the app on the device.
  5. That’s all! Now you have a really quick debugging tool to test your app with.

You should do a few steps to makes it work, but luckily they are not complicated and you can be ready-to-go in a few minutes.  A detailed guide about this feature and how to set it up you can found here.

Read more about the testing and debugging options here and make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

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

Development Tip: Appery.io Push Notification Flow

logo-localpushWhen implementing logic with a push notification function it is a good idea to understand how it works under the hood, so when you send a push notification using a REST API, Server Code, or via the web console, the flow should look like this:

  1. Appery.io push service receives and processes the request to send push.
  2. Then, Appery.io passes the message onto Google or Apple servers.
  3. Lastly, push notification providers (Google or Apple) delivers the message to a device.

Because the push notification was delivered by a third party (not by our service), the Appery.io platform can’t provide details on whether or not the push notification was delivered, and the reasons for this. However, we can provide certain error notifications along the lines of the device was not found. The same basic flows are valid for all push notification services (not only for Appery.io).

Read more about push notification in documentation and make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

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

Development Tip: AngularJS Service, Factory, Directive, and More in Appery.io

resource_template

 

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");

Yeah, that’s easy.

Read more about resource in documentation and make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

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

 

Development Tip: Using Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud SQL with API Express

api_express_service_builderAppery.io API Express enables enterprises to easily and securely integrate apps with any back-end system. Recently, the Appery team has published two guides on how to create databases with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud SQL and then use them with API Express. If you are new to API Express, start with this beginners tutorial. It shows you how to create services based on API Express models and perform CRUD operations.

Check the API Express documentation, and make sure to check out all of our mobile development tips.

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

Development Tip: Use Server Code Plug-ins and Snippets for Quicker Coding

snippets

Using Server Code snippets and plug-ins are a great way to save time when making server scripts. Instead of digging through the Server Code documentation, you can simply choose one of the snippets located on the right side of the screen in script editor mode. The set of snippets provided by the Server Code API are the most common, but if you think of other useful snippets, let us know and we’ll add them to the list.

Server Code plug-ins are another way to save time when implementing your logic. To find Server Code plug-ins, go to the Server Code page and then to the Plugins tab. For now, there are two plug-ins. With them, you can quickly integrate with the Twilio or SendGrid API via XHR (XMLHTTPRequest). Simply click “Import” to create the server script based on the plug-in selected, and then customize it by specifying your API keys.

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

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