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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Explore the possibility of building truly native, cross-platform mobile applications using your JavaScript skill—NativeScript!
About This Book
- Save your marketing time by building for iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile platforms simultaneously
- Be an ace at utilizing the features of NativeScript and its ability to communicate with each of the host device libraries natively
- Proficiently, build your fully cross-platform communication application exhibiting the fundamentals of NativeScript
Who This Book Is For
If you are a JavaScript developer and want to build cross-platform applications, then this book is just the right one for you!
What You Will Learn
- Install and compile your application in NativeScript
- Get important know-how on the NativeScript project structure
- Develop and style your screens for multiple platforms
- Create a full-featured cross-platform communication application
- Import and use several third-party components
- Simplify and deal with device resolution and cross-platform issues
- Test and deploy your application
In Detail
NativeScript allows you to build a fast cross-platform application that has a native UI. NativeScript is a true cross-platform framework that generates native speed applications using the native components of the host platform, all using JavaScript. Although NativeScript allows you to build your application in JavaScript, you have full access to the host OS from your code, allowing you to easily tweak or use new platform features instantly at native code speeds.
Whether you have already developed multiple applications or zero applications, this book will help you to develop your next application in a cross-platform framework quickly, saving you a massive amount of time and money.
This book concisely shows you NativeScript's built-in framework that allows you to rapidly develop a fully-working compiled cross-platform application in just a few chapters. It starts by laying the foundation of NativeScript and working through the fundamentals to create a basic shell of the application. Moving on, you'll see how to build a full-fledged application step by step. We'll show you how to use plugins, and how to communicate with the native OS libraries easily so that you can customize your application as if your app was created in Java or Objective C. We then deal with the issues that arise from being cross platform and compensate for the different screen sizes, screen resolutions, and device abilities. Finally, we progress to testing and deploying your app.
Style and approach
A stepwise guide for building cross-platform mobile applications with the help of easy-to-understand examples.
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Seitenzahl: 215
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Table of Contents
Getting Started with NativeScript
Getting Started with NativeScript
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: January 2016
Production reference: 1220116
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78588-865-6
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Nathanael J. Anderson
Reviewer
TJ VanToll
Commissioning Editor
Veena Pagare
Acquisition Editor
Prachi Bisht
Content Development Editor
Mehvash Fatima
Technical Editor
Abhishek R. Kotian
Copy Editor
Lauren Harkins
Project Coordinator
Shipra Chawhan
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Indexer
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Production Coordinator
Conidon Miranda
Cover Work
Conidon Miranda
Foreword
Are you tired of writing the same mobile app from scratch for iOS, Android and Windows? Yes? Then, you should be glad you found NativeScript!
Owing to the mobile platforms diversification, it is clear that to build a successful mobile application, you should make it available on all of the major mobile marketplaces, namely, Apple AppStore, Google PlayStore, and Microsoft Windows Store. This created a need for companies and developers to publish native apps that are available on all three major mobile stores without compromising on the native user experience. The problem, however, is that these three operating systems are very different and companies need to implement three different applications for these stores. Essentially, your company has to write and maintain multiple implementations for the same problem. Teams write (and have to support) the same apps multiple times. There is a good chance that bugs reported on one platform also exist on the others but remain unnoticed. Apps that are meant to behave identically on all platforms may exhibit subtle differences due to their differing implementations. Also, shipping new features at the same time on all platforms is difficult. This is neither optimal, nor very productive and requires a significant investment to gain the knowledge of three different operating systems, languages, IDEs, APIs, and marketplaces. There has got to be a better way. Enter NativeScript—a framework using the native platform APIs, rendering and layout capabilities to deliver ultimate user experience and will allow developers to reuse their coding skills, eliminating the need to learn new languages and IDEs.
The NativeScript framework enables developers to use the pure JavaScript language to build native mobile applications running on all major mobile platforms—Apple iOS, Google Android, and Windows Universal. The application's UI stack is built on the native platform rendering and layout engine using native UI components, and because of that, no compromises with the User Experience of the applications are made. It is also worth mentioning that a full native API access is provided using JavaScript.
This book has everything you need to get started with NativeScript. It starts with the fundamentals, such as the project structure, the command-line interface, how to use basic UI element, how to use third-party native components, and finally, how to target different platforms with NativeScript.
The author, Nathanael Anderson, is one of the faces of NativeScript. He has a deep understanding of how the framework operates from inside out and is the best person who can teach you how to use it.
"I'm confident that by reading this book, you will be able to quickly get into NativeScript and start building your next cross-platform native mobile application."
Valio Stoychev
Product Manager NativeScript at Telerik
About the Author
Nathanael J. Anderson has been developing software for over 20 years in a wide range of industries, including areas of games, time management, imaging, service, printing, accounting, land management, security, web, and even (believe it or not) some successful government projects. He is currently a contract developer for master technology and can create a solution for several types of applications (native, web, mobile, and hybrid) running on any operating system.
As a senior developer engineer, he can work, tune, and secure everything from your backend servers to the final destination of the data on your desktop or mobile devices. By understanding the entire infrastructure, including the real and virtualized hardware, he can completely eliminate different types of issues in all parts of a framework.
Currently, he has multiple highly rated cross-platform plugins for NativeScript, and he works heavily in the NativeScript community by providing things such as bleeding edge build servers to build knightly code. He has also provided multiple patches and features to the main NativeScript project.
About the Reviewer
TJ VanToll is a senior developer advocate for Telerik, a jQuery team member, and the author of jQuery UI in Action. He has over a decade of web development experience—specializing in performance and the mobile Web. He speaks about his research and experiences at conferences around the world and has written for publications such as Smashing Magazine, HTML5 Rocks, and MSDN Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @tjvantoll and on GitHub at tjvantoll.
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Preface
Welcome to Getting Started with NativeScript. In this book, we are going to go on an awesome journey of building cross-platform applications in JavaScript. We will cover everything from how NativeScript works, to how to test, debug, and finally deploy your application. Over the course of this book, we are going to explore how to build a full-featured, cross-platform messaging platform. The application will work the same on all NativeScript-supported platforms. With your ability to develop in JavaScript and the insights provided in this book, you will be releasing your own cool applications in no time.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introduction to NativeScript, will teach you about NativeScript and how to install and build your first NativeScript application.
Chapter 2, The Project Structure, provides an overview of what all the different files and folders are used for, and we will build and switch to a second screen for our application here.
Chapter 3, Declarative UI, Styling, and Events, works through how to create screens using the Declarative UI, style them and then how to create and respond to events.
Chapter 4, Building a Featured Application, helps you to actually sit down and build a full-featured, cross-device messaging application using just the standard NativeScript components.
Chapter 5, Installing Third-Party Components, delves into how to install several different types of third-party components to enhance our cool communication application.
Chapter 6, Platform Differences, looks at how to deal with the differences between iOS and Android and the differences in the actual physical characteristics of the devices even on the same platform.
Chapter 7, Testing and Deploying Your App, looks at how to use several different types of testing frameworks, how to debug your application, and finally, how to actually deploy your application.
What you need for this book
NativeScript is an open source project; as such, it uses technologies that can be freely downloaded from the Internet. You need to download and install a recent version of Node from http://nodejs.org. You also need a text editor so that you can edit your source code. If you are developing for Android, you need to download and install Java 7, Gradle 2.3, and the Android SDK. For iOS, you need to install Xcode 6.2 or a later version.
Who this book is for
If you are already a JavaScript developer and you want to finally build native cross-platform applications for iOS and Android using your skills, then this book is just for you!
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Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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NativeScript and TypeScript
We are going to explain how parts of NativeScript are developed in TypeScript and what that means for you in terms of developing your awesome application using NativeScript.
What is TypeScript?
In 2012, Microsoft released an interesting language called TypeScript. This language is fully open sourced because the company felt it was something the JavaScript community needed. It is, in a nutshell, a superset of JavaScript with types and several other additional language features. If you write any code in TypeScript, you then have to use the TypeScript transpiler to convert the code from TypeScript back into JavaScript. One of the primary reasons people use TypeScript over regular JavaScript is that TypeScript offers the ability to do static type checking at the point it converts the code to JavaScript. So, you don't have a runtime hit, and you don't have to do a lot of runtime parameter checks if the code is all in TypeScript. This feature alone eliminates a type of bug that is very easy to access in JavaScript. In addition to static typing, it has several class/object type features that make inheritance and class definition considerably simpler and safer.
Note
Types possess the ability to add markup to code denoting the type expected:
The string and boolean are declarations telling what the exact parameter types and expected return type are. This allows the transpiler to verify that the code matches the static types during the building stage.
Transpiler is a shortened term from translation compiler used to mean the code is converted from one language to another language. So, in this case, we are translating the code from TypeScript into JavaScript.
TypeScript's use in NativeScript
The NativeScript command-line utility, common modules, and components are all written in TypeScript. TypeScript is then transpiled to JavaScript before it is distributed for all us developers to download, install, and use. So, unless you are actually pulling the open source code from the NativeScript repositories, then all the code you will see is in JavaScript.
Fortunately for us, the majority of the differences between TypeScript and JavaScript are fairly minor, so the code transpiled to JavaScript in almost all cases is very close to the original TypeScript, which still makes it very readable.
Note
Telerik just released a brand new module in v1.5.0 that will allow TypeScript to now be a first-class citizen in the development of your application. If you don't use this module, then you have to manually transpile all your TypeScript code each time before you build an application. After you execute a nativescript install typescript command, when the NativeScript command does anything with your code, it will automatically transpile all your TypeScript code first. This makes your development a much more streamlined process.
Choosing a development language
Since the final output of all the code must be JavaScript, you are able to write any of your applications or modules in TypeScript, CoffeeScript, or any other language that can be transpiled into JavaScript. This book is going to focus on doing everything in JavaScript as this is what the final code output must be for all the devices, and it is the common language that binds everything together.
Common modules
Common modules were created to solve the issue of JavaScript files polluting the global namespace with variables and functions that another JavaScript file could easily overwrite accidently. JavaScript allows you to redeclare or monkey patch your functions on a whim, which is part of what makes it so powerful. However, with that much power comes the ability to very easily shoot yourself in both feet simultaneously. Then, you are left scratching your head why you just lost both feet. To attempt to solve the issue of one included file function or variable being overwritten by another include file, developers came up with several techniques that evolved into the common module formats we use today. There are three standards available for you to use: the CommonJS module format, which is what node.js popularized; the AMD
