React is enabling frontend developers to build apps like never before. It's benefits are many: one-way data flow, easy component lifecycle methods, declarative components and more.
Reapp was recently released on React. It's a mobile app platform designed for performance and productivity. Think of it as a well-optimized UI kit, along with a build system and a bunch of helpers that let you build apps easily.
Basically, Cordova is a wrapper, an application that has an embedded web browser where your web app is loaded. Note: There is some confusion between Cordova and PhoneGap. Let's clarify this: Cordova is owned and maintained by Apache and will always be maintained as an open-source project. Wrapper for Browser JS API for Blazor and JSInterop - RemiBou/BrowserInterop. Mobile → Actions →. This library provides access to browser API in a Blazor App.
Reapp gives us some nice things out of the box:
To wrap Android mobile apps, use the MDX Toolkit, which includes a macOS graphical interface tool and a Java command-line tool. The command-line tool has customization options, can be referenced from scripts that automate the app wrapping process, and lets you preset some MDX policies. Native Apps Mobile Web Apps; Mobile-specific ad platforms such as AdMob (though there can be restrictions set by the mobile device's manufacturer): Mobile web apps can monetize through site advertisement and subscription fees: Developers have the ability to charge a download price and app stores will typically handle the payment process (in exchange for a percentage of sales). The theoretical solution to a lot of the problems that are characteristic of native apps is a hybrid Web app—meaning a write-once solution of some sort that runs in the native browser, within a native wrapper that provides access to native platform features. Some or all of the code is in some commonly interpretable language such as HTML.
- A complete UI kit for mobile
- 'reapp new' to generate a working app
- 'reapp run' to serve our app with ES6 and hot reloading
- Themes and animations
- Routing and requests packages
- Building our app to Cordova
What we'll be building
Crossftp 1 97 7 – ftp client and synchronization tool. To explore using Reapp we're going to build an app that lets you search with the Flickr API and view the results in a photo gallery. This tutorial should take you less than half an hour to follow along with!
Starting out
With node installed, lets run sudo npm install -g reapp to install the Reapp CLI. Once that installs, run reapp new flickrapp. Finally, cd flickrapp and reapp run.
You should see this:
Browse to localhost:3010 and you can see the default Reapp app:
Tip: With Chrome's Developer Tools, enable mobile device emulation to view your app as a mobile app
Alright! Now we're fully set up with a React stack using Reapp components. Lets check the file structure:
Reapp scaffolded us some demonstration stuff here, which is what you see in . app/components. The rest is just setting up our app. ./app/app.js is the entry to our app, it loads Reapp and runs our routes, which are found in ./app/routes.js. Alien skin exposure x3 bundle 3 5 4 114.
Start Our View
Development
We have our app generated, but Reapp generates us a full demo app showing nested views, and we won't need much more than a single page. Lets simplify things. In routes.js we can swap it out to just look like this:
This wires up the base route (at http://localhost:3010) to the name app, which Reapp's router will automatically look for in ./components/App.jsx.
Now we can delete the Home.jsx and home/Sub.jsx files, since we don't need multiple views. You can leave them be as well if you'd like to explore using them later.
In the App.jsx file, we can simplify it to:
If you refresh, you should see an empty view with your new title 'Flickr Search' at top.
Fetch Data from Flickr
Now we have an interface with no logic. Before we can link together the Button to the display of photos, we need to grab the photos from Flickr using React conventions. First, get yourself a Flickr account and API key using their quick sign up form.
After filling it out (and signing up if necessary) copy the Public Key they give you and add it as a constant to App.jsx. You'll also need the URL that's used for searching for photos, which I found by using their [API explorer](https://www.flickr.com/services/api explore/flickr.photos.search).
It should look like this:
Be sure to put your key instead of 'YOUR_KEY_HERE'.
Note: const is a new feature in the next version of JavaScript, called ES6. It's just like a variable, but one that can never be changed once it's set. How can we use this in our app now? Reapp has a Webpack build system built in that gives you all sorts of features, including ES6 support!
Next, define getInitialState() on our React class, so our component can track the photos we'll be fetching. We add this as the first property after React.createClass. Because we're storing photos in a list, add an array:
This will give us access to this.state.photos in our render function. In the UI we'll need a Button and Input to use for searching:
And then change the render() function:
And we get this:
Pretty easy! There's a few things to note here. First, notice the ref property on the Input? Ref is short for reference, and lets us track DOM elements in our class. We'll use that in the future for getting the value of the field.
Also, note className='verticalCenter' on the div. Two things: Because we're using JSX that compiles to JS objects ([more reading here](http://facebook.github.io react/docs/jsx-in-depth.html)), we can't use the normal class attribute, so instead use use the JavaScript convention of className to set the class. The verticalCenter property is given to us by Reapp, that will align things centered on our page.
Finally, the onTap property on Button? It's pointing to this.handleSearch. But, we don't have any handleSearch function. React will expect that function defined on the class, so lets wire it up. First, npm install --save superagent which gives us the excellent Superagent request library. Then, import it:
Finally, define handleSearch:
A few notes:
this.refs.search.getDOMNode()returns the input DOM node that we put the 'search' ref on earlier.${base}will grab the URL we put in the constant.this.setStatewill take our response photos and put them into thethis.state.photosarray we defined earlier ingetInitialState.
Displaying Flickr Photos
Now we've fetched our Flickr photos and put them into the state. The last step is to display them. You can add this to the first line of your render function to see what Flickr returns:
In your console you'll see that Flickr returns an object with some properties. On this helpful page I found out how to render the URL's for flickr.
Here's how I landed on constructing the URL for a photo, which I put as a simple function on the class we're building:
This function takes our Flickr object and turns them into the URL we need to display. Next, lets edit the handleSearch setState call:
The map function will loop over those photo objects and pass them to getFlickrPhotoUrl, which returns our URL. We're all ready to display them!
Lets import the Gallery component from reapp and use it:
In the render function, below the
No photos found!
The Gallery widget takes these three properties and outputs fullscreen images that you can swipe between. With this in place, we have completed the flow of our app. Check out your browser and see it in action.
Note: Why window.innerHeigth - 44? We're adjusting for the TitleBar height in our app. There are better ways we could do this, but for now this is simple and works well
Final touches
We're just about good, but there's a couple tweaks we can do. The gallery never lets us close it as it is now. If we add an onClose property to gallery though, it will let us. But, we'll also need to update the state to reflect the gallery being closed. It's actually pretty easy. Just add this to Gallery:
Also, our Input looks a little plain as it is. Lets add a border, margin and placeholder:
Much better!
Final code
As is, our entire codebase fits into the ./components/App.jsx file. It's easy to read and understand and uses some nice new features of ES6. Here it is:
Next steps
Node.js >=8
We could keep going from here. We could display a list of images before, and link them to the gallery. Reapp also has docs on it's components, so you can browse and add them as you need. Good examples of Reapp code include the Kitchen Sink demo and the Hacker News App they built. Macclean360 clean up junk on your mac 4 4.
Check out the code
If you'd like to see this application's code you can clone this repo. It includes everything you need except a Flickr API key, which you'll want to sign up for and insert before testing it out.
Steps to get the repo running:
- Install Node/npm, and Reapp:
sudo npm install -g reapp - Clone the repo:
git clone git@github.com:reapp/flickr-demo - Install dependencies:
npm install - Start server:
reapp run - View it in your browser at http://localhost:3010
You'll probably want to explore the Reapp getting started docs and the individual UI widgets docs to keep you going.
Happy hacking!
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There are three main types of mobile apps including native apps, web-based mobile apps and hybrid apps. Hybrid mobile apps combine elements of native and web-based apps. Native apps include Android, Windows Phone, and iOS. Hybrid apps are designed for platforms including Xamarin, Angular Mobile Sencha Touch, React Native, Iconic and others. On the other hand, web-based apps are responsive versions of websites designed in order to work on any mobile device.
Native Mobile Apps
Native apps are developed for a certain mobile device operating system like Windows Phone or Android. Therefore, they are native for a certain device or platform. Apps built for Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Symbian cannot be used on any other platform expect on their own. Therefore, a mobile app designed for Android can only be used on an Android device. Main advantages of native apps are good user experience and high performance. In addition, an access to broad range of APIs puts no limits on app usage. Native mobile apps are accessible form app stores of their kind and have that very clear tendency of reaching target customers. Some disadvantages of native mobile apps include higher costs in comparison to other types of mobile apps. Creating a native mobile app duplicates costs since maintenance and separate supports for different apps are required that result in greater product price.
'In my opinion, the future of mobile is the future of everything.'
Matt Galligan, Digital Transformation Manager at Salesforce
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Hybrid Mobile Apps
Hybrid mobile apps are specifically built using different multi-platform web technologies like JavaScript and HTML5. Hybrid apps are website applications created in a native wrapper that means they use elements of both native and web-based apps. Hybrid apps also possess common cons and pros of both web mobile and native mobile applications. Hybrid multi-platform mobile apps are relatively easy to develop which is a clear advantage. Since code base for hybrid apps ensures that low-cost maintenance alongside smooth updates. On the other hand, hybrid application lack in speed, performance and overall optimization compared to native mobile apps. There are also specific design issues thanks to apps inability to look in the same way on different platforms.
Web-Based Apps
Web-based applications behave in very similar fashion to those native mobile apps. Web apps use a certain browser in order to run and they are commonly written in CSS, JavaScript or HTML5. Web apps redirect users to URL and further offer install options by creating a bookmark on their browser. The greatest advantage of web apps is that they require a minimum of device memory. Users can access web apps from any device that is connected to the Internet. All personal databases are saved on a certain server, so the use of web applications with poor internet connection commonly results in very bad user experience. Another drawback on web apps is access to not so many APIs, with exception of geolocation and several others. In addition, a performance of web-based apps is inextricably linked to network connection and browser work. Therefore, only around fourteen percent of time users spend on web-based apps as only some of device APIs can be used like geolocation.
Categories of Apps
There are thirty-three categories of application in Google Play and twenty-to categories in Apple's App Store. However, there are only seven app categories which have managed to reach more than three percent of users according to latest studies. Commonly used seven categories of apps include gaming apps, business, education, lifestyle, entertainment, utilities, travel, book, health and fitness and food and drink. Around twenty-four percent of users download gaming apps. Gaming apps are followed by ten-percent of users who download business, education and lifestyle apps. By far the most popular category is gaming apps. This is not surprising since the average personal time spent playing mobile games is constantly inversing according to the latest research. Mobile gaming and gaming apps have always been thriving, so developers spend more time and money into creating new games on regular basis. Gaming apps in popularity are followed by business app commonly referred to as productivity apps. Modern-day portable devices are capable of performing various complex tasks, so there is no wonder business apps used for billing, sending emails and checking working progress are on the second place. The most commonly used business apps include Adobe Acrobat Reader, Voxer Walkie-Talkie Messenger, and Indeed Job Search. On the third place are educational apps. Leading apps in education category are Duolingo, Photomath, and Quizlet. Educations apps are followed by popular lifestyle apps like Tinder, Text Free, and AroundMe. Entertainment apps are also very popular like Netflix, Dubsmash, Talking Tom Cat, Amazon Prime Video and other. Utility apps closely follow entertainment apps in a number of downloads. The most popular utility apps include Bitmoji, Flashlight, QR Reader, Speed Test and My Verizon. Other popular categories of apps include travel apps like Google Earth and Uber.
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