All,
I'm writing an extensive iPad application with a Core Data based data model. Because the app requires a lot of user input / typing, I would also want to make the functionality available as a web page, so that users can use standard PCs to key in some of the data.
I'm not particularly worried about the UI for that web app, but I do want to re-use the application logic and Core Data model that I'm using for the iOS app, so my preferred approach would be to expose the functionality as web services on a Mac (using the built-in Apache web server, most likely), using XCode for MacOS.
(1) Are there any existing XCode-based frameworks that simplify the generation of web services?
(2) Am I missing something obvious i.e. is there a better approach to tackle the problem "exposing iOS functionality through a web environment"? Obviously, I could've immediately focused on writing the app in HTML5, but I did want to leverage all the goodies that come with iOS/Cocoa.
(3) Alternatively, I could write a native Mac OS app. That facilitates the re-use of Core Data, etc., but I heard it takes a lot of work to port iOS apps to Mac OS. The question then is what's more work - exposing the functionality as web services or porting it to Mac OS... in both cases, I would need to rewrite the UI.
thanks everyone,
Fabian
If you want iPhone/iPad users to be able to access the App through the PC web browser to send data/files to the App then take a look # this one:
http://blogs.oreilly.com/iphone/2008/09/creating-an-iphone-based-web-s.html
Check this question too:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/9012/has-anyone-ever-tried-to-use-an-iphone-as-web-server
I did some more research and came across the WebAppKit framework. It allows you to easily set up a web server capability and handle requests and responses. It's lightweight, easy to understand - exactly what I wanted.
Related
What's the lowest effort way to get a site with server-generated pages (in my case Laravel/PHP) running as a PhoneGap/Cordova app? I'd rather not have to convert the whole thing into a single page app before importing into PhoneGap/Cordova.
Is it possible to use PhoneGap/Cordova as a very thin wrapper and still load each page live from the server? And if so, how exactly please? I don't think we need any native phone APIs.
Reason for the whole thing is my client insists on "having an app" even though obviously our site will work in a mobile web browser and can have an icon on the user's phone.
Many thanks
Unfortunately for your app to pass Apple App store approval it will have to provide some basic functions and display correctly without an internet connection. This means at a minimum, if you plan to generate content on a server you will probably need the Cordova plugin for network information:
https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/reference/cordova-plugin-network-information/
I would make sure you are familiar with the Apple Human Interface Guidelines:
https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/overview/design-principles/
You will probably also need to bundle any JavaScript. Apple is very picky about apps that download code (this can include JavaScript).
This is a section from the iOS developer Agreement.
3.3.2 Except as set forth in the next paragraph, an Application may not download or install
executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and
interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exceptions to the
foregoing are scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework or
JavascriptCore, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the
Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and
advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.
The following is my opinion only
My fear is that if you go at it in a low effort way, best case you will fail app approval. Worst case it will leave users with a poor experience or worse, a poor image of your client. Do it properly and give the app some extra functions that you can't have in a browser alone. I would advise your client of this and see if they would like a proper app that engages their customers and provides them with a great experience.
Excuse a non-developer being forced to develop applications instead of administrating networks like I'm used to. This is a horrible post in many ways.
I'm developing an application which has reached the point of needing a GUI. However, I haven't done any GUI development ever before, so I feel the need to ask for help on this.
The application is your standard data collecting/management app, with all common widgets and stuff that every application is using. The problem is that I need the application to be able to display websites using an external browser of some sort, to pass a captcha on the site the application works against. The website guys haven't given me permission to circumvent the captcha in any way.
I know of GTK, QT, Tcl/Tk etc. None of these frameworks have struck me as easy to use. To be honest, I'd like to design the interface using drag-and-drop like I used to do in VB6 when I was a kid, although I get chills thinking about writing this thing in Basic.
I was thinking about Adobe Air, and to design the application in Flash/ActionScript. From what I've learned about Air, I should be able to do everything I want to do. And I do believe it has built in sqlite, right? Would it be considered more "simple" to develop the actual GUI using Flash than using one of the traditional frameworks? What pitfalls am I facing?
A few guidelines:
It only needs to run on Windows
I need to be able to work against a database. Currently using SQLite3.
Some sort of browser integration is crucial. A browser window of some sort needs to open up inside my interface, be directed by the application, and the application needs to be able to read some data from the site that is being used.
Any help with this would be great. This is a clear case where I have to rely on the experience of others to complete the project at all. I'm happy to provide more information if you need that to make a suggestion.
You can always try Titanium Framework, it was aquired by Appcelerator nor so much ago. http://www.appcelerator.com/
It actually puts a webkit browser in a window, so if you can design HTML and CSS you can use this framework.
What's your experience in using web technologies (HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript) to implement part of the functionality of a GUI application? Pros and cons, please.
No servers, relational databases, AJAX, or cookies for session management, nor an existing webapp either, but rather a GUI app that uses web widgets (like Qt WebKit) to render and handle substantial parts of the UI, while taking advantage of a GUI framework to achieve an even richer interaction and better desktop integration.
I've already validated that the approach is possible using PyQt. Content can be rendered from the file system or from strings, and URL requests (images or clicks) can be captured and served by the form's event handlers. CSS and JavaScript are supported, perhaps with some limitations.
# ...
self.webView.page().setLinkDelegationPolicy(
QtWebKit.QWebPage.DelegateExternalLinks
)
#...
class TotiMainWindow(QtGui.QMainWindow):
def linkClicked(self, url):
pass # events arrive here
Note: This question is different from this one and this one made before, among other things because there is no requirement to use web technologies on the GUI, but there is the requirement that the application should work without a network connection available, and should integrate well with the default desktop over different platforms, without previous infrastructure requirements (no .NET, Java, browsers, or database servers).
Note: I posted a different version of this question on PMS but found very little experience with this approach there.
Closing Note
I just found most of the information I was looking for in a series of blog posts by André Pareis.
I think the largest advantage to using web markup like HTML/CSS and other web technologies is that desktop apps may very well have their days numbered.
As we speak, Google engineers are working on the Chromium OS, which essentially consists of a single GUI application... the browser...
Now, while nothing may never actually come of it, there is clearly a rising trend in the number of applications accessible through a web browser, accessible anywhere. It seems to me that this is the future of application development.
By using these technologies, this becomes one less headache you have to deal with when or if you determine that your app should be available as a web application.
Update: A few years ago, we developed an Agent Desktop for our call center that is essentially a local application that opens sockets to integrate with the phone system. The user interface the agents use is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and the experience is stunning. When we released our latest update in 2010 with a professional CSS redesign, our agents were all very impressed with not only how easy it was to interact but also how easy it was to use.
In the future we will port this 100% to the browser, but for now it needs to be a local application because of the COM integration with the phone system.
We did exactly this for a project back when Windows XP was new.
This gave my team several benefits:
A good-looking UI with relatively little effort
Easily change the style of the UI in a consistent manner using CSS
Relatively simple integration with C++ (invoking functions from the ui and vice versa)
The drawbacks we saw were:
Some not-so-good firewalls considered accessing internal resources (ie other html pages in the ui) to be a web request
Adding and accessing the needed resources could in some cases be a bit cumbersome
It was possible set properties in Internet Explorer that would prevent JS from running in the application
Note that some of Windows XP:s programs are using this approach.
This probably works best with small, more Wizard-like parts of the ui (which our ui consisted almost entirely of).
I have since then not really been involved in ui projects, so I cannot really tell you whether this approach is still valid... I know that MFC-based applications will let you use HTML-based dialogs though.
In a similar situation in 2005 I created a stand-alone webapp using XForms, CSS, JavaScript, XML and XML Schema for offline data retrieval and verification. With a good XForms -> HTML + JS transformer (Chiba) it did the job with no bug fixes after the initial release. It was used for 6-12 months (IIRC) by about a dozen engineers for a project gathering test data in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. The biggest surprise of that project was just how much you get for free when going for a web platform, even for offline use. Highly recommended.
The major problem is that it reduces your development speed, or the quality of your user interface. A lot. Unless you're using Seaside, it is much faster to develop a desktop app.
There is quite some number of applications built on top of Mozilla platform. It isn't 100% web technology, as instead of HTML you use XML based XUL, but the rest is indeed web stack (JavaScript, CSS). The most successful of these it the OpenKomodo and it's commercial big brother Komodo IDE.
On the other hand, as far as Qt goes, the newest version 4.7 you can build GUI using QML language. Don't let the name mislead you, it's not markup, it acctually JavaScript with app-specific extensions.
I'm in the design phase for a desktop-based application. Because of the nature of this particular application, I believe it would benefit greatly from a web-based approach (i.e., allowing a user to interface with the application through a browser running in kiosk mode) in order to leverage the simplicity of HTML/CSS/JS and the availability of many great JS interface plugins. Does taking this approach (rather than coding in a native or cross-platform graphics library) come with any gotchas?
Well, your access to the OS and other domains are going to be limited.
What about using something like Adobe AIR that lets you use HTML/CSS/JS and compile it into a proper desktop app?
Please look at http://www.terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/ - the library which was designed to create desktop GUI using html and css.
The main "gotcha" to doing a web GUI is that you are going to need to set up a web server of some kind. A gui app can be just a single executable. You allso (probably) will need some GCI coding to get information back from the user to your program. In general, it is liable to be a whole lot more work.
Balancing against that is the fact that any user networked to your webserver anywhere in the world using the OS and browser of their choice should be able to operate your program.
I want to implement web application using xcode?is it possible?if yes then then please advicse me?
example:http://pinoypay.com/iphone/
While I have no personal experience with it I think you are looking for Dashcode rather than Xcode for developing web applications such as the one you linked.
It's located in /Developer/Applications/Dashcode after installing the developer tools.
You can read more about using Dashcode to develop web applications in the Dashcode User Guide.
Is it possible? Yes.
Is it convenient or pleasant? No.
I'm sorry but from the question, it appears you are trying to run before you can walk. Or possibly even crawl.
XCode is not required to build an iPhone styled website, only to write an iPhone application. You would be better off starting with some HTML-CSS tutorials.
XCode is an IDE. You can use it to build a web application but you must use some kind of web application framework in the first place.
The best option is to use one of the frameworks becoming available and maturing.
In the first instance as has been said look at Dashcode, particularly the latest release as this has templates for web based apps and will actually generate the code for dual, Browser and iPhone app so the resultant code will function in both.
The there are a number of third party solutions of varying quality, ease of use and documentation.
In no particular order there is:
IUI library
webapp
iWebkit
jqtouch (this is jquery based)
phone-universal
quickconnect (which has large parts of an OReilly book devoted to it)
All of these give you the javascript and the css to make a web app look and feel and act like a native iPhone app (to one degree or another).
Dashcode is excellent for some solutions as it gives you access to all the Apple tools and has reasonable IDE. The result then runs on a normal web server.
Quickconnect actually has Dashcode templates which you load into Dashcode and build the first part of the app in, then this is exported and imported into Xcode and you completed the project in Xcode and deliver it as a Web App for the iPhone.
Thee other frameworks can be used and developed with any tools, Textmate, Eclipse etc. and the resulting code it then run on a normal web servers
In my opinion, yes.
And while xCode does not target to the web development as other software (like Brackets, DW, etc.) it has a nice feature: a drop-down menu of javascript functions, which would be extremely useful to have in other web development IDEs...