I am developing one mobile app, the requirement is as follows.
1.The app should work offline and online.
2.It should have database in both local device and in the server.
3.When internet is on data has to be synced between local and server.
4.At any point of time local data and server data should be the same.
I have done lot of research on this but not able to find whether hybrid app development supports or not. Some one says we can do but other link says it's difficult and might not be possible.
Please help to me sort out this issue.Thanks in advance
for sure it is possible to have those features in an hybrid app. All depend what you choose to use to deal with that or how you choose to program it.
Remember than an hybrid app have almost all features that a web application could have as it could use almost all technologies, tricks, frameworks and libraries out there.
I have already developed an hybrid mobile app using cordova, jquery and jquery mobile that meet points 1 to 3. Though I am not saying you need to use jquery, or any of the other tools. I described the solutions I use for that app, however they are maybe not the best but it was the most practical and easiest solutions given the time frame and budget.
Was achieved by mirroring the server "data base" the first time the app is installed with WiFi access. When no internet is available the the app use the local data, when it is available then it take the data from the server and update the local data.
The local database was not a formal one, just JSON data files, very similar to the ones provided by the web service.
You can be checking for an active internet connection with the cordova network functions, once detected try to reach the server to check if the actual connection is working, on success then proceed to request mirroring the data. Just be sure to check if the local data is newer to the server one and instead of overriding you should first update the changes in the server.
I think this point is a bit difficult given the fact that you want to work offline. When you are offline you couldn´t do too much to reflect the server data into the app, as you are offline. Then having an exact mirror at any time is not feasible. However having a mirror when you have connection then that is another story.
Having a perfect data sync should be done carefully and instead of programming you own solution try to use a service or tools for that, like http://www.couchbase.com/mobile.
Hope it helps.
Hybrid applications are, at core, websites packaged into a native wrapper. They look and feel like a native app. Hybrid app have main features are portability (one code base, multiple platforms), Access to various hardware/software capabilties, cheaper orginigation costs, faster speed to market.
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I have a web application for my own use that accesses the data from an iPhone application (It's a bill tracking app, and I have a little web-app that generates a simple page with graphs, and calculates the utility division for my roomates).
This iPhone application previously supported syncing data via dropbox, but with dropbox's recent drop of their v1 API, the application decided to drop dropbox all together, and currently only supports syncing via iCloud.
How can I access my iCloud data? More specifically, I need to do this from linux.
I've been experimenting with PyiCloud, and while I can access my iCloud "drive", the application specific data storage does not appear to be stored there. Reading about, iCloud seems to have a quite complex API, but how it actually works is basically undocumented, as far as I can tell.
I assume the "correct" approach is "use a mac", but I don't have any mac servers (I don't have a mac at all, at the moment, actually).
So, all that said, I've been unable to determine how to do this. Is this something I'd use CloudKit for? That seems like it's more for the developer of an app to use for their users, rather then something I (as an end-user) would use for accessing my account.
All I want is to get the blasted app data from a single application automatically.
I'm using python, but frankly if there's an example in any language, I can probably port it to my language of choice.
I am new to mobile programming, and I want to build a mobile app to fill few forms, offline, and then sync them later, when internet access is available, with a database on an online server through a VPN connection.
At first, I thought about learning Windows8 Phone App development, but then I heard/read about Phonegap and Jquery Mobile! and I am a bit confused which one would be better to use, considering two things:
1- Which one you think would be good for my app's functionality
2- Which tool would be more beneficial on the long run (in the mobile programming world).
Any advice would be very much appreciated.
With these functionality I don't thing you don't need many mobile dependent features rather you need more web features. For your first question, answer could be that technology in which you are more comfortable. But it also depends how you want to sync your data. In background or when the app is open. If you want to sync data in background that means app is closed, you have some data to send in server, and internet access is there, then you'll need some native windows phone code. In that case if you use phonegap ultimately you will need some native code to deal with it, may be you'll need to write a plugin to communicate between phonegap and native code. And if you don't need background process, if you want to send data to server only when your app is opened,phonegap can work like a charm. It'll be easy to communicate between 2 web technology.
For your second question, ofcourse phonegap is great technology to learn to deal with cross platform. If you need to make apps not only for WP rather for all platforms then phonegap is great. Having said that it's necessary to mention phonegap has it's quirks too. Native code always has it's benefit. Phonegap can't completely overcome native code. But if you are willing to compromise a bit, then it's easy to learn phonegap,a familiar tech than all those platform dependent techs like objective-c, android etc.
(N.B. I'm not an expert, it's just my experience so far)
I have this idea of writing an application to automatically sync files to a specific place for an ipad every time the ipad is plugged in the computer.
The problem is I've never developed a software like this before. Right now I have these two big questions:
- How to detect when an ipad is plugged in the computer?
- How to connect to and copy files over the ipad?
To make things clear, the application I want to develop should have similar functions like iTools (not iTunes).
Does anyone here have experiences in developing this kind of application? Would you please share with me how to start with this project, because I'm clueless :(
There is a rather simple option; use a internet based service to accomplish this task - just as DropBox, iCloud and similar services do it already. Maybe you can get a lot closer to your goals by simply connecting to the API of DropBox, SugarSync or alike.
Using a direct (USB-) connection to the device will be rather tough to implement and, to my knowledge, will prevent you from selling the resulting software through Apple's channels. I am not saying that it was impossible (see iExplorer) but I am saying that such endeavor will involve a lot of reverse engineering of undocumented functions to a degree that might be considered illegal in certain countries. Additionally, maintaining such software will be very demanding as Apple frequently introduces changes within their communication protocol/s.
I have lot of forms with data being submitted to the system and lot of views with data being pulled from database. I want to convert my web application into online and offline mode. I have gone through HTML5 local storage and web storage concepts and already started
implementing. I had to refactor my code a lot for this.
I am feeling that this approach is not the right one. Does anyone have a better suggestion as to create an application which works both offline and online and can save and retrieve lot of data.
Currently my application is a web application written in Groovy & Grails. My application is intended to be used on all possible browsers and smart devices. Its a Proof of Concept still work in progress and I need guidance on this
Thanks
HTML5 is still a web technology, and optimized for online usage. Making offline web app, even using HTML5 features, is very limited.
If you're really need full functional offline app, it's better to take a look at desctop/mobile tools. Some of them, like Apache Cordowa (was PhoneGap) or Appcelerator Titanium, can reuse some web techologies, like JavaScript. But it's totally different way, and you'll need to have 3 version of your app: web (grails), desktop (titanium, or swing maybe) and mobile (cordowa/titanium)
I'd like my Blackberry devices to get and possibly set data to the server, and am a little confused by all the options:
RIM-Push/Pap-Push. Use any library that is able to compose a HTTP GET request to the MDS-CS service (not MDS-IS). This is a one way operation from the server to the device.
RIM-Push (Push a URL and or shorcut to a device for possible offline viewing)
PAP-Push (Same as above, BUT allows for message confirmation of delivery)
WebServices: Use Visual Studio 2008 to create a Web Services only project. I'm unclear if this is supported anymore, or if MDS-IS is used. This is a 2 way operation.
MDS-IS: Use Eclipse to develop the applications and Java is required, I am unsure of what client libraries are able to do (2 way operation).
Let me know if missing any option, or if I need to revise my understanding of the basics
This is actually quite a broad question - there are a lot of ways for a BlackBerry device to interact with a server, and the ideal way depends heavily on your specific application.
Generally:
MDS Studio: the Visual Studio 2008 method is no longer actively supported. It was a mostly visual forms designer, but not a great solution for a lot of reasons. Basically, don't use it.
Mobile Web: Depending on what you need to do, this might work. Everything server side. The thing to be aware of (and why this doesn't work for a lot of problems) is that prior to BlackBerry 6 the browser wasn't very capable, either in terms of HTML support or JavaScript support. You can, however, create shortcuts to mobile web sites which appear as icons on the BlackBerry homescreen. And you can use BlackBerry Web Signals: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/websignals.jsp to push changes to mobile web pages to devices
Widgets: Supported in BlackBerry OS 5 and higher. http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/browserdev/widgetsdk.jsp These are packaged much like 'native' BlackBerry apps, but written using HTML and JavaScript. Can be a good option for rapid development if you're ok with just targeting OS 5, and with the limitations of the BlackBerry Browser. Lots of JavaScript hooks to system functions, so they give you more functionality than pure mobile web, and you can distribute them through App World and the like.
Java Apps: Most development work, but you get potentially the best user experience, and the most functionality. Too broad a topic to cover adequately here, but there are a lot of questions related to these on SO and elsewhere. A good starting point is the BlackBerry developer zone: http://www.blackberry.com/developers RIM Push and PAP Push both fall into this category, as they interact with Java apps, though there are other methods that you can use to achieve similar results (client polling, or I've even seen SMS or email used to push info or wake up a client, though this isn't recommended by RIM).
For a deeper overview of the options I'd recommend a book by my friend John Wargo, called BlackBerry Development Fundamentals. He covers the various options pretty well.