Since Rails uses MVC architecture. I was wondering that if we can use Rails to develop a mobile app or any web app.
Out of MVC the 'M' and 'C' won't change to develop the mobile app right?
I mean the models and controllers will remain the same.
Only the view portion should be changed such that, instead of using html.erb files I want Java or Android SDK or whatever, to provide the UI for the mobile user.
Can someone enlighten me on this perspective?
Also I have been hearing about jRuby does it come into play for our mobile app development requirement?
The answer to this question is going to depend on how you want to deploy this app. Do you want it running completely on the phone or can it be a web app disguised as an iphone/android app?
For the native app solution I'd checkout the Rhodes Framework. It's not RoR but you'll see that it's an MVC framework that feels similar. This will allow you to build native iphone/android apps using Ruby.
For the 2nd option, web app disguised as a mobile app, I'd recommend Sencha Touch. Sencha has done an amazing job mimicking the look and feel of native iphone/android apps with their Javascript library. With this solution it would be just like any other web app though it's targeted for android and iphone via it's UI.
I've created an example rails / ember.js App that is exported with Phonegap. It uses just the usual MVC architecture of a Rails and an Ember.js App. Maybe you will find it useful. It also implements token authentication based on ember-auth and several OAuth strategies.
Currently in de the devel branch: https://github.com/joscas/base_app/tree/devel
Heroku deploy: https://starter-app-staging.herokuapp.com (the desktop version)
Exported with phonegap-rails gem (of which I'm also the author) for assets, fix paths etc.
Absolutly YES!
Ruby on Rails just a backend tech, is the same as what you plan to do for normal browser. There are only two things that you need to consider about mobile app. First is mobile browser's content size because you need to adjust your layout to fit the size. There is a HTML meta tag called viewport can help you.
Ex.
This script will tell user's browser that the content should be fit the devise size,initial-scale defines the viewport rate and maximum-scale defines how many times this page can scale, and user-scalble=0 means user cannot scale the page. More about viewport you can check the Mozilla's doc.
The other thing you need to consider is the HTML5 techs, but actually these aren't problems when you are using jQuery mobile. I recommend you to check their docs. This is very useful and clear for anyone.
RubyonRails is web application framework - it is running on server and user observer the result of application built on RubyOnRails inside browser(or Browser component), despite the fact that you can process on server just "M" from "MVC", and implement "V" and "C" fully on client side( in mobile browser).
In theory, you can fully deploy RubyOnRails application on client side( even RubyOnRails server and etc), but it will be rather expensive and hard, but it is could not be require in any rational project.
assuming:
There are two way you can choose:
Organize RubyonRails application on the server(process there Model), and process "V" and "C" on client side with any proper js libraries.
You can develop Ruby(not RubyOnRails application) - at least it is possible to develop for Android with JRuby.
Yes you can . Your view can be an web page/android/ ios application as view.
You may want to try jQuery Mobile (which is still in alpha by now) if it's just a matter of UI. If you need a tighter integration with your mobile, I don't think that running Rails would be efficient enough.
Try using React Native, the backend technology can still be Ruby while the front-end can use React Native to build mobile app both Android and iOS.
React Native
Related
This might be a silly question, but wondering if I was able to build an iOS app completely in a UIWebview. Essentially not have one thing be native to iOS.
You can actually. There are several ways to use HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript to make mobile apps like iOS. You can use frameworks/programs like Cordova/PhoneGap. These frameworks/programs can let you use web languages and then compile it into an executable for the device. Something that can be submitted to the AppStore. Whether or not Apple accepts it thats another story. ;)
The other thing you can do is you want it to completely run off the web is you can essentially build a web app on a server like any other web app. However, you can put in CSS3 media queries and Javascript that can detect the size of the screen. Users can use their built in web browsers to access your site. If the screen isn't the right size, then you can redirect the user like if they try to access it with a laptop. With this method you can use server side scripting languages like PHP to do your computation processing. However, connection is required to the server and if a whole lot of people log in to your server, then the server can get bog down.
If you are interested in using web base languages for mobile applications, I highly suggest looking into PhoneGap/Cordova.
Can i make a website using rails (database backed ofcourse) and use phonegap to make a native app vertin of it ?
I know that phone gap is agnostic of back-end technologies but i didn't find any answer for my question.
You can't. Phonegap consist only in HTML, CSS and Javascript. You can build up your web service either REST or SOAP API using Rails.
Reference: http://blog.revivalx.com/2014/07/15/simple-hybrid-mobile-app-using-cordova-and-ratchet-2-complete/
I want to start a new project and im not sure, if im using the best setup/approach. The project is kind of a list directory without high computing power needed.
I planned to build an website with Rails Api and AngularJs (+Bootstrap) for normal devices and mobile and use the same api for apps too.
Therefore i planned to use the IonicFramework (+PhoneGap). Is this a common approach or are there any best practices i should consider?
This is the standard way to develop web/desktop apps and mobile apps.
You are approaching this correctly.
Use core AngularJS + Bootstrap for web/desktop app and Ionic
Framework for mobile
Sharing the backend Rails API makes sense. Typically the Rails API
would be designed with REST principles in mind which makes it easier
to consume (probably using Restangular) via web/desktop app and
mobile app
If you follow standard AngularJS conventions to create a separation
of concerns (controllers, services, and views) then you will be able
to share quite a bit of JavaScript code between the web/desktop app
and mobile app and easily override functionality to customize for
devices, if necessary.
We have a ASP.NET MVC website built that's optimized for the Mobile and Tablet devices using Responsive design.
We would like to reuse/package these views into a Phonegap application for creating iOS/Android/Windows apps.
Our initial thought was to have skeleton views in the Phonegap project and serve the content (including markup) remotely from the ASP.NET MVC website. However, my understanding is that Apple may not approve an app with such an architecture.
Any thoughts on how to design the Phonegap app is really appreciated.
As you hint at, Apple generally discourages websites masquerading as native apps via thin shells. See this SO for some discussion:
Does Apple reject "mobile web shell" applications?
For the current app I am working on, I do all my development by serving through Apache and testing in Chrome. I test on device by wrapping the same set of html/cs/js files with Cordova build process and pushing to device. The only reason that wouldn't work for you to is you must have a bunch of server side logic and conditional rendering of your views.
So either you:
1) Just go for it and try to submit a simple native wrapped website and very well may get approved no problem
OR
2) My recommendation is to do a little reworking of your view designs/interactions such as including a native-mobile-app style navbar, etc. so that the experience is more similar to an app than a web site. Then with your new client/app Views, swap out the server side Controller/Model interactions with a Rest/JSON api.
For example, currently you have something like this:
//Server side
class mainController
{
void fooAction()
{
string bar = getModelThatIncludesBar().bar;
...
renderView($bar, 'fooView');
}
}
Instead, more like this:
// Client side, poor mans MVC
bar = useAjaxToGetModelThatIncludesBar().bar; // pretend this is synchronous :)
...
fooViewElementThatNeedsBarData.innerHtml = bar
Edit: I have drastically simplified things here to try to distill it down to the basic two choices I see. Message me or whatever if you want to chat about it.
My suggestion is you need to separate your client and server side language. Then convert your server side language into web service either SOAP or REST so your client side can send and receive data from your server. Phonegap is allowed client side language only.
I'm working on a web application that uses django.
I would like to create a native application of the site for ios / android using phone gap.
Is this possible? As I understand native devices cannot interpret python code.
It is early in the project and if it proves too difficult I may go with a different framework I.e backbone.js.
Any thoughts / experiences?
That's right, you cannot run python code on iOS or Android using PhoneGap, but there is no need to do that. Yes, you can build a native mobile application of your site using PhoneGap.
I'll try to explain a bit how these technologies compare to each other:
Django is a python web framework running on a web server
PhoneGap is a framework for building native mobile applications using web technologies (HTML5+CSS+Javascript), the application will run on a mobile device
One common approach is to build the mobile UI with i.e. jQuery Mobile and use the Django web application to provide a RESTful API to get data to the application.
Take a look at this another question for more details.
Edit: Answer the question in the first comment
Yes, it's possible to build a fast and well working application with these frameworks. The performance with today's smartphones is more dependent on the quality of the implementation than i.e. jQuery mobile and Django in themselves.
Basically with PhoneGap there are three different ways for showing the content to the user:
server side generated pages
pages generated on the client side with Javascript usin data from the server, transferred in a predefined format using for example JSON
a combination of the previous two
This answer clarifies server-client communication and page rendering quite well.
You could use PhoneGap a bit like a constrained web browser, and basically show content directly from your server as you would when the user accesses the site with a normal web browser. But I don't recommend this, though. This approach has many downsides to it (i.e. what happens when the user opens a link from your website leading to another website?)
To be accurate, at least in my opinion, UI written with Javascript and running inside an app built with PhoneGap is not native. Comparing native applications and PhoneGap applications is another thing, here is one take on explaining the differences.
I don't know what kind of service you are building, but in general I'd suggest evaluating the different approaches before starting to build an application. Would a responsive mobile optimized web site do or is there real need for what an app can provide?
If you decide to build an app with PhoneGap, I'd suggest that you do it with client side Javascript and fetch the data from the Django backend with XHR requests in JSON format. There are lots of examples available in the internet.