My experience getting pretty far building an Ionic app
Bootstrap for cross-platform mobile apps?
My project
I wanted to learn...
- A front-end JavaScript framework (AngularJS)
- Version 3.0 of Django REST Framework
- Cross-platform mobile app (Ionic)
- How to handle more complex Docker-based stack
TweetCheck
My stack
- Django + Django REST Framework serves the API
- Celery handles a few background tasks
- AngularJS powers the frontend
- Very small Node.js app for websockets
- Nginx sits in front to serve it all
- Bootstrap CSS for the web app
- Ionic for the mobile app
- Docker + Fig to run it all
- Host it on DigitalOcean
The dream
A mobile app that...
- Is available on iPhone and Android phones (not tablets)
- Feels fast and native
- Has almost all the features of the web app
- Stores user credentials securely
- Gets realtime updates with websockets
- Receives push notifications
DEMO TIME
Nice parts
- Code re-use between my web app and mobile app:
- ~90% of services code
- ~70% of controller code
- No view code
- It looked pretty native - especially form components
- It's pretty fast
- Websockets worked without much tweaking
- Cordova side of push notifications wasn't hard
- Icon & splash-screen generation was especially awesome
Rougher parts
- Figuring out source control strategy for code that is 70-90% similar
- Dealing with CORS when working locally - update today!
- Setting up dev-environment specific settings
- Debugging - especially device-specific functionality
- Had to buy an iOS developer license - $99/yr
-
Ionic View app didn't give me what I need...
- ...but I think it's a great idea and will get there
- Hard to tell if Android app would look as native
Would I use Ionic again?
YES
and I think it's only going to get better