An App For Culture Night:
A Newbie's Experience With Laravel and the Ionic Framework (and how it can help your event, too!)
Rebecca Martin, NI Developer Conference 2018
Who are you and why are you here?
- Junior developer with Flexera, part of the core API Team
- @laches1sm on the Twitters
- Talk today is mainly concerning my experience with learning Ionic and Laravel to build a Culture Night application
- Also talk about how event applications could help local events here in NI
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986338/flexera.jpg)
But why even develop an application for Culture Night in the first place?
- First Culture Night I went to was in 2017
- I chose this project based on my experiences at it
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986340/culture-night-2017.jpg)
Looking to Dublin
- Before starting development, I felt it was important to look at prior examples
- Dublin Culture Night has an application for their celebrations
- ...with the official lack of information from the Belfast Culture Night, why not look at Dublin's?
- Had some useful features
Culture Night website is bad and it should feel bad
- Extremely little information on the official website
- No application at all - instead relied on paper leaflets
- Overall was in dire need of an update
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4999016/umadparrot.gif)
But why even develop an application for Culture Night in the first place?
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986317/cn.png)
But why even develop an application for Culture Night in the first place?
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986331/Screenshot_from_2018-06-03_14-18-48.png)
The state of information for Belfast Culture Night left me like...
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986342/sadparrot.gif)
Looking to Dublin
- Since Belfast had little to no information, why not look at Dublin...
- Features including creating a event list, etc...
- Make it more 'on-brand'
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4999040/l2kHGPw.gif)
Looking to Dublin
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986548/pasted-from-clipboard.png)
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986551/pasted-from-clipboard.png)
The Case for a Belfast Culture Night application
- With all of the above aspects taken into consideration, why not build an app of my own?
- There were many different technologies I could have used...
- PHP - Laravel
- Native Android/iOS development...
- or Ionic?
The Case for a Belfast Culture Night application
- Python - could have used frameworks such as Flask or Django
- Flask - lightweight and easy to get started...
- ...but might not scale well
- Django - can be tricky to use, esp middleware related things
- Never had used Python before in a huge project
What even is Ionic and Laravel, and why should I develop with them?
- Ionic is a TypeScript framework, that is used to create cross-platform applications
- Laravel is a PHP framework, used for building websites and building APIs
- Why did I choose them?
- Cross platform
- Easy to develop APIs
- Also very easy to get started
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986321/222px-Ionic-logo-landscape.svg.png)
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986322/images.png)
Laravel
- As previously mentioned, I decided to use Laravel for building the API and the website portion...
- Very easy to get up and running
- Overall, an enjoyable experience with Laravel
- Showing off some of the API functionality with Postman...
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986366/Screenshot_from_2018-06-03_14-50-52.png)
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986368/Screenshot_from_2018-06-03_14-52-57.png)
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986369/Screenshot_from_2018-06-03_14-53-32.png)
Ionic
- Cross platform framework for developing mobile applications
- Written in TypeScript - steep learning curve
- I am not a front-end developer - difficulty with CSS
- New and exciting errors, all the time, every time
- In my opinion, much more of a learning experience than developing native applications
- Live demo, oh noes!!!!
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986358/scienceparrot.gif)
After development... what could local event organizers gain from having an app?
- An application is not just for Culture Night - it could suit most events in NI
- Helps users, both local and from further afield
- Near enough everyone has their phone on them
- Environmental concerns
- For the Luddites in our midst - it's purely optional!
Questions?
- If you don't want to ask now, feel free to ask any questions either at the Flexera stand or over pints at the Bot!
- Come over to the Flexera stand - we have a Lego raffle and hiring opportunities!
- We also sponsored a parrot (kakapo) too, his name's Bluster-Murphy
- (a kakapo, btw, is the inspiration for Party Parrot)
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986354/evilparrot.gif)
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media-p.slid.es/uploads/886689/images/4986374/Screenshot_from_2018-06-03_15-00-55.png)
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