I have already developed website using codeigniter and it's now in testing phase and as business requirement we need to have a small version with limited feature as mobile app Iphone, Android...etc
I have done small research and i found that one the best practices so far is using RESTFUL webservice in codeigniter so i wont rewrite the code i just add API that handle request from PhoneGAP app
but I mnot sure how i will be able to communicate from phonegap , is it JAVASCRIPT like Node.js or what kind of code supported in PhoneGAP,
Thank you for your suggestions
You can make AJAX requests in PhoneGap in a similar manner like you would in a browser application. I haven't worked with node.js in any respect so I can't comment on that specific library but I have used both jQuery and Dojo to perform AJAX requests. You will just want to make sure your application has asked for the proper permissions to make network requests to your domain. Have a look at this for setting up those permissions.
http://docs.phonegap.com/en/2.2.0/guide_whitelist_index.md.html#Domain%20Whitelist%20Guide
Related
We have to develop an application with more plattform. We would use the framework PhoneGap. For our application we need services of backend, the question is: Does PhoneGap support PHP?
If it doesn't support PHP. In which way we can solve the problem?
The most important thing is: make call server
(Get and Post), parsing a json and other functions
that PHP gives.
Phonegap does not have a server. You need to call via Ajax to remote servers.
The backend can be in any language which supports HTTP calls, as PhoneGap is an independent client.
You can use PHP to write an API for use within your Javascript PhoneGap application.
I can recommend the Laravel framework to accomplish this.
Yes...you can use PHP or any PHP framework to give backend for mobile app made using phonegap/cordova....point is phonegap/cordova app will be on client mobile which won't understand PHP embedded in phonegap html files....so write an API amd place it on a server and then make AJAX calls to server to do database and other backed operations
Try to return JSON data from the PHP API.....it's a famous data structure and supported by many applications
Hi I have recently began to build mobile open cart sites for mobile browsers. I would like to take it a step further and build native apps using phonegap. My question is , does phonegap support a structure like opencart? Are php files supported?
Would it be possible for me to build a fully functioning opencart site and integrate it successfully with phonegap?
There is very little information online regarding this question.
A Phonegap app cannot contain any server side scripting like PHP. It can only contains HTML, css and Javascript.
But you can always do request to a remote server that runs PHP.
Opencart has quite a few ajax interfaces in various parts of the app. These call controllers that deliver sections of a page usually. I have not looked into the full remote API to know if you can build a full shop app that uses the opencart backend.
If you look down that ajax calls path you may find enough functionality to produce the phonegap app.
If got a task to create a mobile application for iOS, Android and WP. This application needs to access a mySQL database which is already in use by the website running php.
What I found in the meantime, is that I have to create a php webservice and use this webservice to access the data in the mySQL database.
Since I did not found any clear advice which way is the best to do it (JSON, XML, REST, etc) - I just wanted to ask you, is there a kind of best practice which technologies should be used for the php webservice?
Additional it would be great for me if someone knows a good tutorial for the recommended technology.
Thanks a lot.
I am arriving a bit late but here is my answer : I believe that the easier way currently available is a PhoneGap application (with Sencha Touch or jQuery Mobile as a javascript framework) talking to the server through a simple PHP webservice. PhoneGap allows you to build an Android, iOS and WP app with the same codebase.
We use that technology in my company and it works great.
I am a php developer with a few web apps like a project management app and a forum i'd like to move to Android and iPhone.
I've heard of developers using Sencha Touch and PhoneGap to develop native apps and I know they support HTML5, CSS and Javascript, but how abot PHP? And is are there any other APIs/frameworks I should consider that better support local server scripting?
Speaking about webapp, maybe you can avoid building an app by having a mobile enabled version of your website compliant with all the client browsers.
Have a look at jquerymobile, it is compliant with mostly all the mobile browsers and you will be able to reuse your code.
To answer correctly, you can call your webservices using ajax to fetch json/xml/etc data from Phonegap because it is using jQuerymobile ;-)
Have a look at this discussion here on Stackoverflow :
Passing formdata from Phonegap to PHP with JSON
Hope this helps
PHP is a server-side scripting language and your .php files have to be stored on the server side. You can access them asynchronously with Ajax, so no, you can not include php files (with reasonable time and effort) in your app.
The only smart way to go here is native iOS apps, forget PHP, Android and the rest of that crap. By the way I'm not trying to be an iOS snob here but am just reflecting on a few realities. One is that iOS apps can actually make money though a web replacement app might not. The second issue is that going native demands a reboot on your part, that is best done on one platform until you get up to speed. The third issue is that users now a days expect well performing apps that don't have a lot of web cruft in them. Fourth the Android marketplace is screwed, you are far more likely to establish that critical user base on iOS as you can target a handful of platforms running the latest generation of iOS, android is by comparison a pathetic mess of old versions of android running on all sorts of hardware.
On iOS look a BlueAlien as an example of a better than web method of accessing Reddit.
I have an existing PHP/MySQL website that relies hugely on form POSTs for things like signing up, logging in, searching etc. I now need to create a native iPhone app for it. The business requires a native app for marketing reasons, I can't get away with a mobile optimized website.
I'm looking for suggestions from someone who has already done this - how did you rewire your website to POST/GET data from the iPhone app? I'm guessing I'll have to send/receive data as XML, which is then parsed by the server and client. Is there anything simpler or any framework that can make this easier?
Thanks!
If you don't have some sort of webservices or API to connect through for the website I would make that my first priority. While you can scrape HTML and send POST requests, it can get quite messy FAST. I've created iPhone apps which talk with webservices through SOAP requests, and have built an iPhone interface to a site, which wasn't pretty. It is very doable, but it is also very frustrating if anything changes on the webpage.
If you are looking for a decent library to help you get started with POSTing against forms check out the ASIHTTPRequest library at http://allseeing-i.com/ASIHTTPRequest/. If you look at the site there is a 'How to Use It' page with 'Sending Data with POST or PUT Requests'. Otherwise you could just use NSURLRequest and NSURLConnection and handle everything yourself.
It depends a lot on what you are presenting. You may be able to put a lot of your php heavy interfaces into web pages. The web pages and all related resources would be local to, and formatted for the iPhone. You can look at PhoneGap for examples of how to host local web pages and communicate with the host application.
I have been writing an eBook reader. About half of the user interface is done through local html files. In my case there is no network access, but WebKit is the easiest way to style text.
As long as your application does not look like a web page, it is fine if it is a web page. That may simplify big chunks of server interaction, especially things like login that only happen once or rarely.
Jonathan,
I would recommend taking a look at the Apple provided SeismicXML sample app. It uses the NSXMLParser to parse XML in a asynchronous fashion which will be huge for your app. It also shows how to use a NSURLConnection to make the request off of the web. You can use the NSURLConnection (which is also asynchronous) for POST/GET requests.
As mentioned in another answer, the ASIHTTPRequest library from allseeing-i.com is an excellent library but all of the features you want can be done using the built in Apple APIs if needed for your business requirements.
Hope this helps!