Jeremy Wilken - Ionic in Action: Hybrid Mobile Apps with Ionic and AngularJS

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This book is the result of nine months of dedicated work by Jeremy Wilken, a top Ionic developer with whom weve had the pleasure of collaborating since we built Ionic and open sourced it in 2013. This book provides an excellent introduction to the Ionic Open Source SDK, and it also offers plenty of rich information for experienced Ionic developers.

Jeremy built three Ionic apps for this book, using just about every Ionic component in existence. Because of that, the book is a solid reference for using the components in an integrated way. The first app, which a resort might use to provide value for guests, incorporates our slidebox, lists, cards, content containers, and basic navigation. The second, a Bitcoin market app, provides real-time currency rates for Bitcoin and uses pull-to-refresh, popovers, tabs, charts, advanced lists, and nested views. The third, a weather app, uses modals, a custom scroll area (paginated scrolling), externally loaded data, side menus, and a search view.

The apps are unique and robust. They are 80% developed for deployment to an app store, with the obvious missing pieces listed at the end of the chapter to challenge readers to complete them.

For experienced developers, the book explains how to target a platform if, for example, they want to use the action sheet in iOS and the popover in Android. The book also provides background about the Ionic ecosystem, explaining how to leverage Cordova and plugins; discussing Ionics platform services, such as Ionic View; and providing instruction about how to improve Ionic development with advanced techniques and testing. Jeremy provides great examples and insight into how to set up and write your own tests.

Prior to creating Ionic with Max Lynch and Ben Sperry, I joined their company to help develop their already successful products, including Codiqa, which was a jQuery Mobile drag-and-drop interface builder. As we worked on Codiqa, we realized devices and browsers were not being used to their full potential, and users were continually asking for more from our tools. Eventually, we decided to create our toolkit for hybrid applications, in order to push mobile devices to their limits. With the added power of Angular, weve been able to bring hybrid mobile app development to a place where it presents a viable challenge to native application development. Since we released the alpha version of Ionic in 2013, I couldnt be more proud of how quickly the development community has embraced Ionic and helped to grow it even further. The part Im most excited about is that Ionic is only getting started, and well continue to grow and support it, so that developers can build high-performing apps quickly and easily.

Youll find this book to be both an informative introduction to Ionic and an in-depth guide to building better apps, depending on your experience with Ionic and your needs. Thank you for being part of the Ionic community.

Enjoy!

A DAM BRADLEY

C OCREATOR OF THE I ONIC F RAMEWORK

The importance of mobile may be clear today, but even just a few years ago it was debatable if building mobile apps was worth the time and cost. As of 2015 the number of mobile apps available in the Apple App and Google Play Stores is well over a million. Over six times more phones are sold than desktop/laptop devices, and the number of tablets sold should exceed desktop/laptop devices in 2015. Mobile is here, and here to stay.

Back in 2013, the world of mobile app development was focused primarily on building native apps. These native apps were written in Java or Objective C, and required developers to learn those languages, platform tools, SDKs, and so forth. For a web developer like myself, this presented a barrier to getting into mobile app development. It seemed like the mobile web was focused on building responsive websites, not mobile apps. The idea of a hybrid app (which is a native app built using web technologies) was usually given very little credit due to the quality of older devices and browsers that made hybrid apps sluggish, and design practices that made the apps have a visual disconnect from native apps.

The founders of Ionic saw an opportunity. They realized that mobile devices were improving, quite rapidly in fact, and that hybrid apps could be a serious contender with native apps. They aimed to open the door for developers who want to build native-feeling mobile apps, while using the same languages they already know from web development. Ionic builds on the shoulders of other open source projects, Cordova and Angular. Ionic leverages these projects into a more unified platform for building hybrid mobile apps.

As of version 1.0, its clear that Ionic has come of age and empowers web developers to build mobile apps. The Ionic team has become fond of calling Ionic the missing SDK for hybrid apps. As Ive finished this journey of writing Ionic in Action, I can see the full vision of Ionic coming to life. The core of what makes Ionic so powerful is the open source components explored in this book. In addition, a platform of services is being built around it for features such as push notifications, analytics, beta testing, and more. I hold open source projects with well-managed development and community input in high regard, and Ionic is certainly in this category (in the top 40 starred projects on GitHub, and it uses Angular, which is in the top 3 as of this writing). Hundreds of thousands of apps have been created with Ionic, and several apps have even been featured in the major app stores.