Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook [Paperback]

Boydlee Pollentine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 2011

Over 80 recipes for creating native mobile applications specifically for iPhone and Android smartphones – no Objective-C or Java required with this book and ebook

Overview

• Leverage your JavaScript skills to write mobile applications using Titanium Studio tools with the native advantage!
• Extend the Titanium platform with your own native modules
• A practical guide for packaging and submitting your apps to both the iTunes store and Android Marketplace
• Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible

In Detail

Appcelerator Titanium Mobile allows developers to realize their potential to develop full native iPhone and Android applications by using free Titanium Studio tools without the need to know Objective-C or Java. This practical hands-on cookbook shows you exactly how to leverage the Titanium API to its full advantage and become confident in developing mobile applications in no time at all.

Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook offers a set of practical and clear recipes with a step-by-step approach for building native applications for both the iPhone and Android platforms using your existing knowledge of JavaScript.

This cookbook takes a pragmatic approach to using your JavaScript knowledge to create applications for the iPhone and Android platforms, from putting together basic UIs to handling events and implementation of third party services such Twitter, Facebook and Push notifications. This book shows you how to utilize both remote and local datasources using XML, JSON and the SQLite database system. The topics covered will guide you to use popular Titanium Studio tools effectively and help you leverage all the advanced mobile features such as Geolocation, Accelerometer, animation and more. Finally, you'll learn how to register developer accounts and how to publish your very own apps to the Android and Apple marketplaces.

What you will learn from this book

• Design compelling interfaces using native components
• Consume remote data sources using both XML and JSON
• Utilize SQLite to leverage local data capture and offline storage
• Integrate with Google Maps and learn how to draw routes, use the compass, create annotations and more
• Create brilliant layout effects using animations and transitions
• Integrate with social media such as Twitter and Facebook
• Integrate with third party services including FourSquare and Urban Airship Push notifications
• Take full advantage of your device's camera and audio capture capabilities

Approach

Written in a cookbook style, this book offers solutions using a recipe-based approach. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions followed by an analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information. The cookbook approach means you can dive into whatever recipes you want in no particular order.

Who this book is written for

This book is an essential for any developer who possesses some JavaScript or web development knowledge and wishes to take a leap into building native applications for both the iPhone and Android. No knowledge of Objective C and Java is required.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Boydlee Pollentine

Boydlee Pollentine is a keen iPhone and Appcelerator developer who has created numerous apps for the iTunes and Android store and some indie games. He is passionate about mobile development and in particular the Appcelerator Titanium platform. He has been a software engineer and programmer for the last 10 years, primarily focused on web technologies and Microsoft's .NET platform.

Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (December 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849513961
• ISBN-13: 978-1849513968
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #491,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars But this book now January 22, 2012

By Grant Shipley

Format:Paperback

I have been waiting on a book that covers Appcelerator and Titanium SDK and this appears to be the first one on the market. The author does a great job at presenting the material and I followed along through all of the example applications in the book. Where things began to fall apart is with some key errors in the code and a lot of the example applications don't work.

eg:
Chapter 1: The charting does not function. The content references a chart.js file but that is no where to be found in either the downloaded code or in the library if downloaded from the developers site.
Chapter 1: A couple of typos in the example code in the book that is not present in the example code downloads (for instance, too many }) in one of font declarations for a label

Chapter 2: The stock recipeFinder application fails to download any items from the included url to do the fetching

If the publisher and author can issue an errata update and fix the sample code, this would be a must buy book if you are looking to get into mobile development. In the meantime, read the book for the great content but don't expect all the code to work as is.

*** Update *** The author replied to my original comments and provided the errata code to fix the issues that found. After reading this book once, I continue to go back to it as a quick reference on how to implement things in Titanium. If you are interested in learning Titanium, you should absolutely buy this book. It is much better than the documentation that Appcelerator provides.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellant Cross Platform Reference Guide ! February 3, 2012

By Zeeshan Chawdhary

Format:Paperback

I had the pleasure to read Boydlee's cookbook on Appcelerator Titanium and boy(d) I was glad to find the book very extensive, from simple examples to working with social media API as well as writing custom modules. This book is a must buy for diehard HTML5 developers and over-the-night app developers and for anyone still thinking over the million dollar question "Html5-vs-Native for app development"

Chapter 1 explores the UI components available within Titanium, some other highlights include

1)Option Dialog box is a good topic, gives the perfect native feel.
2)Raphael.JS example is awesome - Example shows how easy it is to integrate external JavaScript libraries in Appcelerator and yet feel Native!!

Chapter 2 deals with Local Data and WebServices, highlights of this chapter

1)XML, JSON and SQLite - All methods of data parsing and storage explored.
2)TableView and Search filter.
3)Pull Down to refresh - Excellent example depicting the use of twitter client like "Pull down to refresh" logic.

A very big advantage of Appcelerator Titanium over other HTML5 solutions like PhoneGap is the ability to "Load a pre-populated database within your app", which is again nicely explained in the book, so now you can build a prepackaged SQLite database with PHP or any language and install that database in your mobile app.

Chapter 3 deals with Maps, not much circling here J , examples are straightforward. The routes example is good way to depict distance calculation using Google API.

Chapter 4 involves Audio, Video and Camera: Capturing, Viewing and playing Photos, Audio and Video is covered in great detail, including the ability to store the recorded media on the device....

Chapter 5 teaches us sending emails, Facebook integration, twitter OAuth and few more recipes. Chapter 6 covers application properties, events in appcelerator including custom events.

Chapter 7 covers Animation and drag and drop; however I didn't dig in much on it, so would skip to chapter 8 which is more interesting since it covers background service, local notifications and accessing the contacts address book. What I like most about the book is the attention to details while dealing with individual platforms (Android / iPhone) and letting the users know beforehand. Kudos to the author for covering Android App storage on the devices SD Card.

Further down the book, the author teaches how to create custom modules in Appcelerator Titanium, integrating the Paypal module and some excellent tips for cross platform app development.

Overall, this is an excellent book any App developer needs to keep on his bookshelf/ebook reader. The only part I think missing is the "Mobile Web" feature in Appcelerator Titanium, that also allows titanium apps to run on the browser, think it is still a beta-stage feature, so also debatable to be covered in print book. Still another thing that would have been great would be "Theming" the applications.

I would advise anyone knowing an iota of HTML/CSS/JS know-how, to go ahead buy the book, it has everything to get you started to reach App Store glory. Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars This covers everything! February 23, 2012

By freshfey

Format:Paperback

I was given an early copy of the book "Appcelerator Titanium Smartphone App Development Cookbook" for a review on my blog and on amazon.

Disclaimer: I have done some Titanium Development in the past, however it was mostly copy-paste from the kitchen sink application, since my JavaScript skills weren't that good.

The book is basically a direct dive into mobile development with Titanium, which is great. No long history lessons or theory lessons on why windows and views are the way they are.

The structure of the book is very friendly. every chapter starts with a quick introduction about what the reader is going to build next, some sample code and an in-depth explanation on what the code does. It does, however assume a basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you don't know anything about these languages, I suggest you quickly google it and build some simple pages with it, to get familiar. He also assumes that you work with Titanium Studio, Appcelerator's own IDE. So before you dive in make sure that you have installed the IDE properly and setup the according SDK's (iOS and Android).

The first chapter starts with a very simple application, which explains the basic Ui components of a mobile application. You have to build your knowledge on windows and views before you can do complex applications. Boydlee does a great job of explaining almost every line of code (whether through line-comments or through the explanation after the code).

After covering the basics, you're basically building one cool app after another.... Fun fact: If you're not a complete beginner you can read every chapter like an own section (it's not building too much on the previous chapters, since it's always an own app), so you could start with the coolest application at first and go and do the simple stuff later on, if you'd like!

If you're like me and always wanted to work with APIs of different sites (like facebook or twitter), you'll love the examples in this book. Boydlee shows the integration of different applications into your mobile app, so that you can, for example, share the pics you just took with your app, on facebook.

Something very useful was the integration of payments through PayPal. Since Titanium doesn't support in-app purchases (yet), they partnered with PayPal to allow customers to easily pay through their PayPal accounts. For every app developer, this is huge news. So in the Chapter 10, you get to see how you could integrate payments into your mobile application. There is even a 10-page instruction on how to build your own modules, to sell in the Titanium+Plus store (this is like a marketplace for Titanium modules).

Last but not least there is a whole chapter on how to prepare, package and distribute your mobile application onto the iTunes App Store and the Android Market.

The book covers basically everything there is about the Titanium development platform (if you know the basics of JavaScript), to quickly get you up and running with your mobile apps. I really liked it and I can definitely recommend this book for the hands-on developers out there. Read more ›