IONIC - How to get started with Ionic Framework

Hello everyone,

Today I am gonna show you how to start coding, emulating and having fun with this such great mobile app framework called Ionic. I've been using it 'for fun' since 2014 and it's an useful tool if you want to code as JavaScript instead of other native languages such as Objective-C and Java. In my case I play with both, so, it's really up to you whether or not use it. This weekend I am going to provide you more about it. I hope you enjoy it.

1- First have your Node.js installed on your computer. The current version working with Ionic is Node 4. Node 5, according to the Ionic site at this date, is not yet available for Ionic. Check the site related of Ionic here - http://ionicframework.com/docs/

I have the version 4.4.1 as you can see below on my Mac

2- Make sure you install or have it installed before you start the Apache Cordova Framework that works with Ionic. My current version of Cordova is 6.1.0 as you can see below.

3- I did install my Ionic 1.7.14 version.

4- Starting a project:
ionic start thiagoleoncioApp tabs

4.1- As you can see, it is going to ask if you want to register for push notifications or not.
I would recommend you say yes, as it helps you during your coding to have this option/feature available.

If you type y above, it will give you the option to register your notifications over Ionic site:

NOTE: You probably have noticed that I typed ionic start + my projectname+ tabs.

Here, in this start command we have option to start as blank,tabs or sidemenu. So, if you go with sidemenu your project will start with something similar to this.

5- Now you can run your Ionic project with these commands:
$ cd thiagoleoncioApp --> GO to your project folder created when you started it.
$ ionic platform add ios  --> Add in your platform IOS or Android or another mobile emulator you want to it.

$ ionic build ios

...

$ ionic emulate ios 

COMMON ISSUE: If you are running IOS emulator and you did not install yet iso-sim project you are probably gonna get an issue like this:

ios-sim was not found. Please download, build and install version 3.0.0 or greater from https://github.com/phonegap/ios-sim into your path. Or 'npm install -g ios-sim' using node.js: http://nodejs.org
Error: /Users/tguimaraes/thiagoleoncioApp/platforms/ios/cordova/run: Command failed with exit code 2

So, make sure you run the command - npm install -g ios-sim before emulate it in your Mac.

6- So now, emulating it:

...

7- Here it is your project structure created to develop in IOS using Cordova Ionic Framework.

 Just change the code or whatever you would like and move it on!

Next weekend, I am going to show you guys how to develop using Sencha Touch.

Another great article related of Ionic: How to set up Icons that displays differently amid iOS and Android devices

I hope it helps and happy coding!
Thiago Leoncio.

IOS Exceptions - Objective C

Hello everyone,

   As part of the teaching process on IOS-Development, today I am going to show you guys a little bit more about exceptions in Objective-C.

  I would say that in Objective-C you don’t see that much as you can see in Java Exceptions. But I do like and I add in my code as much as needed .Try/catch/finally blocks can be useful to capture errors that may otherwise cause an app to fail. So, yes, please use them.

  In this simple example below I am allocating an array, but I am not adding any elements on it. Inside the try block the attempt to access the first element will cause an exception to be thrown. So, that’s the easiest way to see something happening, right? Let’s go!

The output of the code is shown below:
iPhoneApp[4769:b601] NSException caught
iPhoneApp[4769:b601] Exception Name: NSRangeException
iPhoneApp[4769:b601]  Exception Reason: *** -[NSArray objectAtIndex:]: index 0 beyond bounds for empty array
iPhoneApp[4823:b601] In finally block

The @finally clause as in java is called, it's called anyway. So, this is perfect place to add some methods such as code cleanup, connections released and so on.
Using exceptions can be very helpful when working with files (eg: exampleNSFileHandleOperationException), when working with data from unknown sources it helps a lot.

Catching or Throwing specific exceptions by the usage of method call, check it out:

I hope you liked and talk to you soon!

I hope it helps and happy coding,
Thiago Leoncio

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Other great IOS articles:

IOS - 3 big reasons why start coding in swift instead of Objective-C

IOS - IOS App Transport Security has blocked a cleartext HTTP (http://) resource load since it is insecure.

IOS - Video using 3D framework

IOS - Video Application with Json and Mysql connection

IOS - How to create Multiple views