Creating Mobile Apps with Appcelerator Titanium

318 Pages·2013·3.47 MB·English

by  Christian Brousseau

Creating Mobile Apps with
Appcelerator Titanium
Develop fully-featured mobile applications using a
hands-on approach, and get inspired to develop more
Christian Brousseau
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Creating Mobile Apps with Appcelerator Titanium
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First published: October 2013
Production Reference: 1211013
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-84951-926-7
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Cover Image by Prashant Timappa Shetty ([email protected])
Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Christian Brousseau Anugya Khurana
Proofreader
Reviewers
Simran Bhogal
Stephen Feather
Amisha Green
Jude Osborn
Acquisition Editor Indexer
Usha Iyer Rekha Nair
Sam Wood Tejal Soni
Lead Technical Editor Graphics
Balaji Naidu Abhinash Sahu
Yuvraj Mannari
Technical Editors
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Production Coordinator
Manal Pednekar Pooja Chiplunkar
Shali Sasidharan
Cover Work
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About the Author
Christian Brousseau is a proud Canadian who has been developing software for
over twenty years. He made his debut in Windows development and then moved on
to Java when the Web came along. About thirteen years ago, he had the opportunity
to move to France where he worked on major Java Enterprise projects for one of
the largest software companies in the world, in different sectors such as banking,
insurance, retail, government, and defense.
Over the last few years, he became very enthusiastic about mobile platforms
in general and has developed quite a few applications for iOS and Android
devices using the Appcelerator Titanium platform. He is very active within the
community; being a Titanium-certified application developer and a member of the
Titans Evangelist group, he is one of the top 10 contributors on the Appcelerator's
Questions & Answers forum.
Still living in Paris, he left the enterprise world and created his own company,
Things Are Moving (http://www.thingsaremoving.com), that specializes in
mobile development.
I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues who have given
me their support, and all those who were there when I created my
very first mobile application (that did not do much at the time I must
admit). I'd also like to thank all of the very knowledgeable people
who took the time to review my book and gave me more than just
review notes. You guys went the extra mile, and I am very grateful
for it.

But most of all, I'd like to thank my wife, who gave me her full
support in this journey (even during bad times, that support never
flinched). Also, to my children who had to see their father writing
every weekend instead of spending quality time with them.

To everyone, thank you!
About the Reviewers
Stephen Feather is an Appcelerator Titanium Titan, holding TCMD and TCAD
certifications, and a frequent speaker on mobile strategies for small businesses
and nonprofit organizations. In 1994, he started his own consulting firm working
directly with communication companies such as Netscape, Microsoft, and Oracle
in the early days of the Internet. In 1996, he wrote Javascript by Example, one of the
first publications on the then new scripting language. Over the next 17 years, his
firm would grow to become a widely recognized vendor of multimedia software for
language learning and providing support to colleges and universities throughout the
Southeastern United States.
In 2009, he cofounded Feather Direct, recognizing a need for quality mobile
application development, reputation management, and SEO services for smaller
organizations. He volunteers his time to assist and train a new generation of mobile
app developers through online forums and local user groups.
Jude Osborn is an experienced, well-travelled Software Developer, having led
and developed projects across the web, mobile, and desktop spaces and in locations
spanning the globe. Jude is passionate about new development technologies, and
right now is especially giddy about JavaScript frameworks and mobile.
Jude currently works with Google's Creative Lab (on behalf of the web development
agency, Potato) on prototypes and experimental software projects. Every morning he
walks across Sydney's Pyrmont bridge soaking up the sunshine and looking forward
to the next amazing technological challenge.
When he's not cutting code and trying crazy new techs, Jude loves creating Littlest
Pet Shop YouTube videos with his daughter, barely managing to compete in
Starcraft's gold league with his son, and enjoying a nice glass of wine with his
beautiful, amazing, and supportive wife.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Stopwatch (with Lap Counter) 9
Creating our project 9
What have we here? 12
The UI structure 12
Why do we use views? 13
Now on to the code 13
It all starts with a window 14
Displaying the current time with big numbers 14
We can now do our first run 16
Starting and stopping the stopwatch 16
We see the buttons, but they don't do much yet! 18
Stopwatch is not defined, but it's okay 19
Keeping up with lap times 21
Capturing lap times 21
Showing lap times in a scrollable list 22
Resetting the timer 23
Summary 25
Chapter 2: Sili, the assistant that just listens 27
Creating our project 28
The user interface structure 28
Coding the application 29
Let's do some scaffolding 29
Table of Contents
Let's see how this looks 33
Recording with a click on a single button 34
What good is a buffer if we're not using it? 35
Listing stored recordings 36
Be sure to call it! 38
Listening to a recording 38
Deleting old recordings 39
Summary 41
Chapter 3: The To-do List 43
Creating our project 44
The user interface structure 44
Let's get this show on the road 45
The database 45
Defining the structure 46
Implementing our model 46
The user interface 47
The header view 48
The tasklist 49
The button bar 49
Let's have a look 50
Adding a new task 54
Listing all the existing tasks 56
Before executing the code 57
Marking a task as completed 58
Filtering out completed tasks 59
Activating the filter 60
Deleting the completed tasks 61
Close the door, you're letting the heat out 62
Summary 62
Chapter 4: Interactive E-book for iPad 63
The user interface structure 63
Before writing any code 64
A native module 65
Where do I get it? 66
Creating our project 67
Adding the module to our project 68
Now we can code 69
The user interface 69
Importing the PageFlip module 69
Adding some colorful views 70
Making sure the pages actually turn 71
Orientation 71
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
The rich HTML page 73
The map view 74
The video player 75
Final assembly 76
Summary 77
Chapter 5: You've Got to Know When to Hold 'em 79
Creating our project 80
The application structure 80
The main application window 82
Moving on to the code 82
Coding the user interface 83
Sparing our fingers 86
Preparing for our first run 87
The portfolio management window 88
Coding what we have designed 89
The form at the top 90
The stock list 93
Navigating between the two windows 94
Let's see if it works 95
Moving stocks around 96
Saving our portfolio 96
Keeping up on our objective 97
Portfolio management 98
Saving 98
Retrieving 98
Updating a particular stock 99
How much is our portfolio worth? 99
Wiring the preference service to the UI 100
Adding a new stock to the list 100
Creating a custom look for our table rows 101
One more thing before we can test 102
Saving all that 103
What if there are stocks already? 104
Retrieving the stock values from the Internet 105
Knowing where to get it 105
Let's see what we get from it 106
Retrieving one stock 106
Creating an HTTPClient object 107
Opening the HTTPClient object 108
Sending the request itself 108
Retrieving all stocks in a single call 108
Calling the web service 109
[ iii ]