Posted: March 4th, 2013 | Author: Charley Cowens | Filed under: Tutorials, Video | Tags: PhoneGap, training, Video | No Comments »
The last piece is in for the Tiggzi self-training course of videos. We’ve now added:
Lesson 5: Tiggzi & PhoneGap Capabilities
In the video, we show how to take advantage of the PhoneGap API with ready-to-use “device services” and data mapping in the Tiggzi app builder. For this lesson, we build a simple contacts app and go through the steps of testing it in an Android emulator.
Here is the complete set of lessons from the video page on our help site:
- Lesson 1: The UI Builder
- Lesson 2: Data Mapping to a Service
- Lesson 3: Using the Tiggzi Database Service
- Lesson 4: Web Service Caching
- Lesson 5: Tiggzi & PhoneGap Capabilities
- Lesson 6: A Windows 8 App with the Twitter API
Each lesson links to a YouTube video. For each lesson there is also a link to a Tiggzi backup ZIP of the finished lesson app, which you can open as a new project within Tiggzi.
We’ll be updating the series soon, so chime in with any suggestions
Posted: February 5th, 2013 | Author: Charley Cowens | Filed under: Tutorials, Video | 5 Comments »
We’ve started a Tiggzi self-training course of videos. These lessons are linkable now from our video page on our help site:
- Lesson 1: The UI Builder
- Lesson 2: Data Mapping to a Service
- Lesson 3: Using the Tiggzi Database Service
- Lesson 4: Web Service Caching
Each lesson links to a YouTube video. For each lesson there is also a link to a Tiggzi backup ZIP of the finished lesson app, which you can open as a new project within Tiggzi.
What’s next?
- Lesson 5: Advanced PhoneGap API with Tiggzi
Stay tuned!
Posted: January 29th, 2013 | Author: Charley Cowens | Filed under: Events, Webinar | Tags: events, webinar | 7 Comments »
UPDATE: The date for the webinar has been changed to:
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST
Tiggzi isn’t just a mobile app builder. As a mobile app platform, it also provides a growing list of back-end services (like a database service) for seamless integration into the apps. Join Max Katz, Tiggzi developer evangelist, for this hands-on demo and overview of the currently available back-end services and the road map for the future. There will be plenty of time set aside at the end for Q&A.
Thursday, February 7, 2013 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST
Register
Posted: January 10th, 2013 | Author: Charley Cowens | Filed under: Events, Windows 8 | Tags: events, Windows 8 | 4 Comments »
Join Max Katz, Tiggzi developer evangelist, for this quick review of how to build a Windows 8 app using the Tiggzi app builder. Then, in an expanded Q&A session, Max will hold “office hours” to answer any questions you might have about Tiggzi.
When: Thursday, January 17, 2013 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/214517057
Posted: December 17th, 2012 | Author: Charley Cowens | Filed under: API, Plugin | Tags: API, Plugin | No Comments »
We’ve just made the ESPN Headlines API and Sample App plug-in available. The API allows you to interact with ESPN’s various news stories. (ESPN publishes hundreds of unique pieces of text content each day, covering dozens of sports and hundreds of athletes and teams.) To make it easier to use the API to make mobile apps in Tiggzi, we created a plug-in with some ready-made services (interfaces) to use the ESPN API.
To add this plug-in to an app, you will just need to follow these steps in Tiggzi:
- From the Tiggzi builder, select Create New and then From Plug-in.
- Click the check box for Sports/ESPN Headlines API and Sample App, and then click on the Import selected plugins button.
- Open Services/ESPN_Settings file and set your API key. If you don’t have, get one from http://developer.espn.com/
Once you’ve created a new app based on this plug-in, you actually have a simple ready-to-run demo app. Just click the Test button in the right upper corner of the screen to see it work. In this tutorial, we’ll first walk through the sample app included with the plug-in. Then, we’ll show you, “under the hood,” some of how to the API is used in developing the app.
The App
To find news you are interested in using the app, you follow these steps:
- On the start page, select a sport (e.g., Golf) from the available sports displayed in the list:
- You will then be sent to the Leagues page which contains the list of existing leagues (if applicable). Select the Professional Golf Association league:
- The Headlines page shows. The headlines are listed by titles and preview images. Select one of the headlines.
- The Details page will display a short description of the news with the cover photo (if available). At the end is the URL of the original article on the ESPN web site.
- Use the Back button to return to the previous pages and search for other news.
Under the Hood
Now that we’ve walked through the app, let’s take a peek under the hood.
Services
Services from the plug-in are linked to UI components as part of the design of the app. The following REST services that are defined in the ESPN API plug-in are used in the app.
ESPN_SportsList service
The ESPN_SportsList service is used for getting the list of available sports. REST Service Properties displays the URL, main settings, and whether a proxy is used as shown below:
Request Parameters contains the parameter sent to the ESPN service:
The service can be instantly tested and the response created automatically based on the return response (JSON):
Response parameters:
The other services are set in the same way with their own parameters.
ESPN_SportByName service
This service is used to get a list of leagues for a given sport:
The {sportName} value is substituted in mapping when the service is running based on the selected sport:
ESPN_LeagueHeadlinesByAbbreviation service
This service is used to get the headlines for that sports league.
{sportName}, and {abbreveationName} are set when the service is running:
ESPN_GetNewsById service
This service is used for getting the details for each news item:
Mapping the UI to the Services
The final part in the app design is mapping service parameters to UI components. Here’s an example of this in action showing response parameters being mapped to output components:
Posted: April 23rd, 2012 | Author: Charley Cowens | Filed under: Features, New release | Tags: features, iOS, jQuery Mobile, PhoneGap, release | 3 Comments »
The Tiggzi team keeps making the great even better, as you can see in this latest release of Tiggzi Mobile App Builder. New features include everything from iOS binary builds to updated support for jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap. Read on to find out more. Read the rest of this entry »