Learn Algolia, Nativescript and Particle

Today’s users expect great things from their search experiences — speed, relevance, and usability, to name a few. Algolia provides developers with out-of-the-box and customizable search experiences that are a joy to build.

This introductory course on the Algolia search solution focuses on the user-facing part of search. Using the Algolia InstantSearch.js front-end library, we’ll see how to build an engaging search experience in no time. (28 minutes, to be exact.) 

**Prerequisites:** 
You don’t need previous experience with search to follow this course — we’ll use an example index with an e-commerce data set preconfigured. We will work mainly in JavaScript, so basic JS knowledge is expected.

If you want to play with your own index settings and data set, you can [create a free Algolia account here](https://www.algolia.com/users/sign_up/hacker/?utm_medium=link&utm_source=egghead&utm_campaign=education), but this is not required to follow along with this first course. 

Algolia's full suite APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences for their customers across all platforms and devices. Type a query. Click a link. Open an app. Everything your customers do sends a signal about what they want. Algolia decodes that intent to deliver the right content - instantly.

algolia

Getting Started with Algolia InstantSearch.js

NativeScript has the ability to write Objective C, Swift and Java apis directly from JavaScript and TypeScript. 

In this course, we will learn how to code directly against these native api’s with NativeScript for Angular. Many libraries are written and published in these languages. With NativeScript you are no longer limited to just JavaScript based libs, but have direct access to these api’s right from JavaScript/TypeScript. Let’s look at how to include these native libraries internally to your project as well as build public plugins to share with the community. 

We will cover some considerations with Objective C and Swift based libraries as well as Java/Android libraries. You can think of CocoaPod, Gradle, and Android Arsenal like npm for native libs. iOS libraries can be found via CocoaPods, Android libraries can be found via Gradle or Android Arsenal. 

Let’s also cover how to write custom view components based on native libs since there are considerations for both iOS and Android. Lastly we will learn how to best handle cases where a plugin/library only supports 1 platform.

Open source framework for building truly native mobile apps with Angular, TypeScript or JavaScript.

nativescript

Use Objective C, Swift and Java api’s in NativeScript for Angular iOS and Android apps 

In this course, we will learn how to use the core layouts for NativeScript apps. We will start with the basic principles of NativeScript layouts using XML. This course will use the app templates provided from the NativeScript framework and installed using [the NativeScript CLI](https://egghead.io/lessons/angular-1-x-set-up-a-native-app-project-with-the-nativescript-cli).

We will cover the following layouts: `StackLayout`, `WrapLayout`, `GridLayout`, `DockLayout`, `AbsoluteLayout` and `FlexboxLayout`. Understanding the concepts and usage of UI layouts in NativeScript is key for a great app.

Build Basic NativeScript App Templates

In this course, we will learn how to work with NativeScript for Angular. We will start with the basic fundamentals of getting setup to run our app in the iOS Simulator in addition to an Android emulator using GenyMotion (https://www.genymotion.com/). Understand how to build your native mobile views with NativeScript XML and how to style them with CSS. Using the NativeScript for Angular starter template provides a nice setup out of the box including the core theme which provides handy CSS classes to work with speeding up view building. For page navigation, we will learn how to use the Angular Router to configure a flexible routing setup for our app. The ListView component is a powerful and highly performant native control for handling your lists powered by the UITableView on iOS and native ListView widget on Android. We’ll highlight how you can use RxJS Observables with our native views. Let's also take a look at integrating npm plugins to enrich the UI component library. Lastly, a round up of styling how-to's including integrating SASS for custom app theme creation as well as creating a live app theme switcher.

This Angular course assumes a solid understanding of the fundamentals.
We have Intermediary Angular courses including topics on [Dependency Injection](https://egghead.io/courses/angular-dependency-injection-di-explained), [Components, Directives](https://egghead.io/courses/building-angular-components), [Forms](https://egghead.io/courses/intro-to-angular-forms), [Router](https://egghead.io/courses/intro-to-angular-router), and [Animating Web Apps](https://egghead.io/courses/animate-angular-web-applications)

Angular is a development platform for creating applications using modern web standards. Angular includes a wealth of essential features such as mobile gestures, animations, filtering, routing, data binding, security, internationalization, and beautiful UI components. It's extremely modular, lightweight, and easy to learn.

angular

Create Native Mobile Apps with NativeScript for Angular

We will learn how to add an Android library to our project and translate it’s Java api to NativeScript. For this lesson, we will look at [Filestack’s Android SDK](https://github.com/filestack/filepicker-android) built with Gradle. Specifically, we will cover how to immediately start working with the library even when a [NativeScript](/q/nativescript) plugin does not exist for it.

Use an Android library in NativeScript for Angular using Java apis

Learn how to use the `nsRouterLinkActive` directive with options to control styling when a route is active in [NativeScript](/q/nativescript).

Add styles to active routes using nsRouterLinkActive

We will learn how to install an Objective C library distributed via a [CocoaPod](https://cocoapods.org) into our project and expose its native api to our app. Specifically, we will cover how to immediately start working with the library even when a [NativeScript](/q/nativescript) plugin does not exist for it. Take for example [Filestack](https://filestack.com), a really powerful file uploading api that provides an SDK written in [JavaScript](/q/javascript) for the web, but also offers native SDK's for iOS and Android. Let's take a look at how to code right against this [native iOS SDK](https://filestack.com/docs/sdks/ios).

Use an Objective C library in NativeScript for Angular iOS app

The stats widget is used to display useful insights about the current results like the number of hits and the time taken to compute the results inside the engine.

Inform users about the current result set with Instantsearch JS Stats widget

The first step to implement Algolia on the front end using Instantsearch : importing and setting up the library with your credentials. This is what will allow the library to initiate the connection to Algolia servers and the first step to complete before adding some useful widgets.

Set up the Instantsearch JS Library

In this lesson we’ll build a search experience reduced to it’s 2 essential components : a search input and the displayed results. As simple as it is, to build this from scratch would require a fair amount of work. Between listening to the input, making the api call, parsing and displaying the result... To build this using Algolia’s Instantsearch library requires a few lines of code with simply two widgets: the Searchbox and the Hits widget.

Search an Algolia Index with Instantsearch JS searchbox and hits widgets

Displaying barebones Hits won’t catch your user’s attention. The UI is key to provide a good search experience and hits are the meat of this experience so they need extra attention. By using Mustache templating we’ll see how to display rich results to your users. 

Display Rich results with templates in the Hits widget for Instantsearch JS

Every  good search UX make users understand instantly why a given hit is being displayed as part of the result set. One way to achieve that is to highlight the keywords from the query directly inside the Hits. This is built in the API JSON response and in this video we’ll explain how to leverage it easily.

Highlight Keywords in Query Results using the Instantsearch JS Hits Widget

Searching is obviously not limited to inputting text in a searchbox. If your dataset allows it Algolia can leverage of attributes and values. To make use of those facets on the front end, one of the most common widget that you can find in a search UI is the refinement list. With this widget, the user can filter the dataset based on facets. This widget only displays the most relevant facets for the current search context.

Filter Datasets with Facets using Instantsearch JS to add a Refinement List

The hierarchical menu widget is used to create a navigation based on a hierarchy of facet attributes. We generally implement it for categories with subcategories.

Browse results based on a hierarchy of Facets (HierarchicalMenu) in Instantsearch JS

The range input is a simple but useful widget that allows a user filter the results by selecting a numeric range with a minimum and maximum input. In an e-commerce website for instance, this widget would be useful to limit the results where the price is comprised between $X and $Y.

Refine a dataset using a numeric range in Instantsearch JS with the Range Input widget

When performing a complex query, based on several active facets and filters, its tedious for the user to start from scratch if she has to unset all refinements one by one. Thanks to the clearAll widget, this task becomes a one click action for the user and is trivial to implement for us developers as it requires no configuration.

Reset all active refinements with the clearRefinements Instantsearch JS widget

When you have a large result set for a specific query and usually not displaying more than a few dozen simultaneously. Pagination is a popular widget that allows the user to switch between pages of the results.

Paginate Large Sets of Algolia Data with Instantsearch JS Pagination widget

All Instantsearch widgets are added to the page in a similar fashion and they also share a number of common options that we’ll cover in this video. We will be playing with a dummy menu widget that won’t be part of the final project just to showcase all those options.

How to Add Instantsearch JS widgets and their common attributes 

The default core theme comes preinstalled and ready to go with every new project. Learn how to use some of the many helpful utility classes that are provided like common `btn` classes for Buttons, `h1`, `h2`, etc. Label classes and convenient `p-10` or `m-10` (shorthand margin/padding) classes ranging from 0 - 30. You can learn all about the rich options you get here: http://docs.nativescript.org/ui/theme

Style NativeScript views using the default core theme

Java has been around a long time and when it comes to Android, you will encounter some structures that may throw you for a loop on how to code against with NativeScript. Let’s examine a few common Java/Android api constructs you may encounter and how to translate them to NativeScript. Learn how to get references to local files in your app using the ‘file-system’ module as well as how to take advantage of NativeScript’s Observable class to send notification events from one class to another. Lastly, look at considerations with Angular’s NgZone when handling your native libraries data events to update component view bindings.

Translate common Java/Android APIs into NativeScript for Angular Android apps

Objective C is a very interesting programming language which offers a lot of power as well as interesting paradigms. Let’s look at some Objective C api’s and how they translate to NativeScript. In particular, let’s learn how to wire up iOS delegates using [Filestack's FSPickerDelegate](https://github.com/filestack/FSPicker#fspickerdelegate) as an example. We will also look at handling WeakRef’s and iterating an NSArray.

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