Learn Electron, Http and Ios

A lot of the time, web apps are built primarily with the desktop layout in consideration, and the mobile layout suffers as a result. In this course we are going to discuss using features of user interface which are optimised for mobile devices.

We are going to discuss CSS features that make a big difference and build entire components that work great on mobile devices and browsers. We are going to take into account browser support to ensure our users are getting the experience we want them to.

More and more of our users depend on their mobile device to use our web apps. With this in mind, we are going to look at how to optimise the components we build for smaller viewports, and how to ensure our customer gets an optimised version of our web app for their device.

We are going to discuss different ways we can view, test, and debug our web app in a mobile setting so that we know what we are seeing is what our user is seeing, because sometimes a desktop browser emulating a mobile device just isn’t enough.


HTML 5 is the structure of our web pages. It is the markup that represents the DOM (document object model).

html

Optimize User Experience for Mobile Devices and Browsers

Electron is a framework that makes it easy to create cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Electron and open-source tools give you everything you need to create a compelling desktop app--native user interface elements like menus and dialogs, installers, auto-updates, and more. 

This course will teach you the core concepts of Electron so that you can leverage it to create your own desktop application for macOS and Windows. 

We'll go over:
- Creating user interfaces in Electron (both HTML based and native)
- Understanding Electron's multi-process architecture 
- Shipping your app to users

Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

electron

Build a desktop application with Electron

In this course, we will learn the fundamentals of the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) by exploring several popular HTTP APIs such as the GitHub API. Starting with the basic structure of an HTTP request and response, we will then delve into the specifics of each element of the request/response messages. Using concrete examples from these APIs, we will cover request methods, response status codes, messages headers, and message bodies. Along the way, you'll learn about specific message headers, such as `Cache-Control`, and `Cookie`  and how they control the behavior of clients/browsers and HTTP API services.

This course uses HTTPie, if you would like to follow along with the instructor you can download the client [here](https://httpie.org/).

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. It is a generic, stateless, protocol which can be used for many tasks beyond its use for hypertext, such as name servers and distributed object management systems, through extension of its request methods, error codes and headers.

http

Understand the Basics of HTTP

As developers, we're often working closely with APIs to make requests in the browser or on the backend with a server, but we might not always know exactly how those requests work or how they should look.

Postman is a tool that lets us create, manage, and test API endpoints all within a UI so we can wrangle our APIs and understand how they work.

Create, Manage, and Test API Requests with Postman

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

nativescript

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.

Use Objective C Delegates in NativeScript for Angular iOS apps

One of the exciting benefits you have with NativeScript is the ability to write native code (Java and Objective C) directly in JavaScript/TypeScript allowing you to create a consistent high level api over top of both underlying iOS Objective C/Swift and Android Java apis. In this lesson, we will look at how to design a consistent api that taps into the appropriate native api’s on the target platforms using underlying native libraries.

Develop a consistent plugin api across your Android and iOS NativeScript app

To prepare your development environment to code against native apis such as Objective C, Swift and Java, let's learn how to [install tns-platform-declarations](https://www.npmjs.com/package/tns-platform-declarations) to provide rich intellisense support for all the native iOS and Android api’s. This lesson will cover how to modify your tsconfig.json and references.d.ts properly to ensure working with native api’s is smooth and as helpful as possible.

Prepare for native iOS and Android api intellisense with NativeScript

React is one of the web’s most popular frameworks for building JavaScript applications. 

If you know what you’re doing, React can drastically simplify how you build, use, and maintain code.

Whether you’re a React newbie or you’re ready for advanced techniques, you can level-up with egghead. Explore our in-depth courses, lessons, and community resources to build more powerful applications and crack open your career.

react

In this lesson we'll explore debugging our React Native application in an actual iOS device.

React Native: Debugging on an iOS Device

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 HTTP GET & HEAD methods are used to retrieve information about a resource. The GET method will retrieve the metadata about the resource, encoded in the HTTP headers, as well as a representation of the resource itself in the message body (e.g. a JSON document with fields that describe a user). The HEAD method behaves like GET, but only retrieves the status and headers; this can be useful when you need some metadata about a resource (e.g. the Last-Modification time), but don't want to waste time or bandwidth fetch the resource itself in the message body. Finally, we discuss the idempotent and safe natures of these HTTP methods.

Use HTTP GET & HEAD Methods

The 2xx family of status codes are used in HTTP responses to indicate success. Beyond the generic `200 OK` status code, there are a set of more specific success status codes that provide additional context or details about the specific nature of the successful request/response. We will explore the available success status codes, and what additional information they convey.

Understand 2xx HTTP Status Code Responses

The body of an HTTP request or response can serve many functions, from including the input data to a POST request, to returning varied representations of a resource in response to a GET request. This lesson details how message bodies are handled in requests and responses, and the associated HTTP headers that provide metadata about the included message body.

Examine HTTP Message Bodies

The HTTP DELETE method is used to request that the server perform a delete operation on the specified resource with resource specific semantics. Behind the scenes, the delete operation may result in a removal of a file from the filesystem, or an update to the database to reflect the change. Because multiple requests to delete the same resource has the same effect as a single one, the DELETE method is considered ‘idempotent’, but not considered safe.

Use HTTP DELETE Method

The HTTP OPTIONS method is used to request information about the communication options available for the target resource. The response may include an Allow header indicating allowed HTTP methods on the resource, or various Cross Origin Resource Sharing headers. The HTTP OPTIONS method is both safe and idempotent, as it is intended only for use in querying information about ways to interact with a resource.

Use HTTP OPTIONS Method

The HTTP PATCH method is used to make modifications to existing resources. In particular, it is designed for "partial updates", as opposed to replacing an entire resource using the HTTP PUT method. Although certain HTTP PATCH requests may behave idempotently, this is not true of all possible PATCH requests, so this request method is not idempotent, nor considered safe. The request body of a PATCH request may be simple `application/json`, or a more specialized type, such as `application/json-patch+json`.

Use HTTP PATCH Method

The HTTP POST method is used to request the resource process the included request message body representation according to resource specific semantics. HTTP POST is loosely defined by definition, and can be used in many different scenarios, such as creating a new resource based on the request representation, appending data to an existing representation, or generic processing of an HTML form submission. Due to the nature of POST performing arbitrary resource specific processing, it is considered neither ‘safe’, nor ‘idempotent’.

Use HTTP POST Method

The 4xx family of status codes are used in HTTP responses to inform the client/browser of an error relating to the user’s request. The status codes in this family are intended to indicate a problem that should be possible to fix or remedy by the user or developer. For example, a 401 Unauthorized status code lets the user/developer know they need to provide authorization information with their request; should they re-submit the request with the additional authorization header, the request may succeed. We will explore the available client error status codes, and what additional information they convey.

Understand HTTP 4xx Client Error Response Codes

The 5xx family of status codes are used in HTTP responses to inform the client that the server experienced an error. The status codes in this family are intended to indicate server or network errors that do not pertaining to a problem with client or the client’s request. For example, a response with a 503 Service Unavailable status code is unlikely to be resolved by resubmitting the request with different content type or additional headers. We will explore the available server error status codes, and what additional information they convey.

Understand 5xx Server Error Response Codes

In this lesson we’ll load javascript into the BrowserWindow and display the Electron version on the page. Loading javascript into Electron is almost exactly the same as loading it into the browser, however it is a best practice to use the `require` syntax.

Load JavaScript in an Electron BrowserWindow

A main menu is a hallmark of native desktop applications. Electron makes it easy to create native menus and menu items in JavaScript.

We’ll go over creating a menu template using `Menu.buildFromTemplate` and then setting it as the main application menu via `Menu.setApplicationMenu`. 

Create a native desktop system menu with the Electron Menu module

In this lesson we'll learn about `dialog.showMessageBox` . This is the most basic Electron dialog but it offers lots of customization options, such as `type`, `icon`, `title`, and `buttons`. Some of these options vary by platform, so we'll also look at how things differ between Windows and Mac. 

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