Display Toast Notifications In A NativeScript Angular Application

Back when I had just started working with NativeScript, about a year ago, I wrote a tutorial for displaying Toast notifications in Android. While still valid, it demonstrated these notifications using vanilla NativeScript and JavaScript. Not only that, but the notifications were only for Android. Since the framework has become significantly better, I figured it would be a good idea to demonstrate these Toast notifications in a NativeScript Angular application.

We’re going to see how to use a plugin to display Toast notifications in a NativeScript Android and iOS application built with Angular.

Control An Onion Omega2 IoT Device With Websocket Communication

I’ve been all about websockets lately. Up until recently RESTful APIs have been my whole world, but they don’t accomplish everything and what they do accomplish may not be the best fit. Not too long ago I got my Onion Omega2 Internet of Things (IoT) device with a bunch of accessories and I’ve been playing around with them non-stop. Previously I had written about displaying system information on the OLED expansion, but I wanted to take it to the next level and display data received through a websocket.

Realistically you probably wouldn’t use a websocket to display data on an IoT OLED screen, but it opens the door to new possibilities. More specifically in the realm of home automation and anything else that needs to be very responsive or real-time. For example, what if you wanted to turn on the lights in your house, but are working with a low bandwidth and low spec IoT device that can’t process large RESTful payloads very fast. The Onion Omega2 is an example of such device and while we’re not going to explore home automation in this example, we’re going to see how to do websocket communication.

Using Modal Dialogs In A NativeScript Angular Mobile Application

Recently I was prototyping an application in NativeScript with Angular, but was feeling too lazy to set up the Angular Router to do multiple page navigation. Typically when I run into this scenario I use the prompt dialog, but this time I needed something more than data input. This lead me to the modal dialog.

With the modal dialog I can create a popup with pretty much anything on it and when I close it I can pass data back to the parent view. We’re going to see how to use a custom modal within our iOS and Android NativeScript application built with Angular.

Accessing The Device Camera In A NativeScript Angular Application

More than a year ago when I started playing around with vanilla NativeScript I encountered the camera module. Previously I had even written a tutorial on using the camera in a vanilla NativeScript application. The NativeScript framework has come a long way and now includes Angular support so I figured it would be a good idea to see how to use the camera with this framework.

We’re going to see how to access the native device camera and take pictures within a NativeScript Android and iOS application built with Angular.

Learning The Angular Platform As Well As NativeScript In Ng-Book 2

I’ve kept this on the down-low the past few months, but I’m pleased to announce that a chapter I’ve contributed has been included in the incredibly popular ng-book 2!

The chapter I’ve contributed is a deep dive into NativeScript development for the Angular developer. After learning every possible thing about Angular development you get to take your skills to the next level and apply them towards the development native mobile applications for Android and iOS.

Automatically Setting Your Profile Picture In A NativeScript Angular App

It doesn’t just take a good idea when it comes to making a great mobile application. Sometimes it takes a little flair in the user interface department to make a good mobile application into a great mobile application. For example, when you have a user login screen, you could just ask for username and password credentials, or you could include profile picture information as well. Which do you think would be better?

Gravatar offers a global avatar registry based on user email address. In other words, you upload your profile picture to Gravatar, associate it with your email address, and then that same avatar can be used in any application that uses Gravatar. WordPress, the platform this blog is hosted on, uses Gravatar for my profile picture for example.

We’re going to see how to automatically set the user profile picture in a NativeScript Angular application using the Gravatar API.

Communicate With Websockets In A NativeScript Angular Application

I’ve been playing around with sockets and websockets recently. Not too long ago I wrote about creating a real-time chat application using Golang and Angular that made use of websockets. In that example we created a chat server using the Go programming language and a client facing web application using Angular. The communication between the two used websockets to keep things real-time.

What if we wanted to create a native mobile application for Android and iOS that communicated via websockets to our server or any other websocket server? Using NativeScript, it is very possible to create a mobile client that works with the Golang with Angular example as seen previously.