My Experience Developing with Telerik NativeScript

I’ve been using Telerik NativeScript for a few months now and figured it would now be appropriate to share my experience and opinions of the framework. I’ve already compared NativeScript against Ionic Framework, but this article is going to be a little different.

I have no plans to make comparisons against other frameworks in this article. Instead we’re going to take a look at what NativeScript can and can’t do and how I feel about everything. This article will be opinion based more than anything.

Send Emails In Ionic Framework Via The Mailgun API

A few years ago a wrote a tutorial for sending emails in an Ionic Framework Android and iOS application. The tutorial works great, but it requires that a mail application be used to finalize the send. In other words, you can set default values for email fields, but you still need to select Gmail or similar to actually send the email.

A popular question I receive is how to send emails without launching an email application. There are a few solutions to this. You could either set up your own server that sends emails and access it via an API, or you can use a service like the Mailgun.

We’re going to see how to send emails using the Mailgun API service.

Use The Device Camera In An Ionic 2 Android And iOS App

As I continue to port my Ionic Framework tutorials to Ionic 2, I figured it was time to discuss how to make use of the device camera within an application. There are often needs to obtain pictures within an application. Maybe you’re creating an application like Imgur, or maybe you just want to be able to obtain a profile picture. Like I mentioned, I had written a camera tutorial a few years back on how to use the camera in an Ionic Framework application.

This time around we’re going to see how to snap pictures within an Ionic 2 Android and iOS mobile application.

Deploy A NativeScript App With A Pre-Filled SQLite Database

Recently I wrote an article regarding how to use SQLite in a NativeScript Android and iOS mobile application. In my previous tutorial the assumption was that the database would be created fresh. However, what if you want to ship a pre-filled SQLite database with your application? Maybe you have 10,000 records that you prefer not to have to download from a remote web server, or maybe there is another reason. Having a pre-populated database is fair game.

We’re going to take a look at what it takes to ship a NativeScript application with a SQLite database that already contains data.

Host A Podcast For Cheap On Amazon’s S3 Service

This year was the year that I started two different podcasts, one titled The Polyglot Developer Podcast and the other being The NoSQL Database Podcast. I’ve been getting a few questions regarding this, but people are asking where I’m hosting the episodes.

This is a great question!

I’m actually hosting these podcasts using Amazon’s S3 service because it is cheap and incredibly easy to get set up with. I’m going to walk through the steps I took to make this possible, and share the fees that I’m experiencing as of right now.

Using Local Notifications In Your NativeScript Mobile App

When developing mobile apps, at some point in time you may find yourself needing to show a background notification to your users. There are two types of notifications, one being the push notification which is sent from a remote server and the other being local notifications that are triggered from within the application.

We’re going to focus on local notifications here.

So when might you need to use a local notification? There are many scenarios. Let’s say you’re creating an app that communicates with iBeacons. When you’re within proximity maybe you want to trigger a notification to the user. There are many other scenarios that I won’t get into.

We’re going to see a basic example on how to use local notifications in a NativeScript Android and iOS mobile application.

Send Emails In A NativeScript App Via The Mailgun API

I get this question a lot, not necessarily for NativeScript, but for other mobile frameworks. The question is, how do you send emails from within your Android and iOS application without launching one of the already installed mail apps? In other words how do you send emails via a custom form within the application or in the background?

A solution to this question would be to use a backend web server that can send mail and create an API endpoint to it that can be accessed from your mobile app. However, this solution takes work and other resources. Instead you can make use of a transactional email service.

There are many of these email services available, but for this example we’re going to look at using the Mailgun service in a NativeScript application.