Using Postman To Troubleshoot RESTful API Requests

A follower of my blog recently came to me asking for help with their Magento API service. If you’re unfamiliar with Magento, it is an Ecommerce solution by eBay that uses Oauth 1.0a to handle API requests. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog you’ll notice I had done a previous post on Oauth 1.0a, and it was everything, but fun.

So how does a newbie go about making quick tests to Oauth providers or RESTful APIs without a lot of stress? If you’re using Google Chrome like I am, there is a nifty application called Postman which does very thorough API testing.

Parse An XML Response With Node.js

A while back I wrote an article on how to parse XML using PHP. Since then I’ve slowly been transitioning away from PHP, yet XML continues to be a burden that I can’t get rid of.

Not all APIs return JSON so it is the application developers responsibility to handle the XML. Lucky for us there is a convenient package for Node.js called xml2js that will handle all the parsing for us.

OTP Safe for Chrome Released

If you’ve been keeping up with my work, you’ll remember in 2014 I released an app called OTP Safe for Android and iOS. This was a hybrid application created with Ionic Framework, that manages time-based one-time passwords (TOTP) commonly used for two-factor authentication (2FA).

I’m starting 2015 off with a bang by releasing my first ever Google Chrome extension. OTP Safe for Chrome was designed to mimic the functionality of the iOS and Android versions, but for laptop and desktop computers.

Upload Files To A Remote Server Using Ionic Framework

I was recently asked by one of my subscribers if I knew how to upload files from an Android or iOS device to a remote server using Ionic Framework. My initial response was no, but it didn’t stop me from taking a whack at it.

Using the AngularJS extension set, ngCordova, with Ionic Framework and the Apache Cordova File Transfer plugin, you can easily upload files to a remote server.

Hooks With Apache Cordova Mobile Applications

If you develop Apache Cordova applications long enough, you’re eventually going to notice little things that you feel you can improve in the development / deployment lifecycle. Making use of hooks in your Apache Cordova project can yield many great things for your project.

Make List Items Swipeable In Ionic Framework

It is an expectation of modern mobile applications to have a fancy UI with smooth animations and gesture controls. Users want to be able to drag things, see smooth transitions, popups and other neat UI wizardry.

A common UI feature, as found in apps like Gmail, are swipe-able list items. Whether it be swiping to show buttons or swiping to perform tasks, it adds an additional layer of coolness.

Using Ionic Framework on top of Apache Cordova gives us access to swipe-able elements in the ion-list directive.

Syncing Data With Firebase Using Ionic Framework

Lately there has been a lot of buzz about Firebase and now that it has been bought by Google, it is probably only going to get bigger. Firebase has a very thorough datastore API making it very useful for applications that can leverage JavaScript.

Now you might be asking yourself, well can’t I use the Dropbox datastore API that you mentioned in one of your previous articles? You absolutely can, however, Firebase is a far better solution when creating a service because the data isn’t sandboxed to a specific user like Dropbox.

In this example, we’re going to create a simple Apache Cordova Android and iOS application using Ionic Framework.