What's the difference in using the android API and the REST API? Are they equivalent? Can I do the same thing in both?
What are the limitations of one and the other?
I intend to start developing a mobile APP with HERE MAP.
There are 2 flavours of the HERE Mobile SDKs at the moment: Starter and Premium edition.
The starter edition is more or less identical to the REST interfaces and is using it also under the hood. It takes away all the boilerplate code you'd have to write (map tiling, fetching tiles and tile scrolling, REST requests to al the services and converting it into local objects, and so on).
The premium edition is using the HERE Hybrid engine instead. This means a lot of the services also work offline and run directly on your device, the mapdata is a special vector format that is also downloaded on your device, and you use online services and offline services mixed.
The premium edition has (beside offline capabilities) also some additional features you won't get in REST or in starter SDK, like turn by turn guidance or LiveSight.
Related
While googling for the confusion of mine, I didn't found the satisfactory resource.
so the question which I was searching for was, What is the difference between offline-first approached mobile apps and PWAs.
As to my level of understanding any mobile app lets say; a react-native app with redux in use or with SQLITE or with realm can be made as a offline-first approached app.
And with PWAs the service worker(of which i have less knowledge) makes all the offline user-interaction and at last when the net connectivity is confirmed the data is fetch or retrieved as required by PWAs.
Though I am not mentioning about other features PWAs can perform(again of which I have less knowledge). And even when the modern browser can only support for PWAs, why there is a hype of PWAs in todays trends?
Please guide me through with any mistake with my question. Any kind of information, knowledge or link to answer my query is much appreciated.
You can read the first of a series of articles about PWAs to get more details about PWAs features and their benefits.
The two concepts are not mutual exclusive. PWAs, thanks to the Service Worker and caching strategies, are able to implement/provide an offline first approach by caching target assets or data responses.
You can however provide an offline first approach also by using other technologies, without introducing a PWA.
The hype behind PWAs is due to the many extra functionalities we can add to a web app, making it behave and look like a native solution. Think just to the advantages of having your frontend team developing a web app that with very little efforts seems almost entirely a native app. And this without having to hire a dedicated native team (iOS/Android).
However PWAs are not the silver bullet for any scenario. They still have limitations that only native apps can provide (eg. SMS capabilities and accessing to the device contacts), even if there are different APIs that aim to solve these gaps, like Google Contact Picker API.
Most of the major apps till recent times was targeted towards countries having decent internet connections. With access to internet spiking in developing countries, most untapped market is coming to light. Though these parts have internet access now , the connectivity problems are plenty. So, to give the best experience for this new brand of customers, we need apps that can run offline
Offline First Approach :
This approach mostly caters to any device which can run offline until a reliable connection is interfaced. As developers , this would mean build the capabiltity to store information in the device through databases, caches or any other local storage approach.
And then when the user opens the app (desktop/mobile) , these run as normal as possible. Just give the user a heads-up that it is not in sync with the latest.
So, an offline first approach can be
Android native app with an offline capability
IOS App w/ offline features
Internet dependent Desktop app w/ offline support
WebApp w/ offline functionality : PWA is the latest
PWA (Progressive Web Apps) :
A PWA is a Web App which has the capability to run offline. With low cost devices (memory deficient, low processing power ) used by many of these users, it's imperative that people installing new native apps will reduce. Also, it's hard to convince people to download and install a new app.
That is where a Web app can be the game changer. A Progressive Web App which has native experience and offline capabilities could drive more users to try a new offering. Adding to that, without forcing a user to install one more app , a link can be easily marketed.
A Progressive Web App is a subset of the offline first approach. With browsers adding more capabilities to access native functions like Contacts as #Francesco pointed out , PWA might will be the first step towards modern app development to release any new feature.
I am exploring ways to improve some of our processes and applications using microsoft tools and more specifically the Custom Vision Cognitive Service. However, i am getting lost in the MS offerings and the Preview AI Builder service in PowerApps which seems to be offering the same capability.
The test that I am trying with both services i using Products pictures and utilize the services to provide me with the brand, sub-brand and some other specifications on the product. To start with, i have started with the browser version of the Custom Vision service (not the SDK) which, because it is a non-programmer interface, is really similar to the AI builder.
Has someone more inputs on the strategy behind the AI Builder in Powerapps and how it complements/replaces some of the capabilities of the MS cognitive services (and more specifically their browser/non-programmer versions)?
In a few words, tools in PowerApps (like in Microsoft Flow or even Logic Apps) are backed by other (more technical) services provided by Microsoft (or third party).
PowerApps and Flow are solutions designed to be used by non-developer people: understanding the technical behaviour / implementation is not needed.
Using AI Builder service in PowerApps vs Custom Vision: generally, there may be a delay between new technical features and the time they are provided in those tools for example. Some features are also never available in "business" versions.
We are looking to develop an application wherein the requirement is such that we need some help on designing the architecture. I am putting down below the requirements of the application.
Brief Description
1) The application shall work on web + Android + Offline desktop version (Offline version meaning entirely offline environment wherein full functionality shall work without internet)
if possible offline android as well (which as per my research is difficult to do in same backend so caching can be used for temporary offline usage)
2) While designing the architecture we want to minimise the rework such that we shall be able to use the same Database, Logic code and Frontend as much as possible
3) Everytime application is updated then web and android will reflect it immediately due to API integration. And for offline application, we want to update the logic and database everytime it connects to internet.
Challenges I am facing
1) Database choice : Since it has to be an offline solution as well, I understand that we will have to use either SQLite or SQL compact edition so that we can use the free version and installation file is also not very big
2) Logic : Due to offline requirement, we may have to put entire logic in Asp.net / (any other suggestions) since stored procedures are not supported in above mentioned databases
Some links I found regarding this :
https://www.codeproject.com/Questions/346702/How-to-make-work-an-Online-Web-application-Offline
3) Application framework : Which framework MVC / MVVM etc would be suitable to minimise the work for web based and offline app.
4) Frontend : I understand that we will have to make different screens for web and android. However want to know whether we can use HTML 5 (cache feature) or Angular JS which can be used in offline environment as well or do we have to make offline screens seperately?
Build an ASP.Net web app with offline functionality
https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/appcache/beginner/
5) Can apache cordova be used in someway for better architecture (I dont know much about it hence)
6) I am sure I might be missing something. If you can offer some suggestion on best way to go about developing this application then will really appreciate your help
Your requirements are not very clear to me.
But if i have backend which is catering to multiple clients with different devices.
I will take the following strategy.
I will expose the backend functionality through rest/HTTP and let the clients consume them.
If i want to make the same UI and functionality and want to do it quickly for different mobile platforms. i will go for a Cordova,Phonegap or a Xamarin app. But keep it in mind that they lack some native functionality.
For web i will go with a UI framework which is device screen size responsive like like openUI5 ( i am sure there are dozen others ), such that an user can open the application in a web browser in any device and it gets rendered easily.
For Desktop based apps again i have to develop a separate UI. If you again have multiple flavors in Desktop application like Windows , Mac etc. You can take multiple strategies like Have a common Java layer + Minimal native layers for each OS or having full blown native layers or have the logic exposed as API in a low level language as C++ and then let high level languages consume them.
For all the apps you can use DBs like SQLite . Have the common DB and scripts ready which easily replicate the table structure for you.
Determination of a technology for the backend can be upto you (depending upon your requirements) and should not matter to clients if you expose your functionality in a restful manner.
Hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Saurav
We are planning to develop a new application that should offer:
Android-capable
Turn by turn with voice navigation
Offline maps (and perhaps routing?)
Satellite maps
Truck issues
As fas as I can see, all of the requirements (but the offline routing) is included in different Here Maps developer plans. Nevertheless, I still have some questions:
On their web (https://developer.here.com/plans/api/consumer-mapping), there are two main divisions (API plan and Mobile SDS plans). Which one is better for me and what is the difference?. I mean, it seems clear that I should go for the mobile plans, but not sure if this will be limiting my development in the future.
There appear no pricing options for the Mobile SDKs. We are planning to make the app available to our customers on a free basis and they will be charged for enhanced services. But seeing that API plans are based on a volume basis... how does the mobile plans work? (does it have any cost depending on the number of transactions too?).
Finally, customized POI are the main advantage of our app and is closed to other users (will no be made publicly available). Does the Here api include the option to add our POIs coming from another (ous) database on the fly?.
Thanks in advance,
Jose.
Turn by turn guidance will be only available via the (Premium) MobileSDK. Via REST APIs you can get routing, but not TbT voice guidance. Also Offline is only avaiulable via the Premium MobileSDK. Beside this, the native MobileSDK offers native vectorbased map rendering, when you use the REST APIs you would need to use the raster tiles. So in a nutshell: if you target Mobiles, you should definitely go with the MobileSDK. If you need any feature that's only available via web APIs (platform extensions, isoline routing, and some more), you can still combine these web APIs with the MobileSDK.
Pricing depends on your usecases, so you should discuss your usecase with HERe Sales: https://developer.here.com/contact-us?interest=mobile-sdk#contact-sales
Customized POIs is quite general, but of course you can load datasets from your servers and show them as POIs on the map, but you could also use the Platform Extension CLE, that also allows you to search within your dataset and is seamless integrated in the MobileSDK already.
I am evaluating Meteor as an alternative to developing real-time capabilities using socket.io and it looks like awesome framework for single page real-time apps. It is great time saver that enables developer focusing on the business logic of the app, rather than writing boilerplate code. However, I find it still pre-mature for a medium size app with multiple pages/routings and REST api. Plus, number of features like i18n are still not available which requires some time investment to develop by myself.
I think that it would be great if I could combine Meteor and Express and use Meteor in use cases where it really shines.
Is it possible to develop an app using standard Express/Mongo stack and use Meteor for only specific part of the app where I need real time collaboration?
For example, can I share a session between Express/Connect and Meteor?
Thanks!
This does not directly answer your question, but I thought I'd throw it out there:
You should check out the community packages on atmosphere. Specifically, I'd recommend having a look at iron-router and i18n (I'll note I have not used the latter).
I've built a large production app that uses iron-router and it's running smoothly. You may also be able to use its server-side-routing capabilities to implement your REST api.