From Ruby on Rails to RubyMotion - Writing your First iOS App with RubyMotion
3 likes5,111 views
Michael Denomy shares his experiences on developing iOS apps using RubyMotion, targeting Ruby on Rails developers new to iOS. He covers essential tools and libraries, such as Bundler, Promotion, Formotion, and MotionModel, while discussing the MVC architecture in iOS and the challenges of navigating the iOS SDK. Denomy emphasizes the importance of testing and further learning about iOS development as the app evolves.
From Ruby on Rails to RubyMotion - Writing your First iOS App with RubyMotion
- 1. RoR to RubyMotion Writing Your First iOS App With RubyMotion Michael Denomy BostonMotion User Group June 25, 2013
- 2. About Me • Tech Lead at Cyrus Innovation - Agile web consultancy with offices in New York and Boston - http://www.cyrusinnovation.com • Agile and XP practitioner since 2004 - Passionate about TDD and pairing • mdenomy on twitter and github • Blog at www.mdenomy.wordpress.com
- 3. Goals • Capture my experiences getting started with RubyMotion - Help someone else along - Get ideas for where to go next • Target Audience - Developers familiar with Ruby on Rails - Little to no previous experience with iOS - Desire to learn • Some talk, some code
- 6. More Cold Hard Facts • RubyMotion is not free - $199.99 - No trial, but 30 day money back - There is a student discount program • iOS Developer Program is not free - $99 / year - Required to deploy to devices and distribute via AppStore • You will need to understand iOS SDK - iOS documentation is difficult to navigate
- 9. Good Stuff • Growing community with lots of online resources • More and more gems appearing that provide a Rails-like experience • Free to use the tools you like - Sublime plug in for RubyMotion has code completion and rake shortcuts https://github.com/haraken3/ SublimeRubyMotionBuilder
- 10. MVC in iOS • MVC is MVC right? • No “convention over configuration” - Have to wire things up manually • Slightly different terminology that Rails
- 11. UIViewControllers • Controller receives actions from the framework (e.g. view loaded) and the user (e.g. button pressed) - Interacts with Models and View • UIViewControllers you need to know - UINavigationController - UITabBarController - UIViewController - UITableViewController
- 12. Models • Models are PORO’s in RubyMotion • Support built-in for - attr_accessor - attr_reader - attr_writer • Possible to serialize/deserialize data using NSCoder and NSKeyedArchiver - Looked for other options to support storage and relationships
- 13. Views • UIView is a base class • Buttons, labels, date pickers, etc., all inherit from UIView • Views can have subviews - Simplifies screen layout and allows re-use
- 14. Let’s Look at Some Code • Basic Navigation - Application Delegate - Root View Controller - UITabBarController - UIViewControllers
- 15. MyWines App • I enjoy the occasional glass of wine. • I would like to have a way to track the wines I like and prices I've paid for them - Record tasting notes - Record purchases and price info - Search for wine by name/producer - Save to Favorites - Save label picture • Spoiler alert - I have done next to nothing to style the app
- 16. Sketch It Out It’s a lot cheaper and faster to iterate at this level than in code
- 17. What Tools Did I Choose • Bundler - Simplify dependencies • ProMotion - Screen development and workflow • Formotion - Entry/edit forms • MotionModel - Models and relations • Teacup - Styling DSL • Sugarcube - UI extensions • BubbleWrap - I used it for camera, but lots more (JSON, HTTP, RSS, Location, Audio, Video) • MotionAwesome - Buttons and icons More at http://rubymotion-wrappers.com/
- 18. ProMotion • Simplifies screen development • Support for table screens - Easily search for table entries • Helpers for tab and navbar controllers
- 19. Formotion • Easily create forms for entry/edit • Integrates with ProMotion • Support For - text - dates - sliders - check boxes - and many more
- 20. MotionModel • Wanted something like ActiveRecord • Chose MotionModel gem - Lightweight - Feels Railsy ‣ Validations ‣ ActiveRecord-like syntax ‣ Relations - Serialization / deserialization support - Actively maintained - Formotion support(turned out not to matter)
- 21. Teacup • Layout and style your app in a DSL • Frees you up from layout of screens in XCode • Allows you to keep your views a lot cleaner • Hierarchical and supports variables
- 22. Sugarcube • Tons of helpful ‘syntactic sugar’ extensions to make your development easier - conversion of hex color codes to UIColor - alert and action dialogs - symbol to iOS, e.g., ‣ :touch.uicontrolevent becomes UIControlEventTouchUpInside - array helpers - hash to object conversions
- 23. BubbleWrap • Amazing set of tools for - HTTP - JSON - RSS - Camera - Location - Alert boxes - REPL support • Just using it for the camera in my app
- 24. MotionAwesome • Great set of icons and buttons • Based on FontAwesome • So far only used it to create a camera button using a camera icon
- 25. Deploying to Device • Must be in Apple Developer Program - $99/year • Get provisioning and developer certificates • Deploy using rake - rake device - Make sure to quit iTunes and Image Capture • Can’t do some things with simulator - e.g. Camera
- 26. Where Do I Go Next • Better use of views and subviews - As app evolves will have more common controls/groups -> re-use - Easier to lay out due to relative positioning used in subviews • Better/more styling - Will require more understanding of iOS • Persist images to file system • Do more with models - Averages, filtering, etc
- 27. Where Do I Go Next • Testing - This was very much a spike, but as the app evolves want to incorporate more automated testing - Tested the models, especially persistence and validation since these were areas of risk - Want to look at more integration testing ‣ motion-frank (maintained by Cyrus Innovation) ‣ motion-calabash
- 28. Questions I Still Have • ProMotion is awesome, but I wonder if down the road this paints me into a corner • Wild West of gems - Will be interesting to see what ideas and tools rise to the top • How much iOS should I learn - Interface Builder - CoreData
- 29. Resources • RubyMotion Developer Center - http://www.rubymotion.com/developer-center/ • RubyMotion by Clay Allsop - http://pragprog.com/book/carubym/rubymotion • iOS Dev Center - Tons of useful info, navigation is horrible - https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action - https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/ ViewControllerPGforiPhoneOS • RubyMotion Wrappers and Libraries - http://rubymotion-wrappers.com/
- 30. Questions • Q&A
- 31. RoR to RubyMotion Writing Your First iOS App Michael Denomy BostonMotion User Group June 25, 2013