Using Local Notifications In Your Ionic 2 Mobile App

A little more than a year ago I wrote a tutorial regarding using local notifications in an Ionic Framework Android and iOS application, but Ionic Framework and AngularJS is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Lately, anything Angular is all the rage and that includes frameworks that use it like Ionic 2. This inspired me to update my previous tutorial for the latest and greatest.

Let’s take a step back though. Why would one want to use local notifications in their mobile application? Well, one example might be in iBeacon detection. An iBeacon comes into range and a notification might show. That is just one of many examples. Let’s also not confuse local notifications with push notifications. Local notifications have no interaction with a service like Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) or Apple Push Notification Service (APNS).

We’re going to see how to schedule notifications and perform tasks based on various actions around the notifications.

Create Native iOS And Android Plugins With NativeScript

In my previous NativeScript tutorials I demonstrated how to access native platform APIs and features using JavaScript, but I never explained how to develop plugins that could accomplish this in a very maintainable fashion. By moving this native functionality to plugins, the application code remains a lot cleaner and is better for the long run.

For reference, you can see how to create Toast notifications in Android and determine the application version in Android and iOS using my previous tutorials.

This time we’re going to look at bundling that functionality into a plugin.

Give Your NativeScript Mobile App An Ionic Framework Theme

I’ve been developing and writing about NativeScript for a while now. One of the things that everyone seems to bring up is that the UI NativeScript offers is unattractive in comparison to frameworks like Ionic. Sure, it may be unattractive, but it is a native UI and had you been developing with Java or Objective-C things would be no different. The UI is what you make of it.

I understand not everyone is a top notch UI designer so I thought I’d share a custom theme that will give you an attractive theme in your application. If you’re familiar with Ionic Framework, it will probably look very similar since the designer, Rob Lauer, made this theme to match.

We’re going to see how to give our native application created with NativeScript a familiar Ionic Framework theme.

Working With Shared Providers In An Ionic 2 Mobile App

When developing an Ionic 2 application there are often scenarios where it probably isn’t a good idea to include repetitive source code in multiple application pages. A common example of this would be when it comes to database interaction in an Ionic 2 application. Sure you could establish a connection to the database on every page and query it, but it would probably make more sense to use it like a shared provider.

We’re going to see how to create a SQLite shared provider, often referred to as a shared service or sometimes a singleton class, in an Ionic 2 Android and iOS application using Angular.

Build An RSS Reader Mobile App With Ionic 2 And Angular

If you’re a long time follower of my blog you’ll remember I wrote an article about creating an RSS reader using Ionic Framework. That tutorial not only used the first version of Ionic Framework, but it now also uses a deprecated Google service, once known as the Google Feed API. Because of the deprecated API, it no longer works.

I still get a lot of people asking me about the creation of RSS readers, so I figured it was time to come up with a new solution. With Ionic 2 being all the rage, it makes sense to explore feeds with this version of the framework.

Here we’ll be building an RSS feed reader for Android and iOS using Ionic 2 and Angular with TypeScript.

Alter The Ionic 2 Gulp Script To Include Browser JavaScript Files

Recently I found myself needing to add a JavaScript library to an Ionic 2 TypeScript project. Now you’ll probably recall that I’ve written two different articles regarding using JavaScript libraries in TypeScript project. I wrote about including a JavaScript library in an Ionic 2 app in a guest post I did, but the scenario had the JavaScript library coming from the Node Package Manager (NPM). I also wrote about including a JavaScript library in an Angular app, but the project structure is a little more web friendly in that scenario.

My new scenario is including a JavaScript file, rather than NPM package. The project structure in an Ionic 2 application is a bit different than others. We can’t just include JavaScript files wherever we want because the build process could very well wipe them out. Instead we have to change the Gulp build process for the Ionic 2 application.

We’re going to see how to alter the Ionic 2 Gulp script to allow us to include external JavaScript files in our project.

Connect to a Raspberry Pi Zero with a USB Cable and SSH

As some of you may know, I have a hoarding problem. I am hoarding Raspberry Pi microcomputers. In my personal collection I have one from each generation, making four standard units. Well, I recently picked up another unit, but this time a Raspberry Pi Zero. These things are about the size of a nine volt battery, but pack some serious punch. The problem is they are incredibly rare because they retail for only $5.00.

Unlike the standard Raspberry Pi units, these do not have WiFi, ethernet, or standard sized USB ports. This changes things when it comes to connecting. We’re going to take a look at getting set up with one of these Pi Zero IoT devices and be on your way towards some cool hack projects.