Install Android, Cordova, And Ionic Framework In Ubuntu

After recognizing that I develop almost entirely on Ubuntu Linux, a subscriber of mine asked me how to properly set up an Ubuntu machine for Ionic Framework Android development. Now there are a ton of options to handle this task, but not many bare bones solutions. Most solutions on the internet explain how to use an IDE, or fail to elaborate a complete installation.

If you’re not interested in learning how to accomplish the task of installing NPM, Android, Apache Cordova, and Ionic Framework, you can just download a convenient shell script that I made. If you want to know how this shell script works and would like to get the most out of it, continue reading the article.

Implement A Barcode Scanner Using Ionic Framework

I recently found myself needing to scan barcodes in one of my apps. More specifically I needed to scan quick response (QR) codes. After doing some searching I found that ngCordova had an extension for the Apache Cordova plugin BarcodeScanner which has the ability to scan barcodes in the following formats:

• QR Code
• Data Matrix
• UPC E
• UPC A
• EAN 8
• EAN 13
• Code 128
• Code 39
• ITF

Pretty much all the formats anyone would ever need. The plugin itself makes use of the very popular ZXing library.

Create An Android App Start To Finish

It was recently requested that I show how to create an Android app from start to finish using a text editor and command line. Although the process isn’t difficult, it might not be so straight forward for a first time developer. The scope of this article should cover the following:

• How to create a new Android project using a terminal window
• Creating a signing keystore for deployment to the app store
• How to submit to the app store and be successful

Manage Files In Android And iOS Using Ionic Framework

You may one day find yourself needing to make an Ionic Framework Android and iOS app that downloads media or in-app purchase content from a remote web server to the users device. Maybe you created an audio app that plays music from the cloud and you decided to cache upcoming songs in your playlist like Google Music does. This will involve downloading the media files to your device in the background so it is ready to go.

Lucky for us, Apache Cordova has a set of File APIs that we can use in our Ionic project for exactly this.

Add Pin Code Unlock To Your Ionic Framework App

I currently have a few Ionic Framework Android and iOS applications on the market. A common request for these apps have been to have a pin code unlock feature for extra security.

Use Font Awesome Shapes In Pixelmator

If you’re like me, Font Awesome somehow gets included in all of your projects. The graphics are crisp, and look great in all your artwork and applications. My go-to graphic editor is Pixelmator for Mac, and it lets you use Font Awesome with very little effort.

The following will show you how to add re-usable Font Awesome shapes to Pixelmator for use in any project.

Handling Apache Cordova Events With Ionic Framework

There will often come a scenario where you need to determine when your application enters the device background and comes back into the foreground. For example, let’s say we wanted to require a password every time the application is shown. We would need to listen for when the application enters the foreground.

Lucky for us, we can make use of the Apache Cordova event listeners to accomplish this task.