Mobile Developer Console

Introduction

Mobile Developer Console is part of AeroGear Mobile Services and allows you to:

  • create a representation of your mobile application in OpenShift

  • bind Mobile App with mobile services

  • build your mobile app (requires Mobile CI/CD service)

  • get the mobile-services.json configuration file for use in your local development environment

Provisioning Mobile Developer Console

To provision the Mobile Developer Console:

  1. Log into the OpenShift console.

  2. Create a new project or choose an existing project.

  3. Select Catalog from the left hand menu.

    You can filter the catalog items to only show mobile specific items by selecting the Mobile tab.

  4. Choose the Mobile Developer Console service.

  5. Follow the wizard for provisioning that service.

    If prompted to Create a Binding, choose Do not bind at this time.

Once the wizard steps are completed, navigate to the Project Overview in OpenShift to see the newly provisioned service. Provisioning the Mobile Developer Console may take some time.

Registering a Mobile App

After provisioning Mobile Developer Console, the next step is to register the Mobile App that you are going to develop.

Procedure

To create a Mobile App:

  1. Log into the OpenShift console.

  2. Choose project where you have previously deployed Mobile Developer Console.

  3. Open Mobile Developer Console by clicking on its route in the Overview screen.

  4. Log into the Mobile Developer Console.

  5. Click on Create Mobile App button.

  6. Enter a name for your Mobile App.

  7. Click Create button.

Using mobile services

Viewing mobile services

In order to use services with a mobile app, the Mobile App associated with the app must be bound to the appropriate services. To show the list of services, navigate to the application Overview screen and to the Mobile Services tab. A list of bound and available services is displayed.

mobile clients mobile services
Some services might support multiple binding and in that case a Bind to App button is also shown in a Bound Services row.

Binding mobile services

The Mobile Services tab in the Mobile App view shows the provisioned services that are available to be bound to the Mobile App. If a service has not yet been bound to a Mobile App, a binding can be created by selecting the Create Binding button.

You can bind your Mobile App to a service by :

  1. Click Bind to App (example image shows a Push Service binding).

    mobile clients service bind 1

  2. Fill in configuration details for the binding (example image shows a Push Service binding).

    mobile clients service bind 2

  3. Press Create to create the binding (example image shows a Push Service binding).

    mobile clients service bind 3
You can safely close the dialog, the process continues in the background.

After the binding is complete, the configuration in mobile-services.json for the Mobile App is updated in the Configuration tab. This configuration is used by your app to interact with the bound services.

mobile clients overview mobile services json
Multiple service bindings

Typically, you create only one binding per service but in some cases it is possible to create multiple bindings. In this case, a Bind to App button is displayed for an already bound service.

mobile clients service multibinding
Unbinding mobile services

To remove the binding press the 3dots button and select Delete.

mobile clients service unbind
Multiple services unbinding

If there are multiple bindings for the service there will be more options for the deletion.

mobile clients service multibinding delete

Building Mobile Apps

The Builds tab in the Mobile App view allows you to view the previous builds of the app, and triggers a new build of the app.

Provisoning a Mobile CI/CD Service

In order to build the Mobile App app, you first need to provision a Mobile CI/CD service. If the service is not provisioned, use the link provided on the screen to browse all the available mobile services and provision a new Mobile CI/CD service.

mobile clients no service

For more details about how to provision the Mobile CI/CD service, please see Mobile CI/CD service guide.

Creating a Build

After the Mobile CI/CD service is provisioned, you need to create a new build config for the Mobile App. You need to provide more information about the mobile app here depending on the platform. For example, the repo of the source code, the type of the build, the keys used to sign the app, etc.

mobile clients build config

For more information about how to configure the build config, please see the build config section of Mobile CI/CD.

Starting a Build

Once a build is configured, you can start a new build. You will be able to view the progress of the build from the OpenShift UI and access the full build log.

mobile clients build in progress

Downloading and Installing Apps

You can use the OpenShift UI to deploy a mobile app by downloading the binary directly to the mobile device. This binary can be downloaded for any successful build in the build history.

Once the build has completed you can then press the Download button and you will be presented with a QR code. Applications to scan QR codes are available in Google Play for Android or the App Store for iPhone. Once the QR code has been scanned, it will open the download URL in the device and the application will download.

Available Mobile Clients

If you do not have a QR code scanner you can also download the artifact from the URL in the OpenShift web console. Once downloaded connect a device to your local machine.

  • For iOS applications open XCode and navigate to Window > Devices and Simulators. Here you can install your mobile application by pressing + button at the bottom, then choose your download IPA file for installation.

  • For Android applications move the APK file into the device directory. On your device locate and select the APK file and select install.

    You may need to enable the installation of apps from unknown sources on Android devices before installing from an APK.

Introduction to the AeroGear SDK

After you have registered a Mobile App, bound the Mobile App to a mobile service, and downloaded the mobile services configuration file, you can start developing your mobile app using mobile services.

The AeroGear SDK supports the following mobile platforms:

  • Android

  • iOS

  • Cordova

  • Xamarin

For information about how to develop Android apps, see Android Documentation.

  1. To use the SDK add jcenter to the build.grade file in your project’s root directory

    allprojects {
    repositories {
        jcenter() // <-- Add This line
        google()
    }
}

  2. In the build.gradle file of your app you can begin adding dependencies provided by the SDK.

    dependencies {
    ...
    implementation 'org.aerogear:android-core:2.0.0'
    implementation 'org.aerogear:android-push:2.0.0'
    implementation 'org.aerogear:android-auth:2.0.0'
    implementation 'org.aerogear:android-security:2.0.0'
}

  3. For push you also need to add a dependency to the Firebase SDK:

    dependencies {
    ...
    implementation "com.google.firebase:firebase-messaging:[version]"
}
To implement certificate pinning in the individual SDKs, see Certificate Pinning in Android Devices.

For Service specific steps, see:

For information about how to develop iOS apps, see iOS Documentation.

  1. In your project directory (the directory where your .xcodeproj file is), create a plain text file named Podfile (without any file extension) and add the lines below. Replace YourTarget with your actual target name.

    source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'

platform :ios, '9.0'
use_frameworks!

target :'YourTarget' do
    ## Require one of the AeroGear SDK's here
    pod 'AGSCore', '2.0.0'
    pod 'AGSPush', '2.0.0'
    pod 'AGSAuth', '2.0.0'
    pod 'AGSSecurity', '2.0.0'
end

  2. Then run the following command:

    $ pod install

  3. Open up .xcworkspace with Xcode and start using the SDK.

    Do not use .xcodeproj. If you open a project file instead of a workspace, dependencies will not be correctly configured.

  4. Import the SDK you want to use in the application. For example:

       import AGSAuth

For Service specific steps, see:

For information about how to develop apps using Cordova, see Cordova Documentation.

  1. Open a terminal and navigate to your appplication project root folder.

  2. Install the AeroGear SDK base project:

    npm install @aerogear/app

  3. In your application, import and call the "init" method:

    import { init } from "@aerogear/app";

const aerogearConfig = {
    // Replace with your own configuration
};

const app = init(aerogearConfig);

For Service specific steps, see:

For information about how to develop apps using Xamarin see Xamarin Documentation.

  1. In your VisualStudio project expand Dependencies > NuGet

  2. Click on Add packages…​

  3. Select AeroGear.Mobile.Core and depending on your target platforms:

  4. for Android:

    1. also pick AeroGear.Mobile.Core.Platform.Android

    2. Initialize Core (for Xamarin.Forms):

      var app = new App();
MobileCoreAndroid.Init(app.GetType().Assembly,ApplicationContext);
LoadApplication(app);

    3. Initialize Core (for Legacy Xamarin):

      MobileCoreAndroid.Init(ApplicationContext);

  5. for iOS:

    1. also pick AeroGear.Mobile.Core.Platform.iOS

    2. Initialize Core (for Xamarin.Forms):

      var app = new App();
MobileCoreIOS.Init(app.GetType().Assembly);
LoadApplication(app);

    3. Initialize Core (for Legacy Xamarin):

      MobileCoreIOS.Init();

For Service specific steps, see:

API Reference Documentation

SDKs for our Mobile Services are available for a variety of platforms, including Android, iOS, Cordova & Xamarin. These SDKs will help simplify your mobile and modern application development needs, leveraging OpenShift’s Container technology to provide a secure, scalable backend platform.

Click on the ✔ to see the API reference documentation:

Platform Core Identity Management Push Notifications Device Security

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iOS

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Cordova

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Xamarin

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