Oracle Mobile Application Framework Getting Started Demo

Sometimes you just need a little push to get started on something and this is pretty much the goal of this post... to get you started with the Oracle Mobile Application Framework.

I'm a very visual person and no matter how much I read about a specific topic I prefer watching a demo or a tutorial and then I try to do something on my own.

With that idea in mind I recorded a 3-part Oracle MAF demo that covers how to get started developing a mobile app, create a new feature (module), create and customize a task flow, invoke a REST Web Service as well as a SOAP Web Service, customize the request and response for the Web Service calls, create a data control, customize the MAF AMX pages, import a local HTML resource, configure a Remote URL based feature and deploy to the iOS Simulator.

I hope you enjoy!

Part 1: Getting Started with Oracle Mobile Application Framework

Part 2: Getting Started with Oracle Mobile Application Framework

Part 3: Getting Started with Oracle Mobile Application Framework

You can also watch these videos directly on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ3xZDDDFwc&list=PLgz4ntw9X2fG_umbS1GcSIHZJs1jheUM_

Working with Device Information in the Oracle Mobile Application Framework

With the proliferation of new device models, form factors and operating systems, you may be thinking about the challenges to make your application work handle all of these different device properties information as there may be features that rely on specific characteristics or capabilities.

As an example, how frustrating it would be for the user trying to use a mapping feature if the device doesn't support geolocation? Or, just getting the device screen height and width to make sure the content fits nicely and also dynamically present different things on the smaller / larger real state you have available. As a developer, it's your responsibility to make sure everything works and looks good on all devices (even though this is a hard task).

The Oracle Mobile Application Framework (MAF) utilizes Apache Cordova to provide access to device properties, SMS, Email, Contacts, Camera, Pictures/Photo Library, Geolocation, Accelerometer, Network, etc. that can either be accessed from Java, JavaScript and Expression Languages in order to support these requirements on your mobile application.

Additionally, the most common functionality (sendEmail, getPicture, createContact, sendSMS, etc) is exposed as a Data Control and can be simply dragged-and-dropped onto an AMX page reducing the need for coding calls to the API and constructing the necessary screens.

The MAF documentation covers all in details but here is a list of what's currently supported by the framework (through the embedded Apache Cordova API):

• device.name
• device.platform
• device.version
• device.os
• device.model
• device.phonegap

• hardware.hasCamera
• hardware.hasContacts
• hardware.hasTouchScreen
• hardware.hasGeolocation
• hardware.hasAccelerometer
• hardware.hasCompass
• hardware.hasFileAccess
• hardware.hasLocalStorage
• hardware.hasMediaPlayer
• hardware.hasMediaRecorder
• hardware.networkStatus

• hardware.screen.width
• hardware.screen.height
• hardware.screen.availableWidth
• hardware.screen.availableHeight
• hardware.screen.dpi
• hardware.screen.diagonalSize
• hardware.screen.scaleFactor

Most of the property names are self-explanatory and I won't go into the details of each one of them but there is a demo available for you that shows how to get started and use some of the information that the framework provides. Screenshots on both platforms are available below so you can take a peek what it looks like:

iOS Simulator

Android Emulator

The demo itself uses EL (expression languages) to get the values and then present them in different ways on the AMX page including outputText, buttons, etc and also change the availability of the component based on the feature capability.

In summary, integrating the device features into a Oracle MAF application is easy and flexible, the declarative drag and drop support suits most of the use cases and you can get deeper control programatically.

The source code is available here: https://github.com/mjabali/DeviceFeatures

Have fun!

Oracle Mobile Application Framework Hands-On Workshops

We are kicking off the US-based series of the Oracle Mobile Application Framework hands-on workshops that are going to cover the details of the platform and get you started with Oracle mobile development in a heartbeat. By the way, this is a FREE event!

These are one-day workshops where you will get technical insights into the new product enhancements, see live demos, and best of all, get hands-on experience with mobile app development. 

All you need to do is register for the workshop, pre-install/configure the development environment (MAF) on your laptop and you will be ready to go (don’t worry, we’ll send you detailed instructions on how to do this as well as contact information, should you need it). We also plan to set this up so that you can BYOD to test out your completed app (details will be provided in the invite).

Here are the links for the currently scheduled workshops so that you can register. If you don’t see your city listed be sure to send me an email letting me know where you would like to see a workshop added – we’re working to prioritize additional workshops now and your input will be valuable.

 Click the city of interest below. 

• San Diego: 8/19/14

• Cincinnati: 8/26/14

• Indianapolis: 8/26/14

• Tampa: 8/27/14

• Houston: 8/28/14

• Calgary: 9/16/14

• Kansas City: 10/28/14

• Omaha: 10/30/14

• Raleigh: 11/4/14

• Pittsburgh: 11/5/14

• Rochester: 11/6/14

See you at the workshop!

Debugging Oracle ADF Mobile Applications - Part I

I've been involved with the Oracle Mobile Application Framework (a.k.a. ADF Mobile) lately and one of the things developers typically ask me during my talks is how to debug mobile applications created with the Oracle framework.

To give you a little bit of context, the Oracle Mobile Application Framework does generate a hybrid app (native container + HTML/JavaScript) so standard debugging techniques apply here. The Oracle Mobile Application Framework has some other capabilities like running Java code on the device but that's a topic for another post.

So, there is more than one way for debugging Oracle-generated (read hybrid) applications depending on the platform your are own and the target device you are working on. I'll try to isolate specific use cases on different posts so you don't get distracted with irrelevant stuff.

The first one on the list is debugging Oracle Mobile Applications on iOS and Mac OS X.

The ingredients are:

- Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.2.4.0
- XCode 5.1 (for the Simulator)
- Apple Safari

The setup is pretty straightforward and here is what you have to do:

On the iOS Simulator (works on iOS +6.x), go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > and make sure Web Inspector is turned ON.

Open up the Safari web browser and enable the Develop features. To do that, go to Preferences > Advanced and check the Show Develop menu in the menu bar.

If you don't have an app deployed to the simulator yet, this is a good time to do so. Open up JDeveloper and deploy a simple application to the simulator (you can use the same approach with a real device but I'd rather start debugging on the simulator).

Once you have the app installed/deployed and running on your iOS simulator go to Safari and select the Develop menu.   

You should see something similar to the picture below where you select the iPhone Simulator and then the name of your application (in my case - MyWeatherChannel). The below HTML pages are part of your application and highlighting one of them in the Safari menu will also highlight them on the iOS simulator.

Selecting that highlighted page will bring Safari's Web Inspector up. Click on the first icon on the left (Resources) and that should show you the DOM for the page you selected.

At this point, you have many options but you may want to try enabling the Styles (click on the Styles button on the top menu) and make changes to the existing components on the page. That would give a good idea on what to look for when doing further debugging.

You can also manipulate the DOM to change the name or size of the labels and see how they are going to look like.

What is also very interesting are the Timelines (click on the Timelines button on the top menu) where you can see how long it takes to make a network request, to load different components of your application and the details of JavaScript calls.

The last thing I'd like to show you here is the option to enable the Console (click on the Console button on the top menu) and you can many other things like triggering commands or watching the console output. You can also reload the application by pressing Cmd + R.

In the test above, I just fired an alert command (alert("My Test Message");) from the console and saw the JavaScript alert on the simulator.

You can also change the current values (by also manipulating the DOM) in the app like the example below where the command: document.getElementById("ot3").innerHTML=72; changes the value of one the fields in the app.

Happy debugging!

An Introduction to Oracle Mobile Suite

Here is a quick overview and introduction to the Oracle Mobile Suite. There are basically four areas that the Oracle Mobile Suite helps with your mobile strategy:

• Development of multichannel applications with Oracle Mobile Application Framework
• Data and services integration across the enterprise with Oracle SOA Suite
• Uniform information security across all layers of enterprise and mobile applications with Oracle Identity Management
• Deployment and management (cloud and on premise) of multichannel applications with Oracle Cloud Application Foundation

The video below shows the core capabilities of the Oracle Mobile Suite and how can you benefit of it.

Oracle Mobile Development Platform Workshop

It has been almost five months since I started at Oracle and I have been busy working on a bunch of different technologies including WebLogic, Coherence, Service Bus, API Gateway and obviously Mobile. If you are interested in the Oracle Mobile Development Platform, we are offering a free technical webinar on October 30th at 9:30 AM Pacific/10:30 AM Mountain.  This is going to be a 90 minute technical presentation and demonstration where you will see how:

• You can develop Mobile Applications once and deploy natively to both iOS and Android
• Resulting  Applications allow your company’s employees and customers to securely access your internal packaged and custom applications from any device
• Your Mobile Applications are written Java and HTML5, but leverage native device functionality such as GPS, Camera, Address Book and Accelerometer
• The Resulting Applications look, feel, and perform as though they were natively developed, i.e., these are not just web applications running in a phone’s browser
• Oracle is using the Mobile Development Platform for their own application delivery
• Oracle’s Mobile Platform enables full lifecycle support of Mobile Applications covering their development, end-to-end security, service connectivity and integration, deployment, distribution and management

To attend the webinar, please contact me at: mqjabali [at] gmail dot com

See you online...