Using the Ionic Framework with Oracle Mobile Cloud Services (MCS)

One of the goals of the Oracle Mobile Cloud Service (MCS)  is to be client agnostic. So, you should be able to connect to your MCS hosted mobile backend from any client technology out there.

If you are a JavaScript developer you might be familiar with the very popular Ionic Framework.

Now, if you want to use an Ionic-based mobile app with the Oracle Mobile Cloud Service backend we have created a starter project for you that will show you how to perform the basic tasks and get you going in no time.

Have a look or clone the following GIT repo: https://github.com/mjabali/ionic-starter-mcs

The Readme file provides the instructions on how to get started with this sample.

Have fun!

Redirecting the log file in the Oracle Mobile Application Framework

If you have been developing with the Oracle Mobile Application Framework you already know that's not always easy to get debugging information out of the iOS Simulator or the Android Emulator.

When you are running on the iOS Simulator you can now use the -consoleRedirect option and send the logging information to an easier location to find. Although you can do that in Apple's XCode, doing that in JDeveloper is quite straightforward.

Open up your MAF project in JDeveloper, select Run >>> Choose Active Run Configuration >>> Manage Run Configurations

Then, click Edit and select the Mobile Run Configuration

Add the -consoleRedirect=<Any_File_You_Want> and select the Simulator configuration (if you have multiple ones configured). Click OK.

You can now use the JDeveloper Run button (the little green triangle on the top menu) that will launch and run your app (you must use this approach to redirect the log file - that's a limitation but worth the price).

This has been tested with the Oracle Mobile Application Framework 2.1.

Happy Debugging!

Do Not Disturb!

To all of my friends out there with their powerful iOS 6 devices, you may haven't noticed yet but if you use the Do Not Disturb feature it will stay on after scheduled time and that's caused by a bug reported here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4510 and it will stay on until Jan, 07th 2013 causing your device to do not alert, notify, ring, etc (depending on your setup) until you turn DND off manually.

Removing Click Delays on Mobile Browsers

If you ever wanted to get rid of the 300ms delay between a physical tap and the the firing of a click event introduced on mobile browsers then the polyfill those guys from Financial Times created is the answer you are looking for.

Available on GitHub, FastClick is a simple, easy-to-use library for eliminating that delay and make your application feel more responsive to, for example, the touch of a button.

Have a look and fork the project at: https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick 

You can also give it a try running one of the demos on your mobile device pointing your browser to: http://ftlabs.github.com/fastclick/examples/layer.html (it won't work on your desktop browser as the library doesn't attach any listeners to them).

Fascinating and job well done...

Running iOS Simulator from Command Line

I've recently migrated to Mountain Lion and it looks like I couldn't start the iOS Simulator from command line as I used to do in Snow Leopard.

Luckily, I was able to find a solution and all development is back to normal now :)

Here is how to run the iOS Simulator from command line:

$ open /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/iPhone\ Simulator.app


and that assumes that you have installed Xcode under /Applications.

You can also create a script with the content above and update your $PATH variable or even create a symbolic link under your /Applications folder using the following:

$ ln -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/iPhone\ Simulator.app/ /Applications/