End-To-End (E2E) testing involves creating automated tests that will test your application as a whole, rather than testing individual chunks of code in isolation (which is the purpose of a unit test). In this video tutorial, I walk through a real-world application that has some e2e tests implemented and discuss the purpose and value of […]
When to Use Providers/Services/Injectables in Ionic
A concept you will quickly come to terms with in Ionic is the concept of a page. A page is just a normal Angular component that we use to display a particular page in our application. We might have a page for displaying a list of users, and so we have a component called UserListPage […]
The Role of Unit Tests in Ionic
Unit testing is an intimidating task to get started with, and with no prior knowledge of creating automated tests, it can be hard to understand the how and why of unit testing. In this video, I walk through some unit tests I have set up for a real-world application I am working on, and we […]
Creating an Accordion List in Ionic
Earlier this week I recorded a video where I walked through building an expandable component on screen. This was a generic component that could be given a specific height, and its state could be toggled between being expanded and collapsed. Due to a dwindling battery, I didn’t get to take the component quite as far […]
Live Coding an Expandable Component in Ionic
I’ve been releasing a series of videos where I walk through building something on screen, with only a vague idea of what I want to build and no planning in advanced. The idea is that it gives a more realistic representation of what the actual development process looks like, rather than having everything pre-planned, working, […]
Setting Up Unit and E2E Tests in Ionic
I’ve written many tutorials on adding automated tests to Ionic applications, but one of the trickiest parts of the whole process is just getting the testing environment configured. If you want to set up unit and end-to-end tests you will need to install Jasmine, Karma, Protractor, and an array of other packages that need to […]
Hybrid App Developers: Don’t Store Your User’s Passwords
I almost titled this post something clickbaity like ‘The one MASSIVE security mistake hybrid developers are making’. It is a big issue, and it is a mistake I see pop up on a weekly basis (and I’m sure it extends outside of the hybrid mobile app development sphere). I don’t want the tone of this […]
Designing a Landing Page with a Video Background in Ionic
The initial impression of your application on a user comes from the application’s icon, the splash screen, and then the initial page of the application. Much like judging a book by its cover, by the time the user reaches the landing page for your application they will likely have already formed some strong opinions about […]
Debugging Ionic Applications When Deployed to an Android Device
In a recent tutorial, I covered how to debug iOS applications that are deployed to a device. When you’re testing through the browser it’s easy enough to use the built in browser tools for debugging, but it’s no so obvious how to do that when you’re actually running the application on your device. In this […]
Animating a Dynamic Background with an SVG in Ionic
Recently I’ve been writing some content and filming some videos on SVGs (Scalable Vector Graphics), mainly because they are freakin’ cool. The content I have been creating is mostly pretty introductory and in the case of animations I have just been using simple CSS transitions and keyframes, so I wanted to tackle a more real-world […]
Debugging Ionic Applications When Deployed to an iOS Device
One of the most useful things about Ionic is that since the framework is web based, we can easily develop and test through the browser. However, if you do intend to build your Ionic application as a native iOS application using Cordova, you will need to test on a real device at some point. In […]
Testing Asynchronous Code with FakeAsync in Angular
When creating automated unit tests in Ionic and Angular applications we would typically follow a process like this: Set up the testing environment Run some code Make assertions as to what should have happened This process is also commonly referred to as AAA (Arrange, Act, Assert). I don’t plan to provide an introduction to unit […]
[VIDEO] SVG Animations in Ionic
I recently wrote a blog post that introduced the concept of the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) format and how you might be able to use that in an Ionic application. You can read more about that here but the basic idea is that SVGs are vector graphics (so they can be scaled to any size […]
Creating a Pinterest Layout in Ionic
Ionic provides a useful Grid component that allows you to organise a layout using rows and columns. By default, if the columns contained within a row go beyond the width of the screen, they will flow automatically onto a new row. This makes it really easy to create a grid layout, like an image gallery, […]
Integrating Google AdMob Advertisements in Ionic
Advertisements, although not always the best way to monetise a venture, are one of the easiest ways to potentially earn some money from an application or website. Google’s advertisement platform allows you to easily implement advertisements without having to secure deals with advertisers yourself – you display Google’s ads and you get a percentage of […]
Creating an Animated Splash Screen in Ionic
One question I often get asked is how one could create an animated splash screen for their Ionic applications – the bad news is it’s not possible to animate a splash screen (and that’s not just an Ionic thing, it’s not possible in general). A splash screen is a static PNG image with no transparency. […]
Using an SVG for Animation in Ionic
I’ve spent the last week reading through Sarah Drasner‘s new book SVG Animations, which has pretty much changed my line of thinking from SVGs seem pretty cool to… via GIPHY If you want a good introduction to SVGs you should go read her book, but in this tutorial, I’ll just be running through a basic […]
Using the Splash Screen Plugin with Ionic
The splash screen is the image that displays for a few seconds when your application first starts up on iOS and Android. Usually, we would be happy with the default behaviour (the splash screen will display until your application has finished loading, and then automatically disappear) but that’s not always the case. In this video […]
Simple Animations with CSS Transitions in Ionic
When used correctly, animations can do a great deal to make your application look more polished. There are a variety of ways you can add animations to an application, but one of the most simple ways is to use the transition CSS property. This property allows you to animate the change of CSS properties, like […]
Creating a Drawing Application in Ionic
Last week I released a two part screencast where I built a simple drawing application in Ionic live on screen. Since I’m just making things up as I go along in these style of videos, the end result usually works but is lacking in polish. As such, I like to do a follow-up blog post […]
Location Select Page with Google Maps and Ionic
If you want to accept a user supplied location in your application, and you want it to be in any kind of remotely useful format, it could be quite hard to do. You could of course just have a simple text field and allow the user to type the address, but that’s a lot of […]
Creating a Shrinking Header for Segments in Ionic
I was browsing the Ionic Forums earlier this week, and came across a post asking if it was possible to create a layout in Ionic where a header would be initially displayed above a segment, that would shrink away as the user scrolled (leaving the segment selections now sitting at the top of the screen). […]
Extracting the Source Code of any Cordova Application
A common misconception when building Cordova applications (which is what we use to create native packages when using frameworks like Ionic), is that the source code for those applications are secure because they are bundled into a single .ipa or .apk file. However, it is quite easy to download any Cordova application from the app […]
Using a Canvas to Create a Drawing App in Ionic – Part 2
The HTML5 <canvas> element provides a space on the screen that we can “draw” on through using a Javascript API. We are able to do things like defining paths and shapes, and we can then trace those with various colours or just fill in entire shapes. There’s a lot of creative uses for the canvas […]