1. Mobile App Dev. Using
Drupal As Base Syetem
Sumit Kataria (sumitk)
26. aug 10:00
VPS.NET

2. About Me
Sumit Kataria
Freelancer & Engineer at CivicActions
sumitk@sumitk.net
http://twitter.com/sumitk
IRC: sumitk

3. Overview

5. But Why Build For
Mobile?

6. More than 41 million iPhones sold
to date
Android now runs on more than
64 mobile devices
60,000 Android devices
&100,000 more iPhones sold each
day!
40% of all Internet traffic will be
by Mobile in 2013

7. But Isn’t Mobile
Development Expensive?

8. “Most apps take at least six
months of full-time work
and cost between $20,000
and $150,000 to develop.”
- Forrester Research

9. Other Questions
Come ....
★Which platforms do you choose?
★How many codebases do you want to (or even
can you) support?
★How long will it take to build native on N
platforms?
★How much effort will be duplicated?
★What if you bet on the wrong platform?
★Who writes the code? Hire out? Retrain/
retool yourself or your devs?

10. The Web Is An
Option...
★...and should be preferred when
feasible
★Mobile browsers are progressing
fast and converging around WebKit
★But there are limitations
★Native apps are inherently more
capable than web apps

11. What to Do Then..?

12. You can Look For
New Better Tools....

13. We Choose Titanium ...

14. Who Uses Titanium?
★NBC Universal
★PayPal
★MTV
★Anheuser-Busch
★Computer Sciences Corporation
★Intridea (Oil Reporter)
★100s of Titanium apps hitting the stores each
month (should soon eclipse 1000/month)

15. What is Titanium?
Titanium is an open source
framework for building native
mobile (or desktop) applications
using open web technologies
(JavaScript - optionally HTML and
CSS)

16. More ..
Open Source - Apache 2.0 License
Build Native Apps - 9.x+
Very Fast in Performance
Modular Approach to Add
Functionality
Lot of APIs Available and Ready to Us
Support and Partner Programs
Available

17. ★Titanium Mobile is Free
(as in Beer)
★Userscan pay for additional
support.
★You can get your App out in
development time of 2-3 weeks
with 1-2 developers.

18. Platforms

19. Why Use Drupal to Manage
Your Mobile Application
Data?

20. What is Drupal?
Drupal is a Free and Open Source Content
Management System that allows users to
easily publish, manage and organize a wide
variety of content on a website.

21. It is the most reliable CMS in the
world
Manages all your data and content
... meta data and users...
... search needs and geo-data...
All in a very reliable way
And besides...

22. You are already using it ....

23. What You’ll Be Programming
Javascript
Titanium API
WebViews
HTML 5
CSS 3

24. How Do You Use Drupal to
Manage Your Mobile
Application's Data?

25. Services API
Enables Drupal to act as a webservice to
accept and send data in a secure way.
http://drupal.org/project/services

26. Services API Consists of 3 Parts
Services
Servers
Authentication Layer

27. Services
Services are methods intended for
consumption by remote applications.
e.g. user.get user.save node.get
node.save views.get etc.

28. Servers
Servers are ways in which a Service
could be called from remote site.
e.g. xmlrpc (ships with Services core),
json, jsonrpc, rest etc.

29. Authentication Methods
★ Keys (Services core)
★ OAuth

30. Titanium Architecture

31. Titanium Features
Native UI Rich Media APIs
Real native tables, tabs, sliders, Local and streaming audio and
and views video, media recording
Location APIs Open Source and Extensible
Native Maps, Compass, and Extend Titanium with custom
Geolocation modules in native code
Local and Remote Data Integrated Analytics
Local SQL Database, Lightweight Baked-in analytics APIs to
Key/Value Store, XHR measure
results and behavior
Social APIs Development Tools
Integrated Facebook Connect Develop and distribute your app
and YQL for
multiple platforms from a single
tool

32. Modular Approach
Custom Modules - Obj-C & Java

33. What Titanium Mobile is not:
★ Not a native wrapper around a web view
(PhoneGap being an example of this
approach)
★ However, you do have a web view
component for HTML/CSS UI if that is your
preference
★ Your JavaScript code is invoking native APIs
for UI and other native functions

34. How to Get Started..
Install iPhone SDK (Mac OS only)
Install Titanium Developer (Mac Win
Linux)
Create account on Titanium Developer
Download and install Services and
json_server modules from drupal.org
More help:
http://civicactions.com/blog/sumit

35. Data, Users Services API
Drupal
TI Network API
Titanium Framework

36. Make a Drupal view.get Service Call

37. Example

38. Example

39. Example

40. Titanium Developer
★ Manage and run
Titanium applications
★ Package applications for
distribution
★ Run on a device for
testing
★ Manage Appcelerator
account

41. Questions so far ...

42. Titanium Fundamentals
• A Titanium application is a
JavaScript program that is
interpreted at runtime on the
device
• app.js defines the root
execution context of the app
• Note that we are not running
in a browser
• It use the WebKit KJS
JavaScript engine (iOS) or
Rhino (Android/BB)

43. Titanium JavaScript API
★ Organized into logical namespaces
★ “Titanium” (or just “Ti” for short) is the root
namespace for all Titanium functionality
★ A few other odds and ends in the global space
★ setTimeout/setInterval
★ alert
★ JSON

44. Cross-Platform Development
★ Not all UI is available across platforms
★ Titanium != “Write Once, Run Everywhere”
★ It tries to enable native apps that look and feel
like they were created in Objective-C or Java
★ Also note that even cross-platform UI
components (like table views) will render
differently cross platform
★ Cross Platform testing is critical during dev cycle

45. But wait, there’s more!
★ Animation APIs
★ Social Networks
★ Custom Module
Development
★ iPad Development
★ HTML 5 and CSS 3
★ Explore Desktop!!!

46. Resources
★ Community Q&A
http://developer.appcelerator.com
★ Reference Docs
★ My Blog: http://civicactions.com/blog/sumit
OR http://sumitk.net
★ http://groups.drupal.org/titanium-api

47. Anything Else ...
Sumit Kataria
sumitk@sumitk.net
http://www.sumitk.net
IRC: sumitk

48. http://cph2010.drupal.org/node/5728