Android Question B4X newbie..please help with my questions

[ia2016]

Hi all,

Newbie here and this is my first posting here and it is awesome to be part of this wonderful community. I really like the B4x apps approach of using Basic for iOS and Android development and have some questions before I make a decision. If anybody can chime on this, it would be really helpful.

1. Wanted to go with the iOS and Android standards when developing apps and don't know where to start. I know Apple and Google has standard docs available online but don't want to jump into developing apps without following the guidelines set forth by Apple and Google. Does B4x documentation has any pointers specific to UI guidelines when using the software?

2. Also looked into Xamarin and there is no direct UI designer. I would like to know if B4x has a visual designer which supports drag and drop of the controls. Also, are all the controls supported (Material design Marshmallow stuff and iOS 10.x)?

3. For common code base, how is B4X supportive on that? I wanted to have REST calls wrapped in some kind of library to be reused by both iOS and Android platforms.

4. Any way of wrapping Obj-C/Swift components (cocoacontrols.com) and Java code to be imported into B4X?

5. Is there a common IDE for both or do I have to use 2 different IDEs?

I think I'm asking a lot but curious to get some feedback.

Appreciate all the help.

 

[Erel]

1. B4A and B4i use the native UI elements. This means that Apple and Google guildelines are relevant. I recommend you to start with the beginner guides:
https://www.b4x.com/android/documentation.html
https://www.b4x.com/b4i/documentation.html

2. There is a visual designer. Most or all of the native views are supported. There are also many libraries available that add more types of views.

3. OkHttpUtils2 API (B4A) is exactly the same as iHttpUtils2 API (B4i). Put the relevant code in a class and use the shared modules feature to reuse the code. You can also use conditional symbols:

#If B4A
 ...
#Else If B4i
 ...
#End If

4. Yes. By writing a library.
5. Each product runs separately, however the IDE is the same.

 

[ia2016]

Thanks Erel for your detailed reply.

Another question:

If I wanted to run B4X on a iMac running Windows 10 thru Bootcamp, how do I compile the iOS project as I don't have any other source for OS X. I wanted to compile locally instead of getting the online option.

Please advise.

 

[Erel]

It is better to use a VM. For example: https://www.virtualbox.org/

This will allow you to run the IDE in the VM and the builder on the Mac.

 

[ia2016]

Awesome!

Just a request Erel:

It would be very helpful to have a video walk thru of a working app on both iOS and Android (not a hello world app ) which also shows code sharing techniques. As you know, I'm not seeing anything helpful on youtube. The documentation is good but a video showing both the IDEs hard at work on a working app would be awesome. For example, a working weather app using openweathermap REST API on both the platforms would be really nice.

With respect to Xamarin, it does have a lot with examples on youtube but I really wanted to stick with B4X and curious to know the power of BASIC for cross platform development.

Thanks.

 

[ia2016]

Hi Erel,

Do you have any updates on my request please?

Thanks.

 

[Erel]

Not yet. Please see this post: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/69064/#content

Note that there is a series of video tutorials for B4J: https://www.b4x.com/b4j.html#documentation
B4J is similar to B4A and B4i (a bit simpler).