When you hire a dedicated app developer to build an app for a project, it’s important to choose a flexible, cost-effective and robust platform. Ionic Framework is one such a reliable framework that allows you to develop an app for all platforms. The guide to the Ionic mobile app development will allow the developers to build one for their project. It also helps the mobile app owners to take better decision before winding up the process to hire Ionic app developers.
Why Should You Use Ionic Framework For An Ionic App Development?
A brief introduction to the Ionic framework will allow you to easily comprehend its advantage for development.
A free and open-source platform that permits you to build a mobile app using web technologies. You can also call the Ionic framework as a front-end UI framework that handles the look of your app responsible to interact with the customers. Its components help in building highly beautiful, interactive, native as well as progressive web apps.
The Ionic Themes consists of pretty and flexible components that are easy to integrate. Ionic buttons, forms, ionic cards, images, and whatnot are available to decorate an app.
Not just aesthetics, an app must have attributes like sensible project structure, navigational services, dependency injection, data binding, and remote data access. Hire Ionic developer to build a perfect Ionic mobile app for your business with the help of these attributes.
But, if you are a beginner Ionic app developer, it will be beneficial to note them. The things that we will cover when building a mobile app are:
- Initializing app with Ionic CLI
- Creating classes to represent the objects from models
- Creating services to handle and have access to data
- Creating pages & components to represent functionality and display UI
What Are The Project Architecture Of the Ionic Development?
Let us begin!
- Modules - Modules are meant to organize an app unifying components, pipes, directives, and services.
- Components - The most fundamental part of building an app. Moreover, the chief way to specify elements and logic on the page.
- Templates - With some difference a typical template looks like a regular HTML. They are used for defining a component view.
- Services - A class that well - defined purpose. It can be anything - from any value to function to feature that your application demands.
- External resources - Databases, APIs and many other elements that enable the app to interact with the outside world.
The process of project structure to app’s architecture consists of a wide variety of components, services, directories, and attributes.
The raw and uncompiled raw in Ionic is present in the src directory. When the Ionic server is run, the code gets transpiled from the src directory to the correct JavaScript version. This depicts that the process undergoes a higher level using TypeScript but compiles down in the polder form of JavaScript of the browser needs.
Within the src directory, you shall find the folders like app, assets, pages, services, and themes.
The app folder constitutes of:
- App.component.ts - It defines the basic structure and initial navigation of the app
- App.html - it defines the navigation and its roots
- App.module.ts - It declares the vast majority of dependencies and teaches the main module to use
- App.scss - This file is the entry point to many apps shared imports and global Sass files to be included in the output CSS
The page folder of the src directory constitutes of more than on folders within:
- Learn-feed.html - It is also known as the page template where you will find all kinds of layout
- Learn-feed.scss - This allows page style-specific which allows you to centralize in one place where you can change stuff
The theme folders consist of variables, mixins, shared styles, etc to make your app easily customizable and extendable.
Common - This will provide all the shared styles to encourage code reuse and prevent DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself)
variable.scss - A predefined ionic file to include all the sass variables usage in your app
The Service Folder functions as the name suggests. Services are used to access the data to be presented within the app. There can be two different kinds - one that interacts with remote backend API and other interacts with local JSON.
- Learn.model.ts - This model is prepared on typescript and object-oriented programming to present the data in the layout
- Learn.service.ts - This gives you the accessibility to pull out the data that are presented in the learning pages
- Question.service.ts - answer.service.ts - This handles the communication and interaction with the backend API
The asset folder may save all the images as well as other assets used in the apps. The data layer can be simplified in some parts of the apps by creating a JSON file with simple data.
Let’s Move Towards Ionic App Navigation
Navigation in Ionic apps works as a simple stack, where new pages are pushed onto the top of the old stack. To move forward in the app stacking over and over is made, when the top is popped out of the page you can navigate backward.
You can set "this.navCtrl" in the constructor to “this.navCtrl.push()” to pass it to the age you want to navigate. Ionic’s navigational system is flexible and using push to navigate you can easily move to a new page.
Source: https://ionicthemes.com/tutorials/about/building-a-complete-mobile-app-with-ionic-3
The type and amount of data representation must be taken into account when using the navigation feature. Because you must never forget that navigation is used to show the structure of the data, thus, it must necessarily follow an information structure.
Other Navigation For UX In Ionic App Development
The type and amount of data representation must be taken into account when using the navigation feature. Because you must never forget that navigation is used to show the structure of the data, thus, it must necessarily follow an information structure. Enabling best practices allows people to find and use the most valuable features of the app easily. Good navigation is like a good design. The navigation patterns are classified into two - Primary and Secondary navigation patterns.
When you open an app, Persistent navigation encapsulates menu structures like springboard or launchpad, cards, lists, gallery and tab menu. Transient navigation is the kind of navigation that is revealed through gestures or tap. The explicit way of navigation is because of the different screen sizes that enable designers to think out of the box. This mobile persistent navigation pattern like a side drawer or side menu or toggle menu can be used in Ionic app development.
Some of the primary navigation work as a secondary navigation pattern to help better the navigation system. Likewise tabs with tabs, Tabs with lists, tabs with dashboard, a springboard with a gallery and more. Some of the mobile secondary navigation patterns that can be used are page swiping, scrolling tabs, and accordion.
Improvising The Design Of The Ionic Mobile Application
Since the Ionic framework is used for developing high-level mobile apps with the help of building blocks, components. Components allow quick development of interface of the app inclusive of modals, pop-ups, and cards. The Ionic UI elements are reusable made up of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Ionic components quickly adapt to its platform which is called Platform Continuity. There are different layouts and UI components in Platform Continuity.
Here is a shortlist of the UI components:
1. Learn feed view
- Different Ionic framework concepts are seen through the feed
- Components: Ionic content cards
2. Learn details view
- A short detail of a particular concept with a list of questions
- Components: Ionic content cards
3. Question details view
- A view that enables easy modification and creation of the questions
- Components: Ionic Model, Ionic form inputs
4. Manage answer view
- A view to create and modify the answers
- Components: Ionic models, Ionic form inputs
Decorating Ionic Mobile Apps With Some Modular Features In Ionic Framework
However, there is a full library of UI components that Ionic has that any mobile app developer can use easily. There are many other functionalities that Ionic offers:
1. Responsive Grid Layout
A powerful mobile-first flexbox system is available in the Ionic framework for developing custom layouts. The grid comprises three units - a grid, row and a column. The number of columns and breakpoints can be fully customized using Saas.
2. Sass Variable
Sass is just similar to CSS that is powerful and goes hand in hand with Ionic. You can easily use Sass variables multiple times once defined value. For instance, to define the main color in the app, you can create a variable "$ main-colour: red;"
3. RTL Support
To enable your app to support multi-directional needs, you can use some built-in mixins in the Ionic Framework. Ionic offers full LTR and RTL support for multilingual addresses.
4. Ionicons
The designer team of Ionic are creative heads like others and understands the need for icons in app development. Thus, the team builds incredibly beautiful and free icons for the Ionic app developers for making apps look pretty.
Data Handling and Backend Implementations for Ionic App Development
There are many ways data could be handled and consumed. With Ionic Framework, you are given full freedom to implement the backend your way. For this, Ionic encourages the utility of some models with a combination of services.
- Models - Domain models are important for defining business logic in apps. To make the app’s components reusable, the logic is moved out of the components and moved into separate classes or models. Thus, this approach enables business logic reusable.
- Services - Since Ionic is implemented on Angular thus, it uses some of its best parts. The best part about Angular is that it permits you to create multiple reusable data services. These multiple services can be fed in components that need development.
The concept of "Dependency Injection" is an important app design pattern. Since Angular has its own DI (Dependency Injector ) framework - this improves the efficiency and modularity of an app.
The need for the class to perform its function is dependencies. Also referred to as a coding pattern where service is sought from the external sources rather than creating them. DI in Angular not only makes an app efficient but flexible, robust, testable and easily maintainable.
Since Angular injector doesn’t know how to create a new service thus, it would fail to run. So, whenever, as a developer, you try to add a new service in Ionic, make sure to train your Angular injector by registering a Service Provider.
As per the Angular Documentation page for dependency injection, there are ways to register a Service Provider:
- One, In the component itself
- Second, In the module
In the Nutshell
Who wouldn’t want a robust, flexible, easily navigable, aesthetic as well as efficient mobile app? But, developing one from scratch can sometimes be overwhelmingly frustrating. A free open-source platform, Ionic Framework which is mostly built on Angular enables the web and app developers to develop highly-interactive and aesthetic yet functional native and progressive web apps.
Ionic not only empowers to hire app developers to build extensive apps but offers templates like Wordpress integration, examples of how to use Google Map, Google Places and Geolocation, Video Playlists, Image Management, Social Logins, Internationalization and much more.
The benefit of using Ionic framework is that it leverages easy building of extensive mobile applications. It also assists the developers and software industry to deliver high-quality products. Moreover, it empowers people with tools and services to develop new skills and make a better living.
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