Current/best cross-platform options

[L. V. Lammert]

Haven't seen any traffic in some time, .. so here's a good question for
discussion:

Given a need for basic device functions (nothing fancy):

GPS
Camera/Video
Voice Recording
Text and network

What are the current options for using one codebase across most platforms
(IOS, Android, Win, for example)?

TIA!

Lee

[John Haney]

Ionic looks rather nice for giving access to platform components and showing native UI components.

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[Rob Dickerson]

My current thinking around this issue is that trying to share UI code across platforms is a recipe for bad UX, but sharing business logic cross platform is probably feasible. Right now, cross-compling with j2obc is my top choice for sharing business logic, but I don't really care about Windows phones in my current job. :) If support for multiple platforms is more important than UX, then I'd look at writing a mobile-friendly web app. (Most mobile browsers let you access location data, etc.)

Totally wiling to admit there are lots of use cases outside my direct experience, this is just my current viewpoint.

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[Heath Borders]

If I was trying to do something simple with a fully common codebase, I'd use Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) or something. We used PhoneGap at Jive, but it didn't work well beyond a simple use case.

I've never used j2objc, but I'm a little put off by it since I'd rather be working in Swift, and I'm nervous about having my whole system being dependent on something so complicated. I generally don't like to be dependent on a library that I can't maintain myself, and I don't consider myself a strong transpiler person.

At Twitch, we use C++ to share our business logic, and it works pretty well. It's a little annoying to have to make all the Java bindings, but I'm sure there's a way to automate that eventually.

[John Haney]

Ionic is awrapper around Cordova. I just got a demo about it from the web team at work, and it does look like a pretty slick solution. Enough so that I am finally tempted to look again at JavaScript/etc for future hobby projects... But only tempted for now... :-)

[Matt Follett]

I've used Ionic & Cordova for a couple of small things. The nice thing about Ionic is that it gives you a clean way to have shared code for across platform that is pretty convincingly native, especially with Ionic 2, which is currently in Beta. The downside of Ionic over just Cordova is that it requires you to learn Angular (either AngularJS for Ionic 1 or Angular 2 for Ionic 2).

Thanks,

Matt Follett

[Tim]

We have used Cordova with pretty good luck. And have accessed camera, gps, ect via the plugins.  What I have seen over the years of using  it is there are some limits mainly on the Android side iOS is fine.  We have used it to communicate with Azure web services and internal web services.  I have also use d3 to create chart visualizations. Heck I even created and sold a few thousand kids coloring books using it. That was on iOS, Windows phone 8, Andriod, BlackBerry and WebOS.   

Real question is what are you trying to do? 

As for UI frameworks Ionic or Framework 7 are some good ones, I have also used JqueryMobile and just rolled our own.  

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