Re: [xwiki-devs] GSoC 2011 - "XWiki Android client"

Hi, I wanted to rename this project to Android/iPhone instead of Android only. I tend to think that today FULL native client development on Android or iOS is outdated. There are now libraries like Appcelerator Titanium (http://www.appcelerator.com/) or PhoneGap (http://www.phonegap.com/) that allow to do cross platform development with "native UI" look and feel in Javascript and with very nice web integration.

I've done a prototype with Appcelerator and calling REST/JSON apis from it is a breeze and the result is a very nice native looking application. The great advantage is to develope mostly once for both platforms. Also the application is tightly connected to a good mobile skin. Indeed given XWiki's web capabilities, you cannot have of an application developped on top of XWiki working on a mobile without actually calling the application itself in web mode (good example is a livetable). So you can't only interact with the content engine of XWiki. Therefore a good native mobile XWiki application is a front end with nice "mobile" oriented widgets for the home page, the activity stream, the search and maybe others which then link to the native XWiki pages embedded in a mobile skin. Althouth native mobile application + mobile skin are connected they can still be viewed as different projects as the mobile skin can be used on it's own. Ludovic Le 20/03/11 18:00, Thomas Mortagne a écrit : > > Hi Rauf, > > Great you are interested in this project ! > > On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 17:32, Abdul Rauf<raufbutt(a)gmail.com>  wrote: >> >> Dear Thomas Mortagne >> >> >> I am very excited to contribute in open source community through the >> platform of Google Summer of Code 2011. I have visited the ideas page >> of “XWiki” at http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/GoogleSummerOfCode/ for >> GSoC 2011. I am interested in working on “Google Android client” for >> XWiki. >> The reason being is my interest in smartphone development. I have >> previously >> worked in Windows Phone 7 and to some extent in Blackberry. I want to >> experience development in other platforms such as Android. I've worked in >> Java, CSS, HTML and Javascript. >> >> >> I am writing to let you know my understanding of the project and would >> like >> your feedback on it. My understanding of the requirements is as follows: >> >> >>   - To develop a smartphone application for XWiki. >>   - The application should be able to navigate wiki spaces and pages. >>   - The application should allow offline editing of wiki space and pages >>   and synchronise results on connecting with the repository. >>   - The application should also allow users an option to launch a browser >>   window. > > That is for the UI part yes. > > The user need a way to view the result and there is a lot of ways > which are not requiring the same work: > - launch the browser to the page (which will be the minimum for this GSOC) > - integrate the browser into the application if you have more time > - something event more integrated in the application if you have lot > of time but i doubt it will be possible ;) > > Plus any commons sense you are thinking of since you are probably more > eperianced than me in mobile development ;) > > But there is also another side of the project which is to develop a > nice android library package that could be used by any other Android > app to comunicate with XWiki. > > More than the featuires what is important is to have a good > architecture (maven build, follow Andoird good practices) that will > make what you did easy to improve and add other features later by > someone else. That's the better way to make XWiki have a good android > client in the long run. > >> I have some knowledge of XML-RPC client/server communication. However, >> you >> mentioned you are interested in using REST API for such communication. >> Does >> XWiki already have REST API or this API needs to be created as part of >> this >> project. Would you please refer me some material to study in this regard? > > Yes there is already a very complete REST interface, a lot more > complete than the XML-RPC one which is why the project should be based > on it. > >> >> I look forward to your response. >> >> >> Regards > > Notes: I only did a bit of Android developement mostly to test it so I > will not be able to help much on very advanced Android stuff > >> >> Rauf >> >> University of Gloucestershire >> _______________________________________________ >> devs mailing list >> devs(a)xwiki.org >> http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs >> > > -- Ludovic Dubost Blog: http://blog.ludovic.org/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost GTalk: ldubost _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs(a)xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs