Announcing Titanium4j Mobile 2.0

Titanium Mobile development is now better then ever. Release 2.0 of our Java API for Appcelerator Titanium Mobile is finally here and we are excited to share with you what we've been working on for the past few months. The Goal of this release was to improve the way you develop Titanium applications by providing features and capabilities beyond what is available in the JavaScript based Titanium development model. In this version we rewrote the framework from the ground up, fixed a handful of bugs and added an entire set of new features. Let's take a look at some of the most prominent ones.

Cleaner ,simpler and more intuitive API

In 1.0 the API looked as follows: Button button = UI.createButton(); button.setTitle("Tap me"); button.addClickHandler(new TiEventListener<ClickEvent>() { @Override protected void onEvent(ClickEvent event) { Titanium.alert("Hello, World"); } }); While this was working pretty well, it had some limitations. First, Components were created through factory methods and not contructors. And because all objects were mostly thin wrappers around GWT JavaScriptObjects, extending them to create custom composites was not possible. Below is a taste of what the new API in 2.0 looks like: Button button = new Button("Tap me"); button.addClickHandler(new InteractionHandler() { @Override public void onClick(InteractionEvent event) { Titanium.alert("Hello,World"); } }); As you can see, button is now a first class Java object with a real constructor. Because all components are now real java objects, they are easy to extend as depicted in the following code snippet: import com.emitrom.gwt4.ti.mobile.client.ui.Window; /** * Implements the MainWindow of the application */ public class CalculateWindow extends Window { private static final CalculateWindow INSTANCE = new CalculateWindow(); public static CalculateWindow get(){ return INSTANCE; } private CalculateWindow(){ this.setWidth(320); this.setHeight(480); this.setTop(0); this.setLeft(0); this.setTitle("Loan Calculator"); this.setBarImage("assets/navbar.png"); this.setBackgroundImage("assets/background.png"); this.add(CalculateView.get()); } }

Server side Integration

Integrating your mobile app with any type of server is an important aspect, especially for enterprise applications. Titanium4j Mobile 2.0 now adds support for all GWT server side transport mechanisms From RequestBuilder to GWT-RPC via RequesFactory everything is supported giving you more power then the regular JavaScript based Titanium API. Integrating stuff like Spring , EJB or Hibernate is easy as in any other enterprise Java application . For example making an AJAX request is simpler and follows the very same approach as any regular GWT based application: requestBuilder = new RequestBuilder(RequestBuilder.GET, XML_FEED_URL); try { API.get().info("Sending request"); requestBuilder.sendRequest(null, new RequestCallback() { @Override public void onResponseReceived(Request request, Response response) { API.get().info("Xml Response received"); LoadingIndicatior.get().hide(); EventBusUtil.get().fireEvent(new XmlLoadedEvent(response.getText())); } @Override public void onError(Request request, Throwable exception) { API.get().error("Request error : " + exception.getMessage()); } }); } catch (RequestException e) { Titanium.alert("Request Exception", e.getMessage()); }

GWT JSON Support

In this release we also added the ability to use the GWT JSON API to parse JSON responses from the server giving you a more robust and more importantly a strong typed way to parse JSON. See an example for this below: private void parseJsonResponse(String jsonString) { API.get().info("Response : "); API.get().info(jsonString); JSONValue value = JSONParser.parseStrict(jsonString); JSONObject object = value.isObject(); JSONObject results = object.get("results").isObject(); JSONArray items = results.get("item").isArray(); for (int i = 0; i < items.size(); i++) { JSONObject item = items.get(i).isObject(); String title = item.get("title").isString().stringValue(); String description = item.get("description").isString().stringValue(); String link = item.get("link").isString().stringValue(); fillTableViewRows(title, description, link); } //more code here }

Powerful Examples

In this release we added real world examples to help you build amazing apps. Let s look at some of them :

1) The loan Calcutor

This example will not only show you how to use UI Components and layouts but how you can even integrate Touch4j to display charts for example. Titanium does not provide a charting package. So we think beeing able to use Touch4j and Titanium in the same application using the same code base is a feature that we are sure you will come to love and appreciate.

2) My Recipes

This demo illustrates the following set of API's

• RequestBuilder.
• XML Loading and Parsing.
• JSON Loading and Parsing.
• How to use the TableView Component.
• SQL API.
• Webview.

3) Exercise Tracker

With this example you will learn how to leverage Geolocation and Google Maps in your apps.

4) Holyday Memories

This demo will help you understand how to use :

• Camera.
• Video.
• Audio.
• File and Directory API.
• ScrollView Component.

5) Photo Sharing

This example will show you how to :

• Send Emails.
• Integrete social media in your app.
• FileSystem API's.

Titanium4j Mobile 2.0 is a big release with a ton of new things and extra cool features.
As always, you can find the Emitrom team and the rest of the Emitrom community in the Forum or by contacting the support team

We are really excited to see what you will build with Ti4j 2.0 !

Happy coding!