I haven’t posted in three weeks now, but there’s a good reason for it – I was preparing a post for Pluralsight on the topic of Ionic. This will be a series of posts which will teach you how to take advantage of your web development knowledge in building hybrid applications for iOS and Android.

I’m super excited that the first  post is now live (I have additional 3 in the queue) and you can check it out here: How to get started with Ionic framework on Mac and Windows.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask, and please share if you like it.

Post moved here: http://www.nikola-breznjak.com/blog/miscellaneou/ekobit-devarena-10-2015/

I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow and I tend to contribute regularly (am currently in the top 0.X%). In this category (stackoverflow) of posts, I will be posting my top rated questions and answers. This, btw, is allowed as explained in the meta thread here.

As you may know, I’m really into Ionic framework lately and am helping out on StackOverflow with the knowledge I gained so far with the framework. I’m in the top All time answerers list.

I answered this question by userChris Lawrence:

I think I know the answer to this question already but thought I would throw it out there incase there was a workaround….

Just built a ionic app with ngcordova, which works fine and I have tested on my android device and deployed to playstore.

Just in the process of deploying to the apple app store. I currently don’t have an apple ios physical device to test the cordova plugins.

I am using sms, camera and local notification. These as far as am aware cannot be tested in the ios simulator in xcode.

Don’t really want to spend £400 on a tablet to test one app.. any one had the same problem and found a means of testing?

My answer was:

You can test plugins in iOS simulator.

edit: I just stumbled upon the official documentation where it states that even with Ionic View you can test these plugins:

• com.brodysoft.sqlitePlugin 1.0.3 “Brodysoft SQLitePlugin”
• com.ionic.keyboard 1.0.3 “Keyboard”
• com.phonegap.plugins.barcodescanner 1.1.0 “BarcodeScanner”
• org.apache.cordova.battery-status 0.2.12 “Battery”
• org.apache.cordova.camera 0.3.4 “Camera”
• org.apache.cordova.console 0.2.12 “Console”
• org.apache.cordova.device 0.2.13 “Device”
• org.apache.cordova.device-motion 0.2.11 “Device Motion”
• org.apache.cordova.device-orientation 0.3.10 “Device Orientation”
• org.apache.cordova.dialogs 0.2.11 “Notification”
• org.apache.cordova.geolocation 0.3.11 “Geolocation”
• org.apache.cordova.globalization 0.3.3 “Globalization”
• org.apache.cordova.network-information 0.2.14 “Network Information”
• org.apache.cordova.vibration 0.3.12 “Vibration”
• org.chromium.zip 1.0.0 “Zip”

How to test #Cordova plugins in #Ionic without a device? https://t.co/IpyYNV4uAn

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) October 20, 2015

I just came home from the ever so slightly awesome Ekobit DevArena X conference. As I usually do, I’ll share my notes that I took in my notebook and a few pictures.

Start your engines

Well, you can’t start a day on an empty stomach, right?

This is how the accreditation looked like:

The accreditation had a handy list of all the presentations on the back side:

As you can see, there were 4 tracks between which you could choose (yes, you could go to any presentation in any of the tracks in a certain timeslot). Chalk n’ Talk presentations are actually a cool thing where they aren’t actual presentations rather something like a round table where the presenter(s) discuss their real life experiences (and the input from the crowd is also highly desirable).

Keynote

• Presenters: Ivan Kardum, Nenad Bakić, Domagoj Pavlešić and Saša Tomičić
• 10th in a row Ekobit DevArena
• A very interesting project called Croatian Makers by Nenad Bakić who was very inspiring and kudos for starting all this
  
• They donated robotical equipment to over 50 schools in Croatia
• Serwantes
• Fantom 3
• Lego Mindstorms – can’t wait to get this for my little girl! Yeah, I know it’s an excuse for me to play with it too 🙂
• He shared a quite intriguing image with us:
  

Modern web application development in Visual Studio 2015

• Presenter: Ivan Popek
• 
• 
• Bower and npm come preinstalled with Visual Studio 2015. I wrote a detailed tutorial for Digital Ocean about Bower if you want to take a look.
• Gulp and Grunt are task runners which offer tools like minification, concatenation, linting, etc…
• Personally, I like Gulp better because of it’s clearer syntax
• Gulp is faster because it uses streams
• Git and Node are also preinstalled by default on VS 2015
• The way you “add” packages for Bower is that you create a bower.json file in the Solution explorer and as soon as you hit Save it installs the listed dependencies. It creates the Dependencies folder and a bower_components folder
• bower install runns automatically after you open up the project
• To add Gulp create a package.json file in the Solution explorer and as soon as you hit Save npm will install it. You can add additional Gulp dependencies the same way.
• To start writing Gulp tasks, create a gulpfile.js and hack on 🙂
• Visual Studio 2015 has a nice TaskRunner explorer where you can run the tasks manually. However, it’s way better to set a “watch” task inside Gulp so that it runs the tasks automatically for you. For example, if you’re using SASS it will compile to CSS automatically on every change to the SASS files. You can set the watch tasks to run after you reoppen the project with Watch -> Bindings->Project open

Clean code is your friend

• Presenters: Bruno Brozović and Antonija Malenica
  
• Technical debt
• Writing code : Reading code = 1 : 10 in terms of time. It’s way better to invest time at the beginning to write “clean code” as it will pay of in the later stages of the project
  
• The boy scout rule – always leave the campground cleaner than you found it
• YAGNI (You ain’t gonna need it) – do not add functionality until deemed necessary
• KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) – Simplicity is better than complexity
• DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) – every piece of knowledge must have single, unambigious, authorative representation within system
• Principle of least surprise – do the least surprising thing
• SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) – a class should have only one reason to change
• Single level of abstraction
• Methods
  • names – detail and descriptive
  • short
  • number of arguments as small as possible (0, 1, 2)
  • SRP
• Comments – you should strive to write selfdocumenting code
• Classes
  • QualitatyClassName (25-30 characters)
  • SRP
  • smaller number of cohesive classes
  • Open Closed Principle – open for extension, closed for modification
• Learning test
• And now, a spectacle! In a room of about 100 people when the question “How many of you are using Unit testing?” was asked only 4 people raised their hands 

Lunch

We’re outsorcing products and services, not people!

• Presenters: Luka Abrus (Five Minutes), Vedran Brničević (Ekobit)
  
• Ekobit started in 1992
  • ALM, BizDataX
• Five minutes needed 7 years to come to the point where 100% of the things they do is on the USA market
• Customer feedback by literally going live from door to door and ask
• Landing pages + AdWords + Sign me up
• Nobody buys enterprise software without a support
• Europe’s problem is language barriers from country to country
• Funny anecdote: when you say to an American that you’re from Croatia: “Oh, yes Dubrovnik – Game of Thrones!”. Also funny one was “oh, you’re just a Russian school of mathematics”. And thus, they believe we are good programmers; designers not so much.
• You need to be willing to hop the plane and go to a meeting at any time
• Five Minutes has currently 12 free spots
• NY Area software developer 150-200$ per hour (jaw-dropping!)
• Quality is everything!
• Put your code to GitHub, designs to Dribble, Behance
• The main problem that both of the presenters expressed was that there are just not enough (quality) developers

Where is this web going?

• Presenters: Domagoj Pavlešić, Ivan Popek, Renato Železnjak, Josip Klarić, Ratko Ćosić
• this was a round table like presentation
  
• Browser as an Operating System
• Microsoft is slowing down the Web standardization
• Too many JS frameworks (you don’t say 😉)
• NO for monolith framework
• Use linting
• Gridster, Selectize, Knockout
• Throw jQuery out
• TypeScript two thumbs up

Automated delivery in Visual Studio 2015

• Presenters: Ognjen Bajić and Ana Roje Ivančić
  
• Build vNext
• 2015 Intentional Extensibility – open source
• Custom build workflows
• Real time output
• Versioning
• Cross-platform build (Win, Mac, Linux)
• Build .NET, Java, Android, iOS
• Ant, CMake, Maven, Xcode Build, Android Build
• Agents, Pools, Queues
• Testing, web performance, load tests

Aurelia – new generation JavaScript framework

• Presenters: Ratko Ćosić and Mario Peroković
  
• AMD
  • modular programming
  • RequireJS
  • CommonJS
  • TypeScript
• SPA
  • chunking
  • templating
  • controllers
• Which framework should I choose?
  
• Durandal -> Aurelia
• JavaScript is a subset of TypeScript which is compiled in ES5. Microsoft is developing along with Anders Hejlsberg (C# creator)
• Angular2 uses TypeScript
•  Every view starts with <template>
• MVVM – model view view-model
• DI – dependency injection
• Parent view models
• Routing
• Screen activation lifecycle
• uses jspm
• jspm install aurelia-http-client
• <input type=”text” value.bind=”firstName” /> and then reference it like ${firstName}
• Debugging
  • compile-spy
  • view-spy

They had a nice additional prize draw for those who asked questions (you get a small paper which you toos in a drawing bowl). I got mine on the last presentation. However, no luck in winning something 🙁

However, as every year, they are giving prizes for the first few people who sign up for the conference. This year I signed up at 6th place, and because of that I got a nice 2 tickets at Terme Tuhelj, and also a nice hoodie with a number 6 🙂

Thanks and hope to see you next year!

If you write on the web, you must have come across the awesome Markdown:

a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).

You can learn more about it from the official documentation.

There are many editors that allow you to write in Markdown but, as I found, most of them require a license. Besides, wouldn’t it be great that your own editor would have a Markdown support? That’s why I love Sublime Text, it has a plugin for everything. Well, ok, it doesn’t have a plugin to throw out sandwiches from your computer, but I guess it will be able to in the not so distant future. 

Ok, jokes and wishes aside, let see how to set up live Markdown preview on Windows with Sublime Text and Markmon plugin.

Install Markmon:

npm install -g markmon

Install pandoc.

Install Markmon Sublime Text plugin through its Package Control (search for “Markmon”).

Make sure you have markmon and pandoc in your PATH variable.

Run markmon in the folder where is your .md file, like this:

markmon myMDfile.md

open up your browser at localhost:3000.

Write on! 

How to set up live #Markdown preview on #Windows with #Sublime Text and #Markmon http://t.co/ROZZxCbvGb

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) October 18, 2015

My notes from the bestseller book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Dr. Eben Alexander, which I rated  4/5 on my Shelfari account:

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks it should be. ~ Albert Einstein

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true. The other is to refuse to believe what is true. ~Soren Kierkegaard

If yo would be a real seeker after truth it is necessary that, at least once in your life, you doubt as far as possible all things. ~ Rene Descartes

If tomorrow starts without me – David Romano

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/655834520990687232

My notes from the bestseller book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, which I marked as favorite and rated 5/5 on my Shelfari account:

Pam Rose – My life

Go small by ignoring things you could do, and doing things you should do.

To do things at once is to do neither.

Habits are hard to only in the beginning.

Discipline over 66 days equals habit.

Do what mathers most first each morning when your willpower is strongest.

Nothing ever achieved absolute balance. A balanced life is a lie. Time on one thing means time off on another.

When you’re supposed to be working – work. When you’re supposed to be playing – play.

Don’t be afraid to fail! See it as part of your learning process and keep striving for your true potential.

Don’t let small things cut your life down to size. Think big, be bold, aim high and see just how big you can blow up your life.

The key to success is not in all the things that we do, but in the few things that we do well.

Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers.

Asking questions improves learning and performance by 150%.

What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

Writing down your goals makes it 35.9% more likely to accomplish them.

Time block your time off, your one thing, and your planning time.

Nobody whoever gave his best regretted it.

Time on a task overtime eventually beats talent every time.

If the people know how hard I had to work to gain my mastery it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all – Michelangelo

Meditate and pray. Eat right. Exercise. Sleep. Hug. Kiss. Love. Set goals. Plan. Timeblock your one thing.

Hang out with people who seek achievements.

20 years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the things you did to do.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/655731461098729472

I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow and I tend to contribute regularly (am currently in the top 0.X%). In this category (stackoverflow) of posts, I will be posting my top rated questions and answers. This, btw, is allowed as explained in the meta thread here.

I answered this question by user user5148540:

npm install -g cordova

npm ERR! Failed to parse json
npm Unexpected token '\u0000' at 1:1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! ^
npm ERR! File: c:\Users\Bruce\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\amdefine\1.0.0\package\package.json
npm ERR! Failed to parse package.json data.
npm ERR! package.json must be actual JSON, not just JavaScript.
npm ERR!
npm ERR! This is not a bug in npm
npm ERR! Tell the package author to fix their package.json file. JSON.parse.

My answer was:

 Via this question on SO it could be that you just have to do:

npm cache clean

But, also try the other methods suggested there like adding the registry option:

npm install <packagename> --registry http://registry.npmjs.org/

Or, if you’ve been mingling with the package.json file by yourself, check if it’s valid.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/655111949139599364

As the official blog post nicely states

mobile just changed forever

How come? Well, as the post says

Google started indexing iOS 9 apps that support the HTTP deep link standards, allowing users to find and open app content through the standard Google search in Safari on iOS and Google on Android.

What this means is that even more businesses will want to have their app. Why? Well, for the same reasons why they created websites. One of our professors at university used to joke:

if it’s not on the web, it doesn’t exist

Anyways, that’s why I think Ionic is going to become the mainstream goto place for making apps, and making them quick.

As the author of that posts says:

Ionic is planning to become WordPress for apps

So, dear fellow developers – it’s time to dive into the app business. And, if you still haven’t got a clue where to start – Ionic is a great place, especially if you have web development skills.

#Ionic is #wordpress for #mobile #apps http://t.co/5E5bhCtaXD

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) October 14, 2015

As just announced on the official blog post IonicPackage now lets you build an iOS app for distribution on Windows machine.

This indeed is a huge news. However, don’t think you won’t have to buy a Mac (or make your own Hackintosh or buy Mac in cloud or similar mumbo jumbo) to build an app for iOS. Well, at least for now you still have to set the certificate and provisioning profile for iOS builds (and you can do that only on a Mac).

Anyways, during the open alpha period, Ionic Package will be 100% free to use, and later they promised to have a free dev package as well.

In order to try this out first update your Ionic CLI to the newest version:

npm install -g ionic

Then, when you’re done with your app, you have to make sure that you uploaded it to Ionic with:

ionic upload

Build for Android

If you want to build for Android it execute:

ionic package build android

The output of the command looks something like this:

> ionic package build android --profile dev                                
[=============================]  100%  0.0s
Preparing your resources...
Uploading your resources to Ionic...
Submitting your app to Ionic Package...
Your app has been successfully submitted to Ionic Package!
Build ID: 1
We are now packaging your app.

To check the status of the packaging execute:

ionic package list

You should see something similar to this output:

> ionic package list                                                       

  id │ status  │ platform │ mode  │ started
─────┼─────────┼──────────┼───────┼────────────────────────
  1  │ SUCCESS │ android  │ debug │ Oct 14th, 2015 21:20:33

Showing 1 of your latest builds.

If the status shows SUCCESS then you can finally download the build by executing:

ionic package download BUILD_ID

Where, of course you would enter your own BUILD_ID number. In my case the command would be:

ionic package download 1

The output of the command shows where the .apk file has been downloaded:

> ionic package download 1                                                 
Downloading... [=============================]  100%  0.0s

Wrote: /Users/nikola/Desktop/ionicTesting/ionicPackageTest/ionicPackageTest.apk
 ✓ Done!

You can learn more about how to use the Ionic Android build tools from official documentation.

Build for iOS

The process is basically the same as for Android, with the added prerequisite of creating certificate and provisioning profile. You can learn more about how to use the Ionic iOS build tools from official documentation.

Build an #app for distribution with #Ionic Package http://t.co/TOfW7ofZXR

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) October 14, 2015