Mobile Foundation Blog

Note: Starting IBM MobileFirst Foundation 8.0 Bitcode is now supported....more

App Transport Security is one of the new features enforced by Apple to improve secure communications between App and Web Services. This feature is available from iOS 9 or later. This post talks about how to enable transport security on IBM MobileFirst Platform Servers.App Transport Security, in simple words, mandates the application to communicate with a web service over TLS version 1.2 protocol and use connection ciphers that provide forward secrecy. This means the developer has to ensure that the web service to which his application is communicating is deployed on a web server that supports TLS version 1.2 and......more

OverviewMost mobile applications need to access data stored in the enterprise's back-end system of records and other back-end systems. The traditional way for accessing those back-end systems in MobileFirst Platform (MFP) is using adapters. Adapters are pieces of code written in JavaScript that are called fom the mobile application using RPC over HTTP and that make a call to some back-end system....more

It all started when I received an email seeking help on using MQA or to be more precise integrating MQA into Xamarin based android app. Before jumping into addressing the problem, let's define MQA....more

This blog post will be continuously updated with the latest updates from testing IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation with Android Marshmallow</p>...more

Note: This procedure is no longer applicable. Use the VPN service for MobileFirst Platform Foundation 7.1 on Containers. For instructions for MobileFirst server running on Liberty buildpacks and Mobile Foundation Bluemix service (which also runs on Liberty buildpack), pl refer to this blog post ....more

Sometimes you may want to take your analytics data beyond the console....more

We just published first hands-on labs series based on MobileFirst Platform 7.1....more

IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation v7.1 is enabled to run on IBM Bluemix using the IBM Containers....more

Let me start this post with a disclaimer that "Don't panic by reading the post title". It might look bit lengthy, but still summarises what we are trying to achieve here.Let me explain you in four steps,...more

This is a follow up to Handling binary responses in native iOS using Java adapters....more

Contributed By : Chethan Kumar SN (chethankumar.sn@in.ibm.com) and Vittal Pai (vittalpai@in.ibm.com)...more

Last week, we announced the general availability of IBM MobileFirst Platform v7.1. Today, we are announcing the availability of the Xamarin SDK for IBM MobileFirst Platform v7.1. Xamarin developers can exploit the new APIs in v7.1. You can download the SDK from the Xamarin Component Store....more

In this blog I will share a few ways of debugging or troubleshooting an MobileFirst Windows Silverlight and Windows 8.1 Universal apps (Desktops, tables and phones). I will be debugging JavaScript code, managed code (C#), native code (C/C++) and combination of these.Basically we will cover...more

IBM MobileFirst 7.1 has started the support for the Windows Universal app development paradigm. In a previous post I had explained a manual procedure of developing a C# Windows universal app using MobileFirst 7.0 DLLs. That post also explained in detail the Windows 8.1 Universal App development paradigm. Starting with MFP (MobileFirst Platform) v7.1 support was added for Windows 8.1 Universal apps as environments....more

New in IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation 7.1 are several Hardened security features.One of these features is Certificate Pinning....more

IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation v7.1 introduces support for creating Cordova applications using the MobileFirst Command Line Interface (CLI).In this type of application, the MobileFirst SDK is packaged into a Cordova plug-in and is served as such along-side other core Cordova plug-ins and 3rd party Cordova plug-ins....more

In previous versions of MobileFirst Platform Foundation, the logged-in state of clients was wholly dependent on an HTTP session. After logging in, the end user remained logged in only as long as the HTTP session was alive. If either the application restarted, or the HTTP session ended, the end-user was automatically logged out....more

We are pleased to announce the Generally Availability of IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation 7.1!This new release is packed with many fixes and new features. Review the full list in the Release Notes....more

When developing mobile applications you may come across situations where you will need to incorporate functionality that is not readily available to implement in Hybrid applications. This can be solved by integrating 3rd party Cordova plug-ins in your application. However, there are some hurdles standing in the way to achieving this integration:...more

OverviewThis blog post is based on Saving and Retrieving Images using Cloudant with HTTP Adapters that I made a while ago using cloudant to store a base64 encoded image. Instead of saving the encoded image I will encrypt it using WL.SecurityUtils class provided in MobileFirst Foundation. WL.SecurityUtils is a small utility class that provides encryption and decryption of data using the Stanford Javascript Crypto Library (SJCL). In addition, I will not be covering the database creation or the Cordova plugin integration you can find that in the previous blog....more

As of June 5th 2015, this blog post acknowledges that IBM is aware of a recently published remote exploitation in Cordova for Android devices....more

With contributions from Rahul Raghuvanshi & Geet Manghnani....more

Since Apple recently announced they’ve achieved over $1B in sales with the Apple Watch and taken over 75% of the smartwatch market, I figured a friendly reminder that you can power the Apple Watch (and other wearable platforms) easily, securely, and efficiently with the IBM MobileFirst Platform can’t hurt… All those great features that the MobileFirst Platform brings to your mobile development process are also easily accessible to your wearable apps, including (but not limited to) data adapters, remote logging, operational analytics, push notification management, and more.</p>...more

iOS 8.4 is now public. All the flagship features such as JSONStore, authentication, notifications, app management capabilities, server connectivity and adapter invocation/chaining, Cordova plug-ins, common UI controls, native pages, native elements in hybrid pages, Analytics and logging all work as expected....more

If you're developing Hybrid applications for Windows Phone, you might have noticed that Visual Studio allows you to retarget your apps to Windows Phone 8.1. If your using the Visual Studio 2013 Profession Edition (Update 2 or higher), you have the choice on whether your can retarget your app or not. However, if you are using the Express edition of Visual Studio, you will be forced to retarget your app....more

In this blog we will do the following: Create an iOS app and use MobileFirst native API Use a MobileFirst HTTP adapter Implement tag-based push notifications to notify users when new tweets are posted Register a Twitter app and use the Twitter API to obtain a list of recent tweets Use an event source to periodically check for new tweets Create a WatchKit app that displays the list of tweets and handles notifications Pass data between the iOS and WatchKit app...more

I introduced some basic concepts around using Git with IBM MobileFirst Platform in the last post. This post will build on that through an example using IBM Bluemix DevOps Services as the host for my repository....more

This is a high level overview of managing the source code of your mobile application project in the IBM MobileFirst Platform (MFP). You should come away with enough foundational knowledge to start implementing Source Code Management (SCM) in your own project....more

Today we put the spotlight on a new section in the MobileFirst Platform Developer Center, to which we call Labs....more

If you have a Worklight Foundation or MobileFirst Platform Foundation application deployed in the Google Play Store, you may soon receive the following warning issued by Google:...more

Managing the lifecycle of mobiles apps, often referred as Mobile Application Management (MAM), is one of the key features of MobileFirst Platform Foundation. It includes:...more

Re-post from Ionic.Also see the IBM press release....more

In recent years OAuth has become a de facto industry standard for authorization. It allows client applications to securely access protected resources on behalf of the data owner without compromising data owner's credentials....more

One of the things to be aware of when working with MobileFirst platform is that you can often have installed multiple versions of tools simultaneously, with a little care. This is something as IBM consultants we frequently need to do, as we work with different customers, but might also be of value to you, our customers, as you test out upgrades and other changes to your MobileFirst applications....more

Recently (April 2015) Apple has tweaked a bit the tests performed on .ipa files as part of the App Store app submission review process.The change now disallows unsigned .sh type files inside the application bundle....more

Important:IBM Watson Question and Answer service has been disconinued. See https://developer.ibm.com/watson/blog/2015/11/11/watson-question-and-answer-service-to-be-withdrawn/...more

OverviewCloudant is a DBaaS, Database-As-A-Service, that manages and scales fast growing data sets. Cloudant is built under Couchdb, a NoSQL database which uses dynamic schemas instead of predefined schemas seen in relational database. The user has the complete power to be create a very structured database or non structured database. In this blog post, I will create a Hybrid app that uses a Cordova Plugin to read raw data and store it into Cloudant. In addition, I will use a HTTP adapter to retrieve that content from Cloudant. The raw data will be an base64 encoded string of an image.I......more

OverviewIn the 7.0 release of MobileFirst Platform Foundation, the WLAnalytics API for native iOS has been expanded to include 2 new utility methods: generateNetworkRequestMetadataWithURL: and generateNetworkResponseMetadataWithResponseData:andTrackingId:. These methods can be used in conjunction with networking APIs to record request metadata and send it to the Analytics server. The advantage of doing so is to have analytics recorded for any network events, even to non-MobileFirst services, while still retaining full control over the implementation of the requests and responses....more

Last year, Microsoft released Update 1 for Windows Phones 8.1, also known as GDR1. While initially, this update was available only on device that were shipped new and for those with had the Preview for Developers installed, later on the update proliferated to almost all of the Lumia models. Known as the Denim update for Lumia phones, it was a major update with several changes to Internet Explorer that comes bundled with the OS....more