Mobile Foundation Blog

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

For the past few weeks, I've been spending a lot of time exploring hybrid mobile applications with IBM MobileFirst. I have a lot of experience with hybrid mobile applications using Cordova, but as a new IBMer, I'm still getting up to speed with MobileFirst. As part of exploration, I did some tests to see how difficult it would be to use the Ionic framework with MobileFirst. If you have not yet heard of Ionic, I strongly urge you to check it out. Ionic provides numerous services that are useful for hybrid developers. These include:...more

iOS 8.3 is out in the open and things look good for IBM MobileFirst Platform customers and developers.All the major features such as authentication, JSONStore, App management capabilities, server connectivity and adapter invocation/chaining, notifications, Cordova plug-ins, native pages, common UI controls, native elements in hybrid pages, Analytics and logging all work great.Advanced device security features like App Authenticity, Device Provisioning and others works as expected.All the features of IBM MobileFirst Platforms v6.0, v6.1, v6.2, v6.3 and v7.0 all work as expected.Watch this space as we continue to test all MFP service releases and publish the useful information related to iOS......more

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this article is a refreshed version of a previous article updated for IBM MobileFirst Platform 7.0. Indeed, the version 7.0 has introduced a new way to develop adapters using JAX-RS. Having the ability to use a Javascript or a Java based model gives the developer more flexibility to create optimized mobile services. Whilst each model has its own advantages, the particular use case described here is more elegantly implemented using the Java based approach....more

Contributed by : Srihari Kulkarni and Vivin Krishnan...more

Starting MobileFirst Platform v7.0, you can use Android ProGuard to obfuscate Android code and block reverse engineering attempts of the application.The Android ProGuard tool can be used to obfuscate, shrink, and optimize application code.ProGuard renames classes, fields, and methods with semantically obscure names, as well as removes unused code.The embedded video below demonstrates how to create a hybrid and native MobileFirst Android application with ProGuard obfuscation enabled.Main topics:...more

The below is related only to MobileFirst Platform 6.3 and below.In iOS, the application resolution is defined by the launch image provided in the application resources.MobileFirst Studio creates a default launch image when creating a hybrid application with an iOS environment but it lacks support for iPhone 6/6 Plus resolution. Starting MFP v7.0, support is provided built-in....more

Apple opened the doors to iOS 8.2 to everyone along with the much anticipated Apple Watch companion SDK.This is another milestone iOS release and things look good for IBM Mobile First Platform customers and developers.The latest available version of IBM MobileFirst Platform, v6.3, plays well with iOS 8.2, as well as with the beta releases of iOS 8.3Major features such as server connectivity and adapter invocation/chaining, authentication, notifications, Cordova plug-ins, native pages, JSONStore, App management functionality, common UI controls, native elements in hybrid pages, Analytics and logging all work great.Advanced device security features like App Authenticity and Device Provisioning are......more

IntroductionThis document describes, at a high level, the security model for the IBM MobileFirst Platform for iOS (beta). It covers the IBM Cloud-based platform whose primary documentation is available here:...more

Contributed by: Rahul RaghuvanshiBlackBerry released WebWorks SDK 2.0 beta in Q1 2014 for the BlackBerry 10.x OS. We had previoulsy published manual procedures for supporting an IBM MobileFirst hybrid applicaton with Webworks 2.0.We have now released built-in support in IBM MobileFirst Studio for generating new projects with WebWorks SDK 2.2! Based on the SDK version the WEBWORKS_HOME environment variable is pointing to, MobileFirst Studio will generate a project structure in the required structure (for WebWorks 1.x or 2.x). This support is available in the latest iFixes of:IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation 6.2.0IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation 6.3.0 and future releases.Please let us......more

OverviewCurrently, JSONStore does not have a dedicated feature to join collection like most relational databases. However, you can utilize shared indexes using additional search fields to relate different collections. In this blog, I will demonstrate how this is done and at the end of the blog I will attach an app that you can use to help you. In addition, I would recommend using the latest publicly available version of MobileFirst Platform but this may apply to older versions as well....more