Sample Mobile Application with Ionic and AngularJS

February 5, 2014 in Angular.js, Cordova, Ionic, PhoneGap

In the ever evolving quest for the best mobile application development stacks, I’ve recently been looking at Ionic. Ionic is a library that provides mobile-optimized UI components to build “native-feeling” hybrid applications.

Where does it fit?

Ionic fits in the UI layer. But unlike other libraries in that space (Twitter Bootstrap, Foundation, Ratchet, Topcoat and others), Ionic is not agnostic in terms of the underlying architectural framework you are using. Instead, Ionic is built on top of AngularJS to provide a complete solution for developing applications that are both well architected and native-feeling. That’s great news if you are an Angular developer. If you use another architectural framework, you can still use the Ionic CSS stylesheets, but you won’t get the powerful UI interactions, gestures, and animations.

I’ve been impressed with the number and the quality of the components and interactions available in Ionic. My employee directory sample app (below) may never have felt that close to native.

Cordova Integration

Another thing I like about Ionic is its integration with Cordova. In fact, the Ionic CLI is built on top of the Cordova CLI. Here is how you install the Ionic CLI, create a seed project, and run it in the emulator or on a device:

npm install -g ionic
ionic start myApp
cd myApp
ionic platform ios
ionic emulate ios
ionic run ios

This should look very familiar if you are using Cordova or PhoneGap.

Sample Application

To further experiment with Ionic, I created an Angular/Ionic version of my employee directory application with the seed project as a starting point. You can run it in the browser or on a mobile device as a Cordova/PhoneGap app. You can also run a hosted version of the application here.

Source Code

The complete source code for the application is available in this repository on GitHub.

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Ben

Hey Christophe,

Thanks for the awesome write up on Ionic! I think it’s a great introduction to the framework, and the simple application you made shows off the capabilities nicely.

I’ll be interested to hear more about your development process with Ionic. There’s a lot of great stuff lined up for the Beta…

Cheers!
- Christophe Coenraets
  
  Thanks Ben! Looking forward to seeing what comes next in the framework. Awesome job so far!
  - Anil
    
    Hi Chris,
    
    i have moved “var employees” into a json file. I try to fetch data and everything breaks down. what changes should i make exactly in the services and controllers file.
    
    i tried this, but its not fectching datas
    
    return {
    findAll: function() {
    var deferred = $q.defer();
    
    // simple get to an hypothetical url
    $http.get(‘http://your.api.server.com/all’)
    .then(function(data) {
    deferred.resolve(data)
    })
    
    return deferred.promise;
    },
    
    findById: function(employeeId) {
    var deferred = $q.defer();
    
    // this is a simple post that have to be customized, of course
    $http.post(‘http://your.api.server.com/byId’, {id:employeeId})
    .then(function(data) {
    deferred.resolve(data)
    })
    
    return deferred.promise;
    }
    }
    
    thanks.
Trevor Miller

Hi Christophe,

I love it! I am very interested in Ionic and have started to look into it. Thank you for writing a post about it. You should make a video tutorial series for Ionic…nobody has done that yet, and I think it would reach an ever increasing amount of people in the hybrid HTML5 app development market. I know I would be interested.
José Augusto

Unlike other employee directory demos you dropped the real time search on key press. Any reason why?
Raymond Camden

I have to say – it seems weird that the ionic CLI wraps cordova. Is there a reason for that? Just seems… I don’t know. Do you know why they did it?
- Ashish Singh
  
  I think the main reason Ionic’s CLI wraps cordova is because they are looking to extend the functionality of the cordova.
Raymond Camden

So yeah – right away i run into an oddity. “ionic emulate” requires you to specify a platform whereas “cordova emulate” will automatically run all platforms you’ve installed. It is a minor thing I guess, but one reason why I’d stick to the cordova cli and just use ionic to create the seed project.
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Horst

I have tested the hosted version. It run very good on iOS, but on Android the scrolling and the whole behavior is not smooth. I think ionic uses the overflow:scroll. I had this in an app of mine, but Android users have begged for the old version without. This was also from Android user with new and fast devices.

I am serching for a long time to get a more native look of cordova apps, but the Android glitches always slowdown.

How is your experience? Have you feedback from Android users?
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Stef

Hi Christophe,

Great sample application!
Is there a way to show the search results when typing, without having to push the search button?

Cheers!
- mani
  
  The search function would be better implemented as a custom filter on the ng-repeat imo. Here’s a filter that I adapted from a Stackoverflow answer I found a while ago (don’t have the reference anymore):
  
  $scope.searchFilter = function (obj) {
  var res = new RegExp($scope.searchKey, ‘i’);
  return !$scope.searchKey || res.test(obj.firstName) || res.test(obj.lastName);
  };
  
  Which uses the ng-model of the search field, and which can test against any properties of the object that’s passed in (I arbitrarily chose the names in this case). Then in the ng-repeat you just do:
  
  ng-repeat=”employee in employees | filter:searchFilter”
  
  This way the results show as the user types – which removes the redundancy of clicking search after entering a string only to find no matches. Naturally it also means less space taken by unnecessary buttons.
  - Vikas
    
    This code is not working. :(
    
    I want to implement dynamic search, Help me.
Raphael Cohen

Seems very promising, although a lot of glitches on android. Hope they will clean things up in the coming releases.
- Mangap
  
  Have you try the latest version?
  Can you list some of the important problems. So developer can look at it and solve it?
  Please add more data, what is the problems, what is the Android version and device used
Mark Simon

The ionic CLI in your Cordova Integration did not work on OSX, better results with cordova (as described on the ionic install page). Thanks for ur code!
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Oluwafemi Korede

Hi Christophe, great application you have here…
I have a few questions bothering me , I will love you to help me out with.

I want to create a mobile app with angularjs that should be able to take pictures with the device camera and send the image to a web api(written with php)..

1. I will like to know if I angularjs has that kind of capability or do I need to use phonegap api to do that
2. How do I use angularjs to send post data from a phonegap compiled app to a web api

Thanks.
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I download this source code but I not able to import into Eclipse kepler 4.3 and I observed there is no .setting folder available in source code.
Jesús Carrera

I made a tutorial on how to integrate PhoneGap with Angular and Ionic using Yeoman if anyone interested: http://www.frontendmatters.com/getting-started-mobile-app-development-phonegap-yeoman-angularjs-ionic/
pierre

Great stuff ! thanks a lot.

You can use ng-src in the “employee-detail.html” to refer the employee’s picture.

Greetings.
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Fabio Santos

Hello !! I am from Brazil and I am trying expose the work with Ionic here. Have you ever experience with Ionic + Windows Phone ? If you already had, could you give us more details ?
Bob Ken

Hi,
I am trying to get the data from a json, but I am missing something… I am new to this and I try to practice. This is the part that I have modified but it would not get the data from the json file.

.factory(‘EmployeeService’, function($q, $http) {

var employees = $http.get(‘js/data/test.json’);

And this is the json file format:

[
{“id”: 1, “firstName”: “James”, “lastName”: “King”, “managerId”: 0, “managerName”: “”, “reports”: 4, “title”: “President and CEO”, “department”: “Corporate”, “cellPhone”: “617-000-0001”, “officePhone”: “781-000-0001”, “email”: “jking@fakemail.com”, “city”: “Boston, MA”, “pic”: “James_King.jpg”, “twitterId”: “@fakejking”, “blog”: “http://coenraets.org”}
]

It would be great if you can give me some hint.
- Anil
  
  hi Bob ken,
  
  if you’ve got the solution can u share with me.
  
  Thanks
  - keilo
    
    Have You managed to get this to work from JSON file? I too have tried without success.
    Would appreciate if you can share your findings or ways to achieve it.
    
    cheers!
ibrahim eray

Hello
I have downloaded source code . It eats very well . but I have a question.
I want to create a tabbar . But does not work. Because of the iconic script. somehow I can not use ICONIS javascript in my code.

If I add below given line , your program does not work anymore ..

But I want to add a tab bar .
If I add this code also , it does not work well .

What do I coll, so that I can use given above Tabbar and Ionic activate JavaScript language can use?

Thank you for your response .
ibrahim eray

Hello
I have downloaded source code . It eats very well . but I have a question.
I want to create a tabbar . But does not work. Because of the iconic script. somehow I can not use ICONIS javascript in my code.

If I add below given line , your program does not work anymore ..

script src=”http://code.ionicframework.com/1.0.0-beta.6/js/ionic.bundle.js”

But I want to add a tab bar .
If I add this code also , it does not work well .
<!–

–>
What do I coll, so that I can use given above Tabbar and Ionic activate JavaScript language can use?

Thank you for your response .
- developer
  
  hey i have same question arise ? regarding tabs
  do u find any answer please send me on email……. wiotal source code also send.
  thanx
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Great Application shared with us. thanks
Bruno Carvalho

Great stuff! I am using to create a tourist guide. If possible, explain to us how to use an external data source (json, with $ http) tried several ways and could not implement.

Thanks and keep up the job.
Jay Garcia

Thanks for the blog post. There is an issue w/ your instructions. You need to be root (via sudo, ideally) to install iconic. It seems that it wants to issue a mkdir on /usr/local/lib/node_modules, where /usr/local/lib is protected. Simple fix to line #1 is “sudo npm install -g iconic”.

Here’s what I see: http://www.screencast.com/t/vsNkmhNlFn

Thanks again for the post dude.
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mrza

dear,
i’m working on a ionic project.
i need to set gradient color to header, it’s ok on browser , but whene i run it on android device ver4, it show only on color.
do you know where is the problem ?

best regards.
mrza.
jerry davidson

I am looking for someone that can program in ionic for a app we are trying to develop. we have a framework available for the MVP once we have made contact with someone.
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Imran Khan

Hi, thanks for the nice tutorial on Ionic framework. I would like to add another two subcategories in the application. Can you please provide any suggestion?
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Where does it fit?

Cordova Integration

Sample Application

Source Code