Android studio library - android-studio

My team and I just developed a web base system. Next, we are planning to build an android mobile app version of the system. But none of us have experience of creating a mobile app. I did some reading from google, I saw many posting about kotlin, volley, retrofit etc.
One thing I still don't understand, can someone tell me how kotlin, groovy are different with retrofit and volley?
Is it just like web base development where one is for front end development and another one is for backend?
My app would need to constantly fetch and submit data to phpmyadmin (which I put in my VPS hosting).
Can someone give me a suggestion which library is the best for me to use to create my mobile app?
Thank you in advance!

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Building an App in SharePoint Online

I have a client that wanted an easier way for his team members to build/update pages on their site, their site is heavily customized with a lot of JavaScript. The issues is that when a team member wanted to add a new section to the page they had consult a dev person to hard code in the desired features. So we decided to create customizable web parts of those features making the site more self-serviceable.
When I first started I found some documentation that said to use visual studios to build the web part using sandbox code, upload it to the site and then they would just need to activate it to deploy it on the site. Buuut unbeknownst to me code based sandbox solutions are no longer supported in Sharepoint and therefore the web parts we built could not be deployed. I was then told that I needed to build it as an Add-in, but as I started building the add-ins I found that the customizable field properties (i.e. ability to change background color, text style/color and banner color) that I want are not implementable as a add-ins.
So now I’m back at square one and I don’t know if it’s even possible to build a web part as a add-in or do I need to go a different route?
Any thoughts or links to sources you can provide would be HUGELY appreciated!
Thanks
Terek
In SharePoint 2016 things have changed a lot from the traditional model which was the classic way of building web parts. The way you worked before is called "classic", the new way is called "modern", and the way to get your dev environment is the following (brace yourself, it is a long answer):
1) In SP2016/Online you will need to configure your dev machine with the following environment, installing the following:
NodeJS Long Term Support version
Yeoman (which will be used to create web parts)
GULP (which will play the role of virtual web server)
Once the three components above are installed, you will install the Yeoman SharePoint Generator to create the SharePoint Web Parts, Yeoman simplifies the process of creating things by delivering templates ready to use and making all the configurations standard, you gonna love this guy!
To configure your machine see the following link:
https://dev.office.com/sharepoint/docs/spfx/set-up-your-development-environment
2) In SP2016/SP Online, you will develop for SPFx (SharePoint Framework), Microsoft has made significant efforts to address the changes and help developers to embark on this new journey by publishing training and educational material at GitHub, YouTube, and on its official website (I will add link below), but for the purpose of helping you, please follow this tutorial, it helped me to learn how to develop Modern Web Parts for SP 2016/Online:
https://dev.office.com/sharepoint/docs/spfx/web-parts/get-started/build-a-hello-world-web-part
3) From the tutorial above, you will get a fully functional Modern Web Part that can be deployed to SP2016/Online, you will see the new modern architecture allows you that old experience of "sandboxing" web parts in a faster way without, thus solving your problem of constant updating/refactoring components in a live production environment. This way now allows you to constantly update the code and see the results in real-time , you will be able to see results on your dev environment by calling: https://localhost:4321/temp/workbench.html and at same time on your SP environment. for example: http://portal.company.com/_layouts/workbench.aspx
Links:
YouTube "SharePoint Framework Tutorials" - it is the step by step tutorial video showing the whole process of creating a web part:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR9nK3mnD-OXvSWvS2zglCzz4iplhVrKq
GitHub repository with the full documentation, samples and extras for the SPFx and PnP (this is another story for another time):
https://github.com/SharePoint
I hope it helps you!

When to use which library? azure-mobile-apps-js-client and cordova-plugin-ms-azure-mobile-apps

I am confused about the following two Microsoft Azure libraries:
azure-mobile-apps-js-client
cordova-plugin-ms-azure-mobile-apps
Does anybody know which one to use when? Or what are the advantages of one over other?
From their names, it appears that the "azure-mobile-apps-js-client" will not contain cordova features while "cordova-plugin-ms-azure-mobile-apps" does. Is that the only difference?
My previous questions were more generic. So adding some more comments to give you more context on why I have those questions.
I was building an Ionic 2 app some time back then stopped it for a couple of months. Now getting back on Ionic app and see this new JS Client library (azure-mobile-apps-js-client) around. My Ionic 2 app is basically going to invoke/call REST endpoints implemented in Azure Mobile App backend developed using Node.js.
Last time when I was developing it by following Microsoft documentation for Azure Mobile Apps, I tried to use "cordova-plugin-ms-azure-mobile-apps" as per the docs.
Now I see this new library (azure-mobile-apps-js-client).
And therefore I have confusion on which one really to use. If anybody has a link that describes both of these libraries in detail and their differences then please do share the link. It would be great!
The cordova plugin is the JS client wrapped in a plugin. Use whichever is more convenient for you.

How can we use Node.js with Html/Bootstrap to develop Mobile App

I want to develop Mobile App using Node.js and Html5/Bootstrap as frontend?
I searched the web , but not getting any proper source of look. I am New in Node.js , but i Know HTML5 / Bootstrap.
Can anyone Guide me through to Develop Mobile App using these two?
While this is an opinionated question/answer and shouldn't be on SO, I'll share my experience as I was in the same boat recently:
For the front-end (The app): Look up PhoneGap (Apache Cordova) to get an idea about building cross-platform mobile apps using HTML5/CSS/JS. Keep in mind that you can use a good amount of front-end frameworks to ease your workload (AngularJS, Framework7, jQuery, etc.)
For the back-end (Server): Node.js is a great start, however you'll need to code your backend almost from scratch this way. I suggest looking up "Parse Server" to use it for your backend. It's an open-source solution for mobile apps backends (MBaaS). If you still decide to code your own full backend, then I highly recommend learning MEAN stack (MonogoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, Node.js), it might take you a while, but the portable experience you'll get is huge.
Either way, if you want to make high performing apps, it's always recommended to go native (Android apps using Java and Android Studio, iOS apps using XCode and Swift)
I hope this helps,
Best of luck

ServiceStack to expose service to multiple clients?

Recently I made the decision to move from Xamarin.Android to native Android development. In the previous Xamarin project I used their walkthrough to call a WCF service from Android with basicHttpBinding, primary purpose in this case to upload a DTO with an image byte array. I'm now trying to figure the best way to do the same (or better) from Android without Xamarin.
Can ServiceStack help me expose a WCF or ASMX service such that most any client (in my case WPF/Silverlight, iOS, Android) can connect to it with the most appropriate message format (SOAP, REST, etc)? If so please point to the best sample for quick adaptation of an existing WCF service hosted in IIS. I'm hoping to get implement quickly for a demo in one week, then circle back and spend more time learning it.
Sincere thanks
Mark

My apps don't work on iOS 5. Do I have to remove them from app store?

I had a bunch of apps that worked great in iOS 4. None of them work in iOS 5 (thanks Apple). I haven't been developing recently, and I don't have the time or knowledge to make my apps compatible with iOS 5. My question is, is there a way to make the apps available only to people running iOS 4? or do I have to just remove them from the app store? I don't want people to download my apps and have them not work. Thanks.
I believe you can set such restriction for people who are downloading your app from a computer (the app won't show up in iTunes). However, if the user is viewing the store through their iDevice, I think they can find your app and download it nonetheless.
It should suffice to simply put in the description that the app won't work with iOS 5.
Or, perhaps you should take a little look into why is your app not working. Normally the problem is not so big.

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