Integrate Node with Phonegap app - node.js

I want to develop an hybrid cross platform app that creates a socket connection to given Ip.
I have achieved it using webTCP module in node.js by running node from cmd to start the server.
Now I want to pack this in to an app using Phonegap. But my question is how do I run node(to start server) in mobile through the app created using phonegap.
Do we need to install node in mobile. If so how can I do that?
Thanx in advance.

nodejs isn't done (yet) to run on Android. NodeJs is a server thing so it should run on your server to run tour backend.
In order to do what you want to do you will have to redesign your architecture.
Indeed, Cordova/PhoneGap is a little server (actually it's is a WebView but you can approximate it to a static content delevery server). So you will have to made your cordova app talk to your node-server.
1. CORS
Cordova-app <- INTERNET -> Node-server
The first thing to do is to enable CORS, for nodejs and whitelist the adress of your node-server in cordova
2. let's talk
Now you can start talking to your server with your cordova app, there is many ways to do that :
xhr/Ajax request
Pur WebSocket (you will need to enable JAVA-WebSocket)
Socketio
3. being more powerful
You will need more powerful feature between your app and your server side. In order to do that, you could need some WebApp framework. Indeed, they automate for you the connection between the server and your application and offer you a cool and easy environment to do great apps. If you want to know more about it, you could look at
BackBone
Marionette
AngularJs
Hope that help.

Related

Can you easily explain the process of deploying ionic (based on react) apps with a node backend?

I recently started using react with a node server as a backend. I'm having problems to understand how to deploy such an app. I'm a beginner with ionic and deploying websites (or rather web based mobile apps) so I apologize if this is an easy/stupid question.
I searched a lot about this but my brain is still struggling to understand the deployment process. As I understand, any website have generally two parts, the frontend built with HTML/CSS/JS and the backend built with nodejs (in my case). If I want to run the app, I need to type npm start in the terminal right? so I'm only running the node server actually, where it will serve the HTML pages (static pages) depending on which url endpoint I wrote, right?
So deploying this is "easy" by copying the static files into a remote server and just run the nodeJs server to serve pages depending on the request, right. Therefore, is the start command here npm start, which will start the whole app.
I'm now using the ionic framework with react syntax and nodejs in the backend. There is a special command to run the ionic app (frontend), which is ionic serve. So if I run this the frontend will show up in the browser. Furthermore, I need to run the node server with npm start to handle requests. Therefore, to start my app, I need the ionic serve and npm start commands. How can this be deployed?
After some research, I read that I need to deploy the ionic app (frontend) and the backend separately. For example the ionic app would be a webapp and the server also a separate webapp (since I'm using MS Azure). The communication between them can be over rest API or web sockets as I understand. Is this the right approach to do this or there is a better/more clear way?
deploying two apps would mean that I need to pay for two apps on azure. Is there a way to minimize costs and have a functional app?
PS: generally, I'm having problems to understand the deployment process. I understand basically how the web works and I can build website on my machine but I'm not confident about my skills when it comes to deployment. Surprisingly, there is not much on the internet about it. Can someone please recommend articles, books or ideally videos that explain this process. Thank you in advance.
here is how you deploy ionic apps as pwa - https://ionicframework.com/docs/react/pwa
if you are using a node backend, the you would start the server same as you would normally, If I am understanding the question
Though your question is not specific to a particular issue but highlights a wide variety of issues, i will still try to explain it.
Ionic is primarily used for creating HYBRID/WEB MOBILE APPLICATIONS. Although you can deploy the code as a website too, but you will not be able to get any benefit out of using ionic for a website only and not using react as a standalone framework.
Be clear on your requirement, your question talks about website and web based mobile apps. Deploying a website and a hybrid mobile application is not one and the same thing. Websites are hosted on servers, mobile apps are deployed in app stores.
If you are not going to deploy to any mobile platform, i suggest you drop ionic and build your website with react.
Now coming to Ionic mobile apps, this is the flow
Create Ionic Project -> Build project for iOS/Android platform -> Deploy these apps to respective app stores
You will not host your Ionic mobile code on any hosting provider.
Your node.js backend code gets hosted on a hosting service. The endpoint URL will change to your hosted servers IP address.
Read about following topics first
What are hybrid mobile applications
What is Ionic
How to build mobile apps using Ionic
Publishing Mobile Applications
Deploying node.js to a cloud host

how to deploy an ionic-react app to mobile if I'm using node js server in the backend?

I discovered ionic this week and I'm really considering using it at work.
Basically, my goal is to build an app that will work on android and Ios, where the needed functionality is to connect to the cloud over web socket and pull data from the cloud and show it on my phone. Maybe later I'll eventually need to consider using login but not for now at least.
Normally, if I'm building a web app. I ll use nodejs to pull the data from the cloud and expose it to the frontend. I ll write all code together and I ll host my app in Heroku or something where the entry point is my nodejs server right? So that my server needs to start and it will take care of the rest.
This is a bit confusing in ionic since I need to start the app with ionic serve, but somehow I also need to start my nodejs server too right? So I assume I can't write the server-side code inside the ionic app or am I wrong?
There is not much about this on the internet but I did some research and I guess that I should deploy (host) my nodejs server in the cloud (maybe using Heroku) and then connect to the server from my mobile app over the socket. Is this the right/only way to do this? are there any security issues with this method?
I find ionic great but I'm not sure if I should use it at work. Sincerely, this use case of using a backend server with ionic made me confused.
Ionic looks ideal for building cross-platform apps that does not need server-side scripting, but how complex can it be if I want to integrate some server-side code in my app? especially as I said I'm going to use some login forms in the future to extend the functionality of my app.
PS: I'm using ionic 6.10.1 and specifically I'm interested in using ionic with react not with angular.
After some search, I discovered that it isn't possible to deploy the frontend and backend code together. Therefore the trick is to deploy the nodejs server separate from the frontend.
Precisely, if it is a web app, then you should deploy the nodejs server in a separate host from the frontend. Then by starting the frontend app, you can communicate with the running nodejs server via socket or REST API.
Hope this helps someone in the future :)

How to host a React App on Standalone Server

I have a stand alone server that will only be connected to a lan without outside internet access. I am new to hosting so I am lost as to what to use and how to do it.
I have run my react app using npm start. But how do I configure node to start up a react app when the stand alone server starts?
Is there some other windows based host that is easier to configure to run a React app?
I would probably use a Linux server distribution to achieve this. Quite easy actually but not sure how to do that on a Windows machine, unfortunately. You can simply Google for "How To Setup A Web Server And Host Website" I am sure there are a lot of guides and tutorials

Chatbot using Api.ai nodejs angular socket.io

I have been using api.ai javascript SDK on angular to build my chat app to integrate it with the website. As this javascript sfk is deprecated I am now exploring to build the same on Node JS SDK with socket.io for real-time experience and angular for client features...
Currently, I'm following the below link to build my chat app
https://codingblast.com/chat-application-angular-socket-io/
As I am very new to Node I have lots of doubt like...
How to deploy my node and angular app on a server to host it on my website
Angular and node can it be deployed as a simple app.. if so what are the steps and how could I achieve it.
Is node is possible ti have multi threading as many users might chat with my chatbot in parallel before on angular it will be acheived by session id.. but how it is possible on the node?
Is it fine to deploy my node app on my existing apache server or should I use separate server
How can I host multiple node js chat app on a single server since each app will use a port... how much it is possible...
Which server is recommended for node deployment windows ubuntu or Linux.
Please help me...
Angular Apps are static files that can be served using any server. For NodeJS, you will need a server that supports NodeJS runtime execution environment. A simple cloud server will do. (AWS or others that you may prefer)
Angular runs on the client-side, NodeJS runs on the server-side, there is no "Simple App Deployment" (as far as I've known). You need to run the NodeJS server code which will server the REST API, and send the Angular deployment files to the client with some file server. (Even the NodeJS server can do it)
"Node.js is a single threaded language which in background uses multiple threads to execute asynchronous code" [Source]
But you can use "fork" to run parallel tasks. For chatbot, you may consider using WebSockets.
It is possible to run NodeJS with Apache server, but how you want to deploy it depends on your decision and architecture. See HERE for more information.
Link in no. 4 should have answer this this.
NodeJS can be deployed on both Windows and Linux(Ubuntu) environment. It depends on how much you can spend, and how much benefit that expenditure will bring you. (Linux server operating systems are totally free, Windows servers aren't)

Can you convert MEAN applications with a compiler to App store?

As we all know you can use compilers as Cordova to convert web applications so you can upload your application to the app store.
This can easily be done when developing with HTML5 and Node.
But is it possible to convert a MEAN application (MongoDB, Express, Angular and Node)?
You can run nodejs server on mobile with jxcore, but I think you should run only client side part on cordova and api shall stay on server. Ideally, I think that api and client side must be separate projects.
No, you can't.
MEAN stack is full stack. You can make your frontend an app with cordova but you still need database and backend service.
But that's ok. Make your app mobile friendly and stick with your server to provide the data you need to make it work.
What you can do, it's to create hosted web app. This is existing web application, just wrapped to make it possible to submit to app store.
For this you can use Manfoldjs, for example Using Cordova Plugins in Hosted Web Apps or if you use Visual Studio, you can use Visual Studio Tools
for Apache Cordova.

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