Building Web Apps with WordPress

Chapter 11. Mobile Apps with WordPress

Native mobile applications with WordPress like iOS and Android applications? Well, sure, why not? We are going to explore building a very simple mobile application for both iOS and Android devices. We will leverage what we are already doing in WordPress to offer the most functionality in the least amount of time. How is this possible? With a native app wrapper.

App Wrapper

An app wrapper is basically a native mobile application with a webview. This means that the native app is really just a web browser embedded within the app itself. The URL of this embedded browser points to your WordPress application, hopefully using a responsive mobile design so it looks like it belongs on the device. You can always extend your hybrid app with more native functionality like accessing the camera, GPS device, contacts, and more. If you want a downloadable app in various mobile app marketplaces and don’t have the time, money, or resources to build full-blown native apps, building a hybrid app may be the way to go. You will only have to build your web app once, and you can offer that same functionality in each mobile app. A hybrid mobile application like this is probably the fastest and most cost-effective way to get your app out there in the marketplace.

iOS Applications

To build a very basic iOS application and to deploy it in iTunes, you will need the following:

1. An Apple Computer running OS X 10.8.4 or later.
2. Xcode, Apple’s development environment for creating ...