Mobile App Development with Ionic, Revised Edition

Chapter 12. Exploring the Ionic Services

Ionic is more than just a framework to build mobile applications; it is also a collection of cloud-based services. These services include the ability to compile your application remotely, update deployed applications without resubmitting, and generating the user interface through a visual builder. The focus of the Ionic Services is to directly support the actual development of your mobile application. Unlike the Ionic Framework, which is open source, these services require a monthly fee. But don’t worry: most of them have a development version, so you can explore them at no charge—with some usage limitations.

Note

Initially, the Ionic Services also contained some additional services like user authentication, analytics, and database support. These services have been or being shut down.

Note

Ionic has announced they are deprecating the existing Ionic Cloud and will migrate to a new system known as Ionic Pro. The scheduled date for this is January 31, 2018.

Setting Up Ionic Services

Before we can begin using any of the Ionic Services, we will need to create a free account.

Next, we need to install the Ionic Cloud client in the app. Make sure your active directory is the at the root level of your application. Then run this command to install the client:

$ npm install @ionic/cloud-angular --save

Generating Your Ionic App ID

Before we can configure our app to use the Ionic Cloud, we need to have an Ionic App ID. This a different ID from ...