Chapter 16. Building an App
Imagine yourself walking through the broad, worn oak doors of Dunn & Lewis Memorial Library in search of knowledge. As you enter, you are greeted with a seemingly never-ending sea of wooden shelves rivaling the Great Library of Alexandria. You stagger from shelf to shelf but have no idea what books are available and where they are located. Frustrated, and alone, you are about to leave the library for good when an old librarian beckons you closer.
The librarian has a musty, but familiar, smell of old books and mahogany about him. You walk closer, but before you can go much further he points knowingly to a flyer taped on the wall that heralds your salvation: an app is available for download to help you find the books you need. Your days of wandering are over!
But, where is the app? You can’t download it. What do you mean it doesn’t exist yet? The librarian whispers quietly in a gruff voice, “If you build it, they will download it,” and disappears into the darkness of the corridor.
We’re going to build this app.
Now, forgetting about our ominous and magical librarian for a moment, in Chapter 15, we showed you how to set up your environment and create the simplest, most bare-bones application possible. In reality, however, apps are much more complex. For starters, they are usually more than just one screen. In order to really learn a platform it’s necessary to build something of sufficient complexity—beyond the basic “hello world” example—so you can get ...