We use Titanium Developer for cross-platform development

Aren't you going to create a desktop application, but are familiar only with technologies related to the web? You might be interested in Titanium Developer technology.



This topic is devoted not only to the Titanium technology, a good overview of which is given in this topic, but also to the experience of implementing applications using it, the difficulties encountered and the solutions found.





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Intro

Briefly about technology. Titanium Developer is a special environment in the manner of Adobe AIR, with which you can build a cross-platform application (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone), using tools and libraries familiar to every web developer. An undeniable advantage is also the fact that the project is collected and placed in a special cloud, removing from the shoulders of the developer of litigation the writing of installers for different operating systems, and also allowing you to immediately share a link to the assembled project.



The principle is quite simple: a stripped-down WebKit is packed into the application, inside which the created application is opened. You can use jQuery, css-frameworks, use support for PHP, Python and Ruby. Everything is optional and customizable, for example, you can specify that the necessary libraries will not be included in the standard installer, but will be downloaded from the Internet.

Opportunities

Sqlite

SQLite support is implemented out of the box and allows you to really conveniently and quickly store and retrieve data within the application. Database documentation is located here . We must immediately make the reservation that this section of the documentation looks extremely damp, contains many nedogovorok and errors. For example, choosing the correct database file should be as follows:



var db = Titanium.Database.openFile(Titanium.API.application.dataPath+"demo.db");



In all other respects, standard SQL syntax is used. Do not forget that the data types in SQLite are strongly generalized, therefore the speed of the aggregation functions is small.

Network

Networking documentation is here . Frankly, the convenience of the provided functions caused me great doubts, therefore, to implement asynchronous data loading from the server, it was decided to use the standard and familiar jQuery functions . On top of that, developers honestly admit that some API objects are aliases of standard Javascript.

Filesystem

Don't underestimate Titanium. Its API contains many useful methods, including methods for interacting with the file system . I will not speak much on this subject, I will only say that in addition to the standard functions there are asynchronous analogues.

Utility

Among other things, the developer has been provided with convenient tools for working with data in JSON format , managing the application icon in the system tray (dock for Mac OS X), functions for determining system parameters and the ability to interact with the Android / iPhone SDK.

Problems

Of course, not without a fly in the ointment. In addition to the typos described in the SQLite documentation, there are some flaws in the Update Manager section - the forum is still not addressed by the developers how to work with the update system correctly. In the project while left simple notification.



Recommendation # 1 . In addition to the above, I recommend managing the program window by editing the tiapp.xml file, which lies at the root of each project. As practice has shown, this option works more reliably on different operating systems, in contrast to setting up the program window by calling API functions.



Recommendation # 2 . If you have doubts about the path to this or that file (for example, an image file or a connected script), I recommend using the app prefix: // - this will allow you to be sure that the path is taken from the application root