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javascriptandroidcordovaionic-frameworkhybrid-mobile-app

Access/Update data in server from android app using Web API provided by web developer?

Let us say I work for a company which is building a dynamic web application. I am the android developer. I have been asked to develop a native android app for the web application. The web app developers have provided me the API to access the data using JSON. I develop my android app using Volley to get dynamic data from the website and also post data from my android app which updates the database and therefore can be viewed by users who access the website from any browser.

The following are my questions:

  1. Is my understanding of the above scenario conceptually correct. If not, please clarify?

  2. Is there any other way I can access/update data other than provided web API's?

  3. Will I be using the web developer provided API to get data from server and also update data from the server? Does it work both ways. For example posting data on Facebook.

  4. Do I need to know any web programming in addition to access/update data using developer provided APIs? (I do not want to learn how to create web applications in addition to creating android applications at least at this time).

  5. I believe if I am asked to develop a hybrid android app using Cordova/Ionic, I would be accessing/updating data using my javascript builtin functions(not sure which one at this time) and pass my HTML, CSS and JavaScript to Ionic to wrap my app for a specific platform. Is my understanding accurate?

Thank you for your response in advance!

Solution

  • Samuel has basically answered all your questions but I would like to add few more things.

    Ionic is a front-end mobile development SDK that heavily uses AngularJS in addition to HTML and CSS. Therefore, your knowledge of Angular highly correlates with application development using ionic. Note that there are 2 versions of Ionic, namely ionic 1 and ionic 2. Ionic 2 seems to be the future of Ionic since it is based on Angular 2. Since you are still in planning phase, I would recommend going with Ionic 2 for long term success.

    Furthermore, using Sass and Gulp is something that you will encounter (should anticipate) soon as an Ionic developer.