How to build a mobile app for alfresco?

[dynamolalit]

Hi,

I want to know how can i built a mobile app for alfresco that works on mobile and using this, user can login &  see content on his mobile phone while connecting to alfresco repository.

[gavinc]

The plan currently is to release an Alfresco Android app (v1.0) later this year, in the autumn timeframe, I can't be any more specific than that at the moment I'm afraid.

[dynamolalit]

With respect, that's quite a vague set of requirements!  :wink:

- Native or web… or hybrid?
- Platforms to be supported - iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc…?
- View only?

We're currently working on a mobile SDK for both Android and iOS that will make building third party apps much easier. Until those are released (later this year) you can always access the source for the current iOS app at https://bitbucket.org/ziadev/alfresco-mobile/

Thanks,
Mike

Thanks Mike for Help.

I want to build an app using CMIS on top of alfresco which should be platform independent, may be accessible using mobile browser and has read & write mechanism with alfresco repository.

Any idea which tool/language/platform should be used?

Regards.

[gavinc]

Hi,

If you're going to be using CMIS I would suggest you build a native/hybrid app rather than trying to do that using a cross platform tool.

CMIS currently has 2 official bindings, web services and AtomPub (a browser binding (JSON) is on it's way but the standard is not finalised yet). Trying to parse XML from JavaScript won't be much fun so I would personally stick to the native language/tools for each platform.

[stevereiner]

For CMIS in a mobile browser you could use apache chemistry opencmis / java in a web app / app server to deal with the xml/atompub or soap cmis bindings and use jquery mobile, sencha touch, YUI? etc for your clientside javascript ui code.

For mobile apps that are easier to customize and more cross platform than all native, the hybrid approach Gavin mentioned (web tech html5/js/css + wrapper apis to native with say PhoneGap  + a native cmis  and/or alfresco plugin) sounds like the best approach when this is available.

I just pointed out my FlexSpaces mobile and CMIS Spaces mobile projects, based on cross platform Flex / AIR mobile as some stuff that is already available. These are best suited for developers already using Flex. If Flex survives long term, it depends on how well the transition from Adobe to Apache goes, and also whether Apache Flex can get it to target HTML5/JS (with FalconJS to translate ActionScript to JavaScript) in addition to the Flash player runtime. ActionScript does have its advantages as a more structured / object oriented language with type-checking that is still javascript like. I am currently looking into translating (with Jangaroo until FalconJS is avail from Adobe) the FlexSpaces/CMIS-Spaces code base to javascript + newer YUI + PhoneGap. Also looking into the Google Dart language.

Not mentioned above, I think Alfresco recently added some android cmis code to the Apache Chemistry svn codebase.

[gopei77]

is app for blackberry platform also open source? if yes, where can we download them? 

thanks and regards

Henry

[stevereiner]

The open source 3rd party apps FlexSpaces Mobile and CMIS Spaces Mobile can target blackberry playbook from the common source. Only have a download for android already built. Just check the "Blackberry Tablet OS" target platform checkbox from the export release build dialog in FlashBuilder 4.6 from the mobile app projects to build for BB (or check Apple iOS for building for iPad).
http://code.google.com/p/flexspaces/
http://code.google.com/p/cmisspaces/

[mikeh]

Whilst we would love to support every possible platform out there, we have, like all companies, limited resource; so we must focus effort on what makes sense for the majority. As I said, we're watching the market closely and who knows what the landscape will look like 12 months from now?

Some advice: as you're about to set policies for mobile access within your company, you should look closely at MDM (mobile device management) solutions in order to mitigate and/or prevent data loss. We're working closely with many of the MDM providers, e.g. Good, MobileIron, Symantec, etc. What's telling is that one of the market leaders, Good, have exactly the same view on Windows 8 right now: "<em>This support is on the Engineering roadmap, but no ETA at this time; this is contingent on market demand.</em>". As of writing they still only have iOS and Android SDKs as that's what most people are deploying.

Sorry if that's not the answer you might be looking for, but I do encourage you to research your MDM options before committing your policy to paper. If you'd like to contact me via email (mike dot hatfield at alfresco) I can put you in touch with our Director of Mobile who I'm sure would be glad to talk to you about MDM in the Enterprise.

Thanks,
Mike

[ricabuxon]

I also want to know How to build a mobile app for alfresco. Thanks for your comments. It's a big help.

[mikeh]

This would be a great place to start: https://www.alfresco.com/develop/mobile

Thanks,
Mike