A Simple & Complete Meteor Mobile Tutorial

[patrickcneuhaus]

Hey guys,

I have been engaged in a handful of mobile apps developed on Meteor - and over the last ~6 months scanned through pretty much every resource available about it. My conclusion is:

• The guide on Meteor’s official page is insufficient to get developers started; a lot of important information is missing and the only way to find it is by fishing through forum threads

• The Meteor part of mobile app development is only a small part of the challenge… getting your app from code to app store is a long journey that one has to learn by experimenting (because there is no thorough, updated material about it)

Therefore, I was thinking about dedicating a few weeks to create a Meteor Mobile tutorial. One that is written in simple English and goes through every step from project setup to publication. Maybe even with a few videos for those who are absorb more by listening.

What do you think about it? Suggestions, ideas, warnings? Let me know!
Thanks!

[minhna]

awesome, that could help other people a lot.

[robfallows]

That would be really useful. Thank you.

[digitalx778]

They say meteor builds mobile app. It would be nice to see a complete app built with it. From the very beginning to the end.

[bradzo]

That would be great and a wonderful gift to the community. Thank you!

[Urigo]

How about creating a version of the WhatsApp clone but in Meteor?
Would give you a head start and also a tech stack to compare to: https://medium.com/the-guild/whatsapp-clone-using-react-hooks-suspense-graphql-apollo-typescript-and-postgresql-de1840c27d21

I would love to help, you can email me directly if you want (my email is on my Github profile)

[jeffa]

Great ! that will help me a lot !

[jkuester]

I would be great to have a split tutorial that covers Android and iOS specific content like sdk management etc.

[skirunman]

Instead of a separate tutorial why not just update the Meteor Guide? I’ve been a frequent contributor to the Meteor Guide and a more thorough mobile section I’m sure would be welcomed by MDG. In addition, it can be more easily maintained by the community as things change.

[arggh]

Instead of a separate tutorial why not just update the Meteor Guide?

I think this is the superior idea.

[mariuspop]

That would be extra-awesome. We need a way to incentivize the creation of this kind of resources.

[chidimo]

I want to add something I found super useful for those using android studio on Windows 10.

The meteor docs say you can’t run the android emulator or whatever on windows but after hours of frustration trying to set up on ubuntu I ran across a nifty little trick.

Take not of step 4. From there on you can follow the official mobile guide.

Setup meteor for android on windows 10: guide

1. Add C:\Users\<account_name>\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\platform-tools to system path
2. Create ANDROID_HOME=C:\Users\<account_name>\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk
3. Create JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_191
4. Find and open emulator.js from <project_root>\.meteor\local\cordova-build\platforms\android\cordova\lib
5. Find the line avd.target = 'Android ' + level.semver + ' (API level ' + api_level + ')'; and replace it with avd.target = 'Android ' + (level ? level.semver : '') + ' (API level ' + api_level + ')';

[cmogusu]

That would be a great idea. I’m still relatively new to meteor and would love to see that tutorial

[philipmjohnson]

While a contribution to the Meteor Guide would be optimal, I would hate to see the creation of this tutorial stymied by putting stylistic or other obstacles in the path of the author.

I say: go for it and use whatever publication approach you find to be easiest. Then, once the community has had a chance to take a look, someone (either you or someone else) could adapt it for inclusion in the Meteor Guide.

[jkuester]

I agree on this and would like to add, that if the tutorial is published somewhere else than the official guide repository then please add an appropriate license, so that the tutorial could also be legally included into the guide.

[paulishca]

Hi,
I worked on an updated package for Push notifications with Firebase Admin for Android and APN on the IOS side. I have it in production, works ok, it is also installed on another app in the Czech republic and I was in the position to write the documentation so I could make it public. I found that impossible… There are so many things that can go wrong on the Android side that writing a documentation is almost impossible. IOS can take a day (like for myself) or a week like it happened with the app in the Czech republic to which I provided my support and knowledge. If one follows the conversations on the Cordova push plugin … there are 10 -15 messages daily starting with “I can’t” or “I get this error”. I modified the Meteor 1.7 build and added latest cordova-android and latest cordova. After 2 weeks, I could build an app outside Meteor with a Meteor generated bundle which I then had to restructure because Android totally breaks from 6.4 (in Meteor) to 7. Having done all these, I feel it is no longer possible / viable to output an APK or an IPA from Meteor. I think at least the Android side has to be done in Android Studio so one can manage all the plugin conflicts especially due to the Firebase mobile libraries.
Ionic has recently released Ionic for React in beta which makes it now possible to wrap a Meteor React app in Ionic. I guess Meteor Angular was already build…able with Ionic.

PWA supports push notifications on Android (or the other way around) and they seem to become more and more attractive for both developers and consumers.

This is my own opinion … that I don’t think the Meteor documentation needs an update. I think mobile build should be separated entirely from Meteor, built with specialized technologies while Meteor should be able to output a mobile bundle good enough as an input to something else.
Another question in my mind is … for what versions of Cordova can a documentation be written. I missed the beta updates in 1.8.1 but is there a working cordova-android 7+ in there. Has anyone built a mobile app with Meteor recently? What Push plugin was used for it cause RAIX is still based on Android GCM which is pretty much … EOL.
I would love to participate on the Facebook login, Push, S3 file storage, meta-scrappers services for enhanced mobile previews of links, Lambda services for cheap mobile image processing (to avoid expensive services like Cloudinary) but can we make Meteor mobile great again? If you think we can and we get enough support from MDG I am all in with all the code I wrote recently. And again … if I know React why not just do it React Native?!
Closing sentence … if the Meteor community wants to take mobile further and better I would like to participate but a documentation if far from what is actually necessary.

[patrickcneuhaus]

Hey guys,

Thank you very much for all the insightful replies. It is safe to say that the lack of good Meteor Mobile learning resources is a general complaint that hinders a more widespread adoption of Meteor by developers and entrepreneurs. I am starting to work on my tutorial and will let you know when it’s done. Updating Meteor’s official guide sounds very good, but I’d rather enjoy a little more freedom of style and publish it as a separate resource.

Thanks!

[edemaine]

Here are some quick notes I took about how to do a mobile deploy (tested on Windows). Hopefully helpful!

[jkuester]

Just a recent example how painful the whole mobile stack can be: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54930244/meteor-app-push-notifications-stopped-working-for-android-8-when-updating-targ

[drew]

Super interested in this - any idea when you’ll complete it? Maybe you can open-source it on Git and make it a community project.