Is there any good stack for building mobile apps with meteor/react?
or would Angular/Ionic be a better choice?
or is there another option?
To me I think Angular + Ionic is the best option right now because both have official support for Meteor. React is very good but its mobile framework for Meteor is not very ready:
- React Native is not production ready.
- Reapp + Meteor still have some big issue, e.g: router,…
I’ve done quite a bit research these past week or so … seems like at this point, Ionic on top of Angular-Meteor is the best bet for nearest future viable solution, since it’s officially supported (with driftyco ionic meteor package on atmosphere). Not very well documented nor much tutorials out there though, I’m nervous to use that for production app at the moment. Hopefully in half year to a year’s time when more people use it, more docs and tutorials, etc.
React is more embraced by MDG, but only viable mobile solution I’ve found is framework7, which itself is much less used than Ionic. React Native doesn’t really integrate into Meteor as far as I know, not to mention React Native itself is not too much production ready.
I’d love to get more comments and feedback from some people who have more experience with this. I myself am sticking to blaze+meteor and Ionic for now … then talking via REST (restivus?) or DDP (asteroid?). not sure about that at the moment, still building the meteor web app.
hi lytstephen
I’m in the same situation in the last few weeks. After countless hours search and read in the web with pro cons list is this my favourite stack.
Angular 2 with Ionic 2 and Angular2-Meteor from Urigo for Mobile Dev and Angular 2 with Semantic-UI and Angular2-Meteor from Urigo for Web
I think this is the best stack to start a new production app at this time, i try angular2 and it is awesome, for me much better then react. I develop at the moment a app for production with this stack, all works great and i’m really fast to write my app.
Try the tutorial for angular2 on angular-meteor.com
best and a happy new year
React Native isn’t production ready? I’m sorry, but did you know that Delivery.com and other medium - large companies are using React Native, not to mention Facebook for their AdsManager and Groups apps?
Hey thanks for the reply norBu.
Angular 2 is not even beta though correct? It itself is not production ready right, not to mention its integration with Meteor? Definitely excited about future prospects on that though.
I have a production app at the beginning stage now (its a small scale app, several thousands users at most), and I’m so torn about what to do for the mobile app part. My possible thoughts:
- separate Ionic app, REST API (restivus?)
- separate Ionic app talking via DDP? (asteroid? does that work?)
- meteor deployed cordova app, looking like a mobile web app (not ideal but its quick and dirty, last resort)
- giving a try with angular1-meteor + ionic package (a bit nervous since its so new, afraid will run into bugs that I cannot fix. I’m fairly inexperienced developer)
- using some other lightweight CSS framework that can make it look like mobile app, while look like a web app on the desktop? (semantic UI? never checked it out yet)
- open to other suggestions
Any suggestions you (or anyone else) could give here? Appreciate the help!
P.S. I’ve heard so much good things about Angular 2 though, and Ionic 2 as well, I cannot wait when they are all ready, and integrated into Meteor, and embraced by the community.
Or maybe integration with react native and meteor… doesn’t look like that could be soon though.
Angular 2 is now in Beta watch angular.io, the Angular dev team says "Beta means we’re now confident that most developers can be successful building large applications using Angular 2. "
watch Blogspot.
Angular2 Meteor integration is now in Alpha but this is only the integration, angular2 release in the package is the current beta.
We are working on a medium scale app with a web platform to, we do this with angular2 + ionic2 and meteor for the app and semantic-ui css for the web.
All of this Frameworks works great and we not found critical issues.
PS: Official Angular2 release is coming in the early 2016.
Okay wow great thanks a bunch. I guess what I’ll do now is go the safe route with the production app, meanwhile just hack away trying to get really good at Angular 2, and give angular2-meteor a go… maybe even rebuild my app in angular2-meteor and see how far I can take it.
If Angular 2 is as good as I’ve heard people say, I’d imagine angular2-meteor would be HUGE in the very near future, along with integrations with stuff like Ionic 2.
Yeah I research some, but still find it is not enough production ready for me. Although I like React a lot
Hi. I also like React a lot. But after couple hours of research, I decided to go Angular + Ionic for my mobile app.
The big problem is: whatever framework you choose, you have to decide the app architecture: do you want your mobile interface be in the same project with your web app (if you already have one) and build using divided package modules, or do you want to build a completely separate app and connect to server using DDP (Asteroid) or REST.
You could find reference here
To me, after reading this issue on Github, I have been building a separate mobile client app, with:
- Meteor backend server ( share with my web client app )
- Angular-Meteor by Urigo installing through Bower (ver 1.3.2 now with helpers support)
- Ionic
- Meteor client side package by Idanwe installing through Bower ( with this package, I dont have to use Asteroid and still have full Meteor API in my mobile client app).
Till now I’m very happy with the result 
. Looking forward to have more feedback from you guys.
I think the safest road for the production app is angular1 with meteor an then migrate to angular2 with the migration guid from angular-meteor.com.
Or you can mix angular 1 and angular 2 you find a guid for this at angular-meteor.com