bradedelman/baller-android

Baller for Android (Alpha 0.0.4)

Baller is a cross-platform View Framework. It's not an Application framework, it's just a way to implement a view e.g. a "User Interface Screen".

Baller Views are written in TypeScript. The reuslting transpiled JavaScript file can be use in any of the existing Baller runtimes - currently iOS, Android and Web.

Here's an overview of the functionality.

View Types:

• Div: basic view container
• Field: text entry field
• Button: button
• Image: image
• Label: text
• List: easy, but powerful (iOS uses a UICollectionView to implement this)

Services:

• Http: for retrieval of JSON data
• Store: for easy, efficient storage/retrieval of JSON data

API Documentation

Docs are coming soon. For now, it's pretty easy to review the Classes and their APIs by looking at the core TypeScript implementation in the git repo here.

Getting Started on Android

It's really easy to get up and running with Baller in any Kotlin Application. Let's walk through the steps to create an Application from scratch:

1. Create a new Kotlin App

   • launch Android Studio
   • Create New Project (Empty Activity, Language: Kotlin, Name: HostApp)
   • Confirm you have a class named MainActivity with a method onCreate
   • Confirm it builds, runs in Simulator - you see a Hello World screen

2. Add the Baller Module to your App

   • The project has 2 gradle scripts that you'll add to:

   build.gradle (Project: HostApp)
   
   in the allprojects repositories seciton, add the additional repository needed to
   get Baller from jitpack.io.
   
   line 21:
   
   	maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
   

   and

   build.gradle (Module: HostApp.app)
   	
   in the dependencies section, we'll add Baller
   	
   line 36: (the hex number is a git revsion)
   	
       implementation 'com.github.bradedelman:baller-android:0.0.4'
   

   • Now you need to "Sync Gradle" - it will download, etc.
   • Baller is now in your Project

3. Add Permission to Use the Internet and to use a local http server (for dev)

   in AndroidManifest.xml
   
   add on line 4 (right before the <application	
   
   	<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
   	
   also add this attribuet to the application tag:
   	
   	android:usesCleartextTraffic="true"
   
   

4. Add a Sample Baller View to your App

   • Open MainActivity
   • add an import at the top

   import com.affirm.baller.platform.BallerView
   

   • delete this line:

   setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)
   

   • and put this there instead:

   val ballerView = BallerView(this, 320); // width is virtualized
   setContentView(ballerView);
   
   // load script (loadUrl is a convienence, but load can be used
   // for a script that comes from anywhere)
   ballerView.loadUrl("https://www.cleverfocus.com/baller/sample.js")	
   

That's it! Run and you'll see the sample view with a scrolling list of 1,000 numbers! More coming soon on how to create your own views.