Ionic and Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), have teamed up to create a starter mobile app for GitHub. It uses a pre-configured AWS Mobile Hub project that provides back-end services.
Ionic is well-known for its open-source framework and the associated development tools that allow you to create native mobile apps and progressive Web applications with one codebase based upon JavaScript, Angular, and CSS Web technologies.
Ionic’s first front-to back starter project was created to help developers understand the intricacies and functionality of mobile back-ends. These include storage, databases, security, user administration, and more. The app, called Ionic AWS Starter (GitHub), allows developers to import a readymade AWS Mobile Hub project that provides all the aforementioned backend functionality.
It uses Amazon DynamoDB to store the data, Amazon S3 to store the data, Amazon Pinpoint for user engagement, analytics, and Amazon Cognito to sign-up and authenticate users.
Ionic wrote in a blog post that “Our developers often tells us it’s difficult to navigate the landscape of mobile enabled back-end services. They don’t know where they should go after creating and building the first few Ionic apps.”
“To help developers overcome this hurdle, we have partnered with the AWS Mobile Team in order to create the official Ionic AWS starter program.”
The GitHub project requires command-line interface tools (CLI) from AWS and Ionic for initial setup, and then the Mobile Hub Console to import pre-configured backend functionality.
AWS explained in a blog post that developers can import the Mobile Hub project into their AWS console. This interface allows for drag-and-drop operation and all back-end services will be instantiated. The cloned project will replicate the original using a newly provisioned set AWS resources. The configuration file for the Ionic app to consume is automatically created. It can be deployed to a device or used in a Mobile Web scenario.
“With the ability capture and redeploy a stable and known back-end, errors are significantly reduced and there is less scope for debugging/testing.” Ionic developers can concentrate on the mobile application front-end sample.
Although the README file for the GitHub project contains iOS-centric guidance Ionic claims its dev tooling can create native apps for all major app stores.
Ionic stated that this is the first time we have attempted to create a front-to back Ionic starter project. We hope it will get you running faster than ever before. We would love to hear your feedback about the new AWS starter. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or features we should add.
