A presentation at Devfest Lille in in Lille, France by Horacio Gonzalez
Capacitor : from PWA to native app in 5 minutes Horacio Gonzalez @LostInBrittany @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Who am I? Introducing myself and introducing OVH @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Horacio Gonzalez @LostInBrittany Spaniard lost in Brittany, developer, dreamer and all-around geek Flutter @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
OVH : Key Figures 1.3M Customers worldwide in 138 Countries 1.5 Billions euros investment over five years 30 Datacenters (growing) 350k Dedicated Servers 200k Private cloud VMs running 650k Public cloud Instances created in a month 15TB bandwidth capacity 35 Points of presence 4TB Anti DDoS capacity Hosting capacity : 1.3M Physical Servers
Ranking & Recognition 1st European Cloud Provider* 1st Hosting provider in Europe 1st Provider Microsoft Exchange Certified vCloud Datacenter Certified Kubernetes platform (CNCF) Vmware Global Service Provider 2013-2016 Veeam Best Cloud Partner of the year (2018) * Netcraft 2017 - @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
OVH: Our solutions Cloud Web Hosting Mobile Hosting Telecom VPS Containers ▪ Dedicated Server Domain names VoIP Public Cloud Compute ▪ Data Storage Email SMS/Fax Private Cloud ▪ Network and Database CDN Virtual desktop Serveur dédié Security Object Storage Web hosting Cloud HubiC Over theBox ▪ Licences Cloud Desktop Securities MS Office Hybrid Cloud Messaging MS solutions @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Capacitor The Native Bridge for Cross-Platform Web Apps @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
What’s Capacitor? Cross-platform app runtime making it easy to build web apps that run natively on iOS, Android and web @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Spiritual heir to Apache Cordova Evolution, not revolution @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Spiritual heir to Apache Cordova Support for many Cordova plugins @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Extensible and evolutif ● Close to web-standards ● Plugin API ○ Swift on iOS ○ Java on Android ○ JavaScript for the web @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Developer Friendly Easy to get started Works on any framework @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
You still need the platform tools Android Studio and/or Xcode to build the native packages @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Weren’t you a PWA advocate? And you are also championing Flutter! Where is the coherence, guy? @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Well, I am a PWA advocate indeed I rooted for PWA before it was fancy… @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
And I know the numbers… Apps drive engagement, web drive visitors… 20 biggest apps account for 80% of user time @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
An engineer role is to choose The right tool for the right problem @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
If you need super fancy UX 60 FPS, slick animations An experience more than an app Then go full native And BTW, do it in Flutter believe me, you will thank me! @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
For more normal needs A well done PWA is simply enough @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
But if you need to be in the store? For many reasons, not all objective… @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Hybrid PWA apps The best of two worlds @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Capacitor take your PWA to the store In a simple, quick and painless way @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
First steps testing Capacitor Adding Capacitor to an existing app @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
From web to native Giving superpowers to you webapp @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Testing with a real webapp Warp 10 Photon - IDE for Warp 10 @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Step 1 - Add Capacitor to the app ● Install Capacitor cd my-app npm install —save @capacitor/core @capacitor/cli ● Init Capacitor npx cap init ● Add Android and/or iOS and/or Electron support npx cap add android @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Step 2 - Copy to Android ● Edit capacitor.config.json to choose the built folder ● Copy the built resources to Android npx cap copy ● Launch Android Studio npx cap open android @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Step 3 - Test And our webapp is now a native app @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
First test: successful! Capacitor 1 - Scepticism 0 @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
The Capacitor example app Nice to explore Capacitor @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Made by the Ionic team To replace Cordova in Ionic 4 @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Official example built on Ionic Showcasing Ionic 4 @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Let’s try the official example @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Using directly the Capacitor repository Custom built project, not a production app @capacitor/core and native libs loaded from local directory @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Let’s build the Android version Some pre-building and building needed… @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
We now have an Android project @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Easy and painless Android app @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
And in PWA mode? Some elements haven’t web implementation (yet?) @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
But it still works! It fails gracefully for unsupported plugins @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Second test: successful! Capacitor 2 - Scepticism 0 @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Let’s try something harder Stencil & capacitor @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Capacitor without Ionic I want to use it Capacitor with my own toolset @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
I’m a Web Components guy And I speak a lot about Polymer @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
But Polymer is in a transition phase Polymer 2.x : bower based Polymer 3: npm based but recommended only for legacy LitElement: the new, lightweight, blazing fast library by Polymer team @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
So what to use? Stencil, of course! The magical, reusable web component compiler @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Let’s begin with a simple example A Camera app, working well on web mode Using standard Media Capture and Streams API @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Let’s charge it with Capacitor We want the same behavior But now in Android, iOS, Electron AND web @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
And does it work? Yes it does… in native mode only! @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
But not in PWA mode :( And a big question: why? @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Well, let’s spot the differences… Searching on the example code hmmmm, @ionic/pwa-elements, what’s that? @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
@ionic/pwa-elements Web-based alternatives for some Capacitor plugins @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Adding @ionic/pwa-elements Simply install them: npm install @ionic/pwa-elements And then import them: import ‘@ionic/pwa-elements’; @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
And then… It’s a kind of magic! @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
On Android and Web @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Second test: successful! Capacitor 3 - Scepticism 0 @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
And in Real Life? Because examples are examples… @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Use case 1: Putting PWA into store It simply works, easy and painless! @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Use case 2: Progressive enhancing Giving your PWA an extra P when going native @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
And Capacitor already works A true winner @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Conclusions Capacitor or not? @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Still fairly recent There are small glitches Doc could be more detailed, with more examples @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Easy to use Friendlier than Cordova @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Yet extensible You can use existing Cordova plugins @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Not opinionated Easy to use in any framework Easy to integrate in any dev toolchain @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Thank you! @LostInBrittany #Capacitor #DevFestLille
Ah, Capacitor, what a beautiful idea, an alternative to Cordova easier to use, easier to integrate in any framework, fully integrated with Ionic…
Well, not really for me, at least at the beginning. After having developed lots of PWA these last years, I was a bit skeptic about the pertinence of native or hybrid apps, so when I heard of Capacitor I put it in the cool techno not really for me basket. Until I when to the website and I read: “Build web apps that run equally well on iOS, Android, Electron, and as Progressive Web Apps”. Oh, that really grabbed my interest.
So I decided to use Capacitor on some of my PWA projects, to see if I could transform them in native iOS or Android apps.
And this talk is the feedback of this process, my first steps with Capacitor in some real life applications, what did work for me and what didn’t, and what I learnt in the process.
Here’s what was said about this presentation on social media.
