Although installing RhoMobile Suite provides everything you need to build RhoMobile applications through the included RhoStudio IDE, you may wish to use your own IDE to build your RhoMobile applications. This guide describes how to setup your environment as well as how to use the Rhomobile command line options.
A RubyGem is a software package, commonly called a “gem”. Gems contain a packaged Ruby application or library. The RubyGems software itself allows you to easily download, install, and manipulate gems on your system. There are three gems included with RhoMobile Suite: rhodes, rhoelements and rhoconnect-client.
For more information on Ruby Gems, visit Rubygems.org
Before installing the needed Rho Gems, you must:
Then, run this command to install the Rho Gems.
$ [sudo] gem install rhodes $ [sudo] gem install --local path_to_gem/rhoelements_gem_name.gem $ [sudo] gem install --local path_to_gem/rhoconnect-client_gem_name.gem
Note: Installing RhoMobile Suite will install these gems automatically. You can have multiple versions of these gems installed on your system. By default when building your application the most recent version # is used. Please consult the guide on building for a specific version of RhoMobile.
The rhodes gem is distrubuted to publically availableRuby repositories. The command above will install the latest version available. If you are testing a beta release, you can also use the local syntax for installing a local copy of the gem file
The rhoelements gem is only needed if your application will be taking advantage of mobile APIs and features that are targeted towards enterprise devices. You will also need this gem if you wish to have a Webkit-enabled application running on Windows Mobile/CE.
The rhoconnect-client was previosly included in the rhodes gem prior to version 4.0. If your application plans on using the RhoConnect client for data synchronization, you will need to install this gem.
You will need the SDKs for the platform you want to build your app on. These instructions are found here.
After you install the gem and your desired SDKs, you need to run:
$ rhodes-setup
This will prompt you for where you installed the SDKs for the various platforms. The installation script will display its best guess as to where the SDK is. You can then enter a new location, or leave it blank to use the suggestion. If you are not building for a specific platform (for example, you can’t build for the iPhone on Windows), you can leave that SDK location blank.
The first step is to generate the application and base files. First we will generate an application called StoreManager.
For generating the ruby-based application use the following syntax:
$ rhodes app storemanager http://localhost:9292/application
For generating the javascript-based application use the following syntax:
$ rhodes jsapp storemanager http://localhost:9292/application
This will generate an application directory called “storemanager” with several files. Note also that the third argument above is the URL to the RhoConnect server data source (required if you want to do synchronized data as we describe in the next section). Specifically it will set the rhoconfig.txt file to have the following option:
syncserver = 'http://localhost:9292/application'
If you do not need synchronized offline data, you can leave the third argument out.
The default home screen of the app is defined in the storemanager/app/index.erb file. You can edit the HTML there to create what your app displays. You can link to other HTML files and ERB files from there with standard HTML techniques.
You can also use the command line to add models and controllers. When the model is generated, Rhodes will also create files for a sample UI for displaying and editing the model. For a ruby-based application this follows the standard model-view-controller paradigm. For a javascript-based application sample UI is built on pure javascript and jquery. You can use any javascript frontend web application framework like Angular, Ember, Backbone etc. Get more details on project structure.
Let’s generate a model called “product” and give it some attributes.
Ruby-based models
$ cd storemanager $ rhodes model product brand,name,price,quantity,sku Generating with model generator: [ADDED] app/Product/index.erb [ADDED] app/Product/edit.erb [ADDED] app/Product/new.erb [ADDED] app/Product/show.erb [ADDED] app/Product/product_controller.rb [ADDED] app/Product/product.rb [ADDED] app/test/product_spec.rb
Javascript-based models
$ cd storemanager $ rhodes jsmodel product brand,name,price,quantity,sku Generating with jsmodel generator: [ADDED] app/Product/index.html [ADDED] app/Product/index.js [ADDED] app/Product/model.js [ADDED] app/Product/new.html [ADDED] app/Product/show.html [ADDED] app/Product/edit.html
Note: Models created through the command-line-interface will use the property bag data schema by default. To use Fixed Schema instead, have a look at the fixed schema section of our Rhom in Ruby guide.
You build and run for individual platforms using command line options
Running on iphone simulator
rake run:iphone
Running for iOS on RhoSimulator
rake build:iphone:rhosimulator
Running on WM device
rake run:wm:device
Note: Starting in version 4.1 of RhoElements, no .cab file will be generated within the project when running rake run:wm:device
If your IDE or Text-Editor provides a means to launch an external executable, you can integrate RhoMobile development tasks by using command line options. You execute these by the appropriate rake tasks, such as “rake run:android” to run it on the Android emulator. To see all possible rake tasks do the following from your application project folder:
$ rake -T rake build:android:eclipsebundle # Build RhoBundle for Eclipse project rake build:android:extensions # Building native extensions rake build:android:rhobundle # Build RhoBundle for android rake build:uwp:rhobundle_noext # Build UWP rhobundle rake clean:android # Clean Android rake clean:iphone # Clean iphone rake clean:win32 # Clean win32 rake clean:wince # Clean windows ce rake clean:wm # Clean wm rake clean:uwp # Clean win10 UWP rake device:android:debug # Build debug self signed for device rake device:android:production # Build production signed for device rake device:iphone:production # Builds and signs iphone for production rake device:symbian:production # Build production for device rake device:win32:production # Build installer for Windows rake device:wince:production # Build production for device or emulator rake device:winxpe:production # Build installer for Windows XP Embedded rake device:wm:production[exclude_dirs] # Build production for device or emulator rake device:uwp:production # Build production for device rake emulator:uwp:production # Build production for emulator rake run:android # build and launch emulator rake run:android:device # build and install on device rake run:android:rhosimulator # Run application on RhoSimulator rake run:iphone # Builds everything, launches iphone simulator rake run:iphone:rhosimulator # Run application on RhoSimulator rake run:webrickrhologserver[app_path] # start rholog(webrick) server rake run:win32 # Run win32 rake run:win32:rhosimulator # Run application on RhoSimulator rake run:wince:device # Build and run on the Windows CE device rake run:wince:device:cab # Build, install .cab and run on the Windows CE device rake run:wince:rhosimulator # Run application on RhoSimulator rake run:wm # Build and run on WM6 emulator rake run:wm:cab # Build, install .cab and run on WM6 emulator rake run:wm:device # Build and run on the Windows Mobile device rake run:wm:device:cab # Build, install .cab and run on the Windows Mobile device rake run:wm:rhosimulator # Run application on RhoSimulator rake run:uwp # Build, install .appx and run on UWP emulator rake run:uwp:device # Build, install .appx and run on UWP device rake run:uwp:rhosimulator # Run application on RhoSimulator rake uninstall:android # uninstall from emulator rake uninstall:android:device # uninstall from device
Note: Windows Mobile/CE apps that use the Webkit will not be able to run in the Windows Mobile Emulator due to memory limitations in the emulator.