Appcelerator recently announced the availability of the long-awaited Hyperloop, which gives Titanium developers access to the entirety of the iOS and Android APIs, all through JavaScript!
The new Hyperloop functionality allows developers to not only write to native APIs via JavaScript, but also write native Objective-C, Swift and Java classes, and access them through the Titanium SDK as well. Even 3rd party frameworks and pods!
While Appcelerator has always provided the ability to access any API or 3rd party framework through what is called module, the process for writing, testing and compiling the modules has always been fairly involved. We’ve written several, and can attest to this. The new Hyperloop functionality eases this workflow by keeping the code inside the Titanium project, so any changes can be made without the extra steps for re-compiling the module.
New Functionality
Hyperloop also provides new features over the existing module support:
Cocoapods
Maintain a podfile right inside the the Titanium project, and get access to over 20k Objective-C and Swift project libraries.
Swift Support
Previously only Objective-C was supported in the old module setup
Access Native APIs and 3rd Party frameworks in JavaScript
To access native APIs, you can now do something like this:
var UIView = require('UIKit/UIView');
var view = new UIView();
Or to access a 3rd party Framework after importing it through cocoapods or directly adding the framework to the library:
var JBBarChartView = require('JBChartView/JBBarChartView');
var chart = new JBBarChartView();
chart.minimumValue = 1;
chart.maximumValue = 100;
Same with Android. And you can access JAR and AAR resource files as well.
Learn More
If you would like to learn more about how Hyperloop can help you or your development team on your next mobile app project, please attend our upcoming meetup in Fort Lauderdale.
And you can always contact us directly to discuss your mobile app development needs. Contact Us.