Hi all - I’m completely new to building mobile apps but I’m hoping I can at least build v1 using Wappler. I’ve read through the various tutorial docs and they mostly make sense, but I have a few questions. Sorry if these are somewhat basic, but as I said, mobile development is totally new for me.
Using Capacitor - my understanding is this allows me to build an app for android and iOS at the same time. Do I add both platforms to the same project or I need to make 2 projects, one for each platform?
Android Studio / xCode - I see these need to be installed. Is this only for testing / emulation or they need to be running while building the app within Wappler? I’m assuming building within Wappler removes the need for editing code within Android Studio / xCode?
No Mac - xCode requires a Mac, which I don’t have. Can I build the app in Android and just add iOS later? Or do I need to add it from the start and look at a virtual mac / dual boot?
Hi @PaulS ,
Feel free to ask any questions you have without hesitation. No problem at all!
I’d like to answer your questions to the best of my ability:
This is actually entirely your decision. You can certainly build Android and iOS simultaneously. The goal here is that sometimes a feature that should be in Android may not be needed in iOS (this is just a simple example). In such cases, developers can create separate projects for Android and iOS.
You will indeed need Android Studio for Android app development. If you want to develop iOS applications, unfortunately, you need to own a Mac and have Xcode installed. There’s nothing you can do about this; it’s not related to Wappler. However, you can start with Android and later include iOS in your project without any issues. You can use a virtual Mac, but I don’t recommend it. While building your application, you may face many issues on Windows already (compilation takes a long time, even with an i7 CPU and 16 GB of RAM).
I’ve tried all the services you mentioned, and I’ve been working on a chat application for a long time. I’ve used Sendbird, Mesibo, and more. Additionally, for this kind of application, Flutter is a great approach. Flutter is really fast, easy to learn, and fun to use. Instead of Sendbird and Mesibo, I recommend https://www.zegocloud.com/.
I hope we’ll see Flutter in Wappler one day because it’s truly amazing. @George
Thanks @s.alpaslan. That makes sense. I was looking at Fluttterflow.io and I think that’ll be my fallback if I can’t get it working quickly in Wappler. The app is part of a larger project, and whilst I’m sure I can connect from Flutterflow to my main app via API, I feel like it’d be better medium/ long term if I can do everything in Wappler.
Thank you for the Zegocloud recommendation - I’ll check it out properly. Sendbird’s AI chatbot has a lot of value for me though.
Whichever I go with though, how do I think about incorporating their SDK into my app? Is this done within Wappler or I go into Android Studio and add it there?
If you’re really looking into a native app, and already checked with FF, I would recommend looking closer for the mobile app. Especially with the remote build service, which gives you the ability to build and deploy to Apple if you don’t own a Mac.
I am using both, Wappler for API and web projects and FlutterFlow for quick app development (and I am a long time Ionic Framework / Capacitor user)
While I highly recommend to move to a Mac if you want to deep dive into app development for iOS and Android, you CAN utilize remote build services for iOS building, like Codemagic, Ionic Appflow, Bitrise, or simply renting a remote Mac.
Thanks for the pointers @HeikoK. I’ve spent most of today playing with Wappler and FlutterFlow and definitely I’ll be going FF for the first quick app build. Wappler has just had way too many bugs and crashes simply trying to set up a mobile project before even trying to build anything. With FF, it’s taken me a few hours to get the API calls working, just because I had to learn, but now it’s up and running I think it’ll be way faster.
So with FF you can use Server Connect APIs created in Wappler?
Can you build the app on free or standard subscriptions, upgrade to pro to deploy and then downgrade once again?
I need to find an alternative app builder as Wappler is completely broken for Android (Gradle Issues). I wish Wappler would put some priority on this.
Totally agree @brad - Wappler was just one error / crash after another just trying to set up a mobile project.
I’m certainly not an expert, but yes you can connect to a server connect API from FF. From an FF perspective, it’s just the same as connecting to any other third party API and it’s really simple. The complications for me were all on the Wappler side, and working out how to connect to the APIs from anything (e.g. Postman) as I found very little info re setting up your own API in Wappler. The way that worked for me:
GET is super simple as you just pass the parameters like any API
POST was trickier as parameters didn’t work. I had to put it in the body - so if in Wappler I had inputs $_POST.variable1 and $_POST.variable2, the body in the POST request would be:
{
“variable1” : “value1”,
“variable2” : “value2”
}
I don’t know if there’s a better way to set up/ use the SC APIs in Wappler. I also haven’t got as far as working out how to configure proper authentication, other than confirming the security log in works same way as any Wappler app.
Specifically for FF, I suspect that it’ll make sense to host the API server on Firebase. Mine’s currently on Digital Ocean, which works, but there seems to be a lot of FF and Firebase integration that unlocks more functionality.
Not sure about upgrade / downgrade in FF. Certainly you can build it for free but I don’t don’t know if the deployment to the app stores is a one-time thing or if there’s some ongoing gotcha in FF. You can download the source code / APK on standard, so presumably if you don’t need to update the app you can get away with paying for 1 month but I haven’t dug into it.
FF is defo not in the cheaper side, fifty bucks a month, but together with Wappler a dream team for apps with backends (or you use Firebase which is super closely integrated)
After the app is created (you can actually start for free, but especially API connections are limited), you can integrate with GitHub or Flutterflow CLI to download the Flutter sources and build and submit on your own…
As FlutterFlow is more or less part of the Google Eco-System, Firebase is very tight integrated. But you need to know how to work with real-time no-sql databases (documents). supabase is getting strong on FF, too. But if you are confident with Wappler, you don’t need to use both integrations and add possibly more cost.
So with FF you can use Server Connect APIs created in Wappler? of course …
Can you build the app on free or standard subscriptions, upgrade to pro to deploy and then downgrade once again? of course …
I need to find an alternative app builder as Wappler is completely broken for Android (Gradle Issues). I wish Wappler would put some priority on this.
Wappler is definitely leading in many areas. The only thing I see missing right now is Flutter. I’ve been using FlutterFlow for a long time and using it alongside Wappler. In fact, I know the problems you’re experiencing, and I’ve experienced the same ones before, but after switching to Flutter, really amazing applications have emerged, and they are incredibly fast and smooth.
Actually, there’s a way to reduce the cost to zero, and I can say it’s much, much better than Firebase.
Supabase (PostgreSQL) works much better with Flutter. I only use Firebase for notifications. Supabase has all the real-time features, and I can confidently say it offers even more. You’ll be amazed when you explore it. Additionally, there are recommendations on the forum for using Supabase, and I’ve mentioned in old posts that it’s an alternative to Firebase. Right now, I have an application running with Supabase. With just a few additions, Wappler can become fully compatible with Supabase.
Here are a few examples of what you can quickly achieve with Supabase:
Wappler already has PostgreSQL, so it’s just a matter of adding a few small features. While using Supabase, I have encountered a few minor issues, but I haven’t reported them yet.
it is open source and it works on docker container
The improving support for Supabase in FlutterFlow is amazing. Especially for app designers who don’t know anything about backends, API and remote states.
There is so many interesting stuff in the Low-/no code world going on at the moment, I am really happy to see all the tools and automations coming up.
It saves a ton of time for me as a developer so I concentrate on the core features and don’t have to hassle with the environments.
(And the AI Features of FlutterFlow are really amazing… first I saw them as toys, but for sketching / drafting up an app idea: holy!)
this is the power of flutter, but after getting to know wappler and flutterflow closely, you will realize that wappler is actually much better. I hope we will see flutter on wappler and we will be much closer to amazing results.
yes flutterflow , supabase these should be taken into account by the wappler and I think it should be within the wappler as soon as possible . also the supabase team is very good and they give very close answers to the questions asked. It’s nice to be able to communicate.
Wappler is a really really cool environment for Server applications with a HTML Frontend, and the Bootstrap integration is one of the best I’ve seen. Wappler is still my go to solution in the Low Code world, but I wouldn’t even think about going mobile with Wappler, other than having a responsive website.
FlutterFlow is a very powerful mobile app development tool. I am honest: I gave up my previous Ionic route for apps and I am fully invested in FF now. You can create simple apps in weeks, if not in days. In fact, I did a small challenge and created an app in 16 hours, this included some external API- and OpenAI integration (The final app, now fully designed and featured, will be released soon, once I have the business model finished and subscriptions setup)
FlutterFlow and Wappler make a dream team when it comes to demanding no-code projects.
