Make beautiful apps with beautiful code: use the elegant and concise
Ruby programming language with RubyMotion to write truly native iOS apps
with less code while having more fun. You'll learn the essentials of
creating great apps, and by the end of this book, you'll have built a
fully functional API-driven app. Whether you're a newcomer looking for
an alternative to Objective-C or a hardened Rails veteran, RubyMotion
allows you to create gorgeous apps with no compromise in performance or
developer happiness.
Developers interested in native iOS app development have been restricted
to the limits of Objective-C and Xcode--until RubyMotion came along.
RubyMotion enables you do full iOS development using Ruby. You have
access to familiar tools such as Rake and RubyGems and can compile Ruby
code into native applications. RubyMotion even comes with a Ruby console
useful for live coding and interactive debugging. And since RubyMotion
is built on top of the Objective-C runtime, you can use all of Apple's
libraries and most third-party code alongside Ruby classes.
This book takes you from zero knowledge of iOS development to building
an app that displays information about colors using a web service API.
You'll work through each topic with a small example app that covers just
enough to get you familiar with the techniques you need to get real work
done.
You'll start with just drawing boxes on the screen, but you'll quickly
add animations, a navigation stack, and high-performance table views.
You'll peek into less visible components, such as using Ruby
metaprogramming to create JSON-based models. You'll use some incredibly
useful common Ruby techniques that are only possible in RubyMotion, such
as writing automated unit tests with an RSpec-like framework.
Using both Apple's existing libraries and fresh, community-driven
RubyMotion projects, you'll be well on your way to writing real-world
apps.
What You Need:
A Macintosh running OS X 10.7 or later is required to install
RubyMotion. RubyMotion is a commercial product and currently requires
a purchased license. Experience with the Ruby language and Ruby tools
like RubyGems and Rake are suggested.
