Lessons and Tutorials

 

These tutorials lead you step-by-step through creating applications with the MoSync SDK. They include both general tutorials which cover the use of the SDK, and code tutorials which give examples of how to use the many different MoSync libraries and syscalls. (For a complete description of all the MoSync libraries and syscalls, refer to our API Reference Guides.)

 

Just getting started?
If you are new to MoSync, we recommend that you work your way through the beginners tutorial called Creating Your First Application. It steps you through the creation of a simple "Hello World" application using the MoSync Eclipse-based IDE, introduces the Moblet event-handling framework to handle key presses, and covers many of the basic concepts that you will encounter in the tutorials listed below.

 

To learn more about writing MoSync C++ applications, take a look at our Hello World, Deconstructed tutorial. It describes, line-by-line, what is going on in our Hello World application, examines the structure of a C++ program, and introduces you to some of the important MoSync class libraries and syscalls that you will commonly use in your applications.

 

If you wish to author applications using HTML5 and JavaScript, take a look at the HTML5 Project Tutorial, and the JavaScript to C++ communication bridge overview.

 

  • Creating New Fonts
    The MAUI user interface components use bitmap fonts in its own format. These files are converted from a specific, but common, format for bitmap fonts. The MoSync download comes supplied with a freeware tool called BMFont for creating bitmap fonts from the fonts installed in Windows. MoSync developers can use BMFont to create their own fonts for use in their applications.
  • Adding Resources to a Project
    This tutorial provides an introduction to adding resources, such as images and sounds, to a MoSync application. These external files need to be added into the project, so that they can be packaged with your code and deployed to the device.
  • Creating New Screens (MAUI)
    Screens are the skeleton of your application. They contain the content widgets which are the heart and muscles of your program, but the Screens provide the navigation and structure you will want. You can create screens with their widgets at design time, when you are writing your code, or you can interpret some data to create screens at runtime. We’ll be looking at both of these in this tutorial.
  • Using Layouts (MAUI)
    Layouts format your widgets on screen. They provide a grid into which all of your widgets can be aligned. Almost every screen you’ll create will have a Layout widget on it, and whilst they can’t do everything you can imagine, they can help you create some attractive and useful screens.
  • Starting a New Moblet Project
    This tutorial gives you a short introduction to developing mobile applications with MoSync. If you’ve never created a mobile application with MoSync before, this is a great place to start. In this tutorial, we’re going to create a new project in Eclipse, create a new screen, and interact with the user.
  • Introduction to MAUI
    This tutorial introduces the MoSync API for User Interfaces (MAUI). It describes how to use the MAUI library classes to build screens and widgets and how to extend the MAUI model with your own custom components.
  • Downloading Data from the Internet
    There are a thousand reasons why you might want your application to get information from the Internet. Perhaps you want to download today’s Dilbert cartoon, or get specific data for the user, or serve adverts, or  connect to a web interface. Maybe you want to implement a new protocol, like FTP or Jabber. In this tutorial we’re going to show you how to get data over HTTP.
  • Detecting Events
    Throughout the execution of your program, the MoSync SDK can supply it with events.  These are typically things which is happening to the phone.  For instance, a button has been pressed or the screen has been touched.  They also cover more advanced functions such as 'nothing has happened for a few seconds' or 'the phone has a new location from the GPS'.
  • Using Data Stores
    There are several ways to save or read data from a mobile device. Reading and writing to the Internet can be done with Connection classes, but can be labourious without specific helper classes. The simplest way of saving your data is with a MoSync store. This tutorial looks at creating stores, writing to them and reading them.
  • Processing XML
    If you are writing cross-platform mobile apps in the MoSync® SDK, you will probably want at some point to connect to the Internet to get data. Typically, this data will be in XML or in JSON format. If you are getting XML data, the MoSync SDK has a built in XML parser (MTXml) you can use to parse it. There are also string functions in the MoSync MAUtil library which can be used to read XML in some simple cases. In this tutorial we take a look at retrieving XML data and the various ways of reading the data from it.
  • Determining Location
    In this tutorial we take a look at how to detect a device's current geographical location and how to use location data in your application. We also describe some basic strategies for updating location data on a regular basis.
  • Downloading Images from the Internet
    Often when using images in MoSync, then the images are available to you as a developer, and you can package them with your application, as described in the tutorial 'Adding Resources to a Project'.  However, there will be many scenarios where you want to show a picture you've not been able to package.  This may be because there are  too many pictures, or you are responding to user input.  An image search of Google or Bing would be an example of this, there you cannot possibly know what the user is going to search for, nor could you package the images in advance.
  • Downloading Audio from the Internet
    In addition to the standard methods of downloading data using the Connection, HttpConnection, or Downloader objects, the MoSync SDK provides a special downloader, the AudioDownloader class, for retrieving audio files from the Internet. The AudioDownloader is a useful wrapper for the Downloader class and is specifically for audio files.
  • Custom Downloaders
    There are obvious occasions when you want do download data from the Internet for your games or application.  There are even obvious occasions when you want to download images and sounds using the ImageDownloader and AudioDownloader.  What might appear less obvious is the use of a Custom Downloader.
  • Discovering Devices and Services with Bluetooth
    Implementing Bluetooth in your application is usually done in three stages. Firstly, there is device discovery: getting the phone to scan for other devices in range. Secondly, there is a service discovery: querying a discovered device to see which protocols and services it supports. Lastly, there is the implementation of a service, a specific transfer of data. This tutorial covers the first two steps: discovering devices and services.
  • Creating a Bluetooth Server
    Many people are developing Bluetooth applications in MoSync. Some of the most interesting applications involve creating a new Bluetooth service so that the user’s phone can receive incoming messages on Bluetooth and act on them. In this tutorial we take a look at using the MAUtil::Server class to provide Bluetooth services.
  • Creating Bluetooth Clients
    In our Discovering Devices and Services with Bluetooth tutorial we demonstrated how the MAUtil::BluetoothDiscoverer class can be used to locate nearby devices and find out which Bluetooth services they support. Once you’ve discovered a device and a service you will need to write a client for that service and open a data connection to the server. That's what we will be doing in this tutorial.
  • Collections in MoSync
    The MoSync SDK provides several different collection objects, suitable for different occasions.  Collections let you deal with sets of object collectively, but the way you access the collection varies.  Collections are not implemented consistently in MoSync though, so different collection types are not as interchangable as you might expect.
  • MoSync for Java and C# Developers
    Mobile offers developers a new world, with cool devices and nice, easy, small projects compared to that monstrous and boring enterprise code you've been doing in Java or C#, right? Right! However, there are somethings I'm going to tell you to help you move your Java/C# skill to C++ in MoSync. The reality is that both Java and C# are based on syntax from C, so you are going to be able to read C++ source code without anyone having to explain how curly braces work or reminding you to put a semi-colon at the end of the line, which is cool.


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