The IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Foundation SDK and command-line interface have been redesigned to give you greater flexibility and efficiency when developing your apps. Also, you can now use any of your preferred Cordova tools when you develop cross-platform apps.
Review the following sections to learn what is new for developing your apps.
Starting with IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation V8.0.0, you no longer create a project WAR file that needs to be installed in the application server. Instead, the MobileFirst Server is installed once, and you upload the server-side configuration of your apps, of the resource security or of the push service to the server. You can modify the configuration of your apps with the MobileFirst Operations Console.
MobileFirst projects no longer exist. Instead, you develop your mobile app with the development environment of your choice.
You can modify the server-side configuration of your apps and adapters without stopping the MobileFirst Server.
For more information about the new development process, see Development concepts and overview
For more information about the migration of existing applications, see Migrating apps from earlier releases.
For more information about administering MobileFirst applications, see Administering MobileFirst applications.
You can now use the MobileFirst client-side JavaScript API to develop web applications with your preferred tools and IDE. You can register your web application to MobileFirst Server to add security capabilities to the application. See What's new in web-applications security.
You can also use the new client-side JavaScript web analytics API, which is provided as part of the new web SDK, to add IBM MobileFirst Analytics capabilities to your web application.
For more information about developing MobileFirst web applications, see Developing web applications.
Starting with IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation V8.0.0, you can now use your preferred Cordova tools (such as Apache Cordova CLI or Ionic Framework) to develop your cross-platform hybrid apps. You obtain these tools independently of IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation, and then add MobileFirst plug-ins to provide MobileFirst back-end capabilities. For more information, see Developing Cordova applications.
You can also take advantage of additional new security features for Cordova apps.You can install the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation Studio Eclipse plug-in to manage your cross-platform Cordova apps that are enabled with IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation in the Eclipse development environment. The IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation Studio plug-in also provides additional IBM MobileFirst Platform Command Line Interface (CLI) commands that you can run from within the Eclipse environment. For more information, see IBM MobileFirst Studio plug-in for managing Cordova projects in Eclipse.
Previously MobileFirst client SDK was delivered as a single framework or JAR file. You can now choose to include or exclude specific functionalities. In addtion to the core SDK, each MobileFirst API has its own set of optional components. See Adding optional iOS frameworks, Adding the optional MobileFirst components with Gradle, Adding MobileFirst features to an existing Cordova app and Adding the optional MobileFirst components by using NuGet.
The IBM MobileFirst Platform Command Line Interface (CLI) has been redesigned for greater development efficiency, including for use in automated scripts. Commands now start with the prefix mfpdev. The CLI is included in the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation Developer Kit, or you can quickly download the latest version of the CLI from npm. For more information, see The MobileFirst command-line interface (CLI) .
A migration assistance tool simplifies the procedure of migrating your existing apps to IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation version 8.0. The tool scans your existing MobileFirst apps and creates a list of the APIs that are used in the file that are either removed, deprecated, or replaced in version 8.0. When you run the migration assistance tool on Apache Cordova applications that were created with the IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation, it creates a new Cordova structure for the app that is compliant with version 8.0. For more information about the migration assistance tool, see Scanning existing MobileFirst native iOS apps to prepare for MobileFirst version 8.0, Scanning existing MobileFirst native Android apps to prepare for MobileFirst version 8.0, Scanning existing MobileFirst native Windows apps to prepare for MobileFirst version 8.0, Starting the Cordova app migration with the migration assistance tool.
Starting with Cordova 4.0 the pluggable WebView allows the default web runtime to be replaced. Crosswalk is now supported by Cordova applications with IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation. Using the Crosswalk WebView for Android allows high performance and consistent user experience across a wide range of mobile devices. To take advantage of the Crosswalk capabilities, apply the Cordova Crosswalk plug-in. For more information see Crosswalk WebView (Android).
org.apache.http has been removed from the Android SDK. okHttp will be used as the http dependency. For details on the SDK changes see org.apache.http removal.
IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation now includes sample applications that you can use as a starting point for developing your own apps. Samples for iOS, Android, Windows, web, and Cordova are provided. You can download the sample apps from the MobileFirst Operations Console. For more information, see Getting started with a sample MobileFirst application.
From IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation V8.0.0, you can replace the default UIWebView in cordova apps with WKWebView. To get started with WKWebView for your hybrid iOS cordova applications, refer WKWebView (iOS).