This guide helps you create a first app for a mobile device.
Before starting, please ensure you’ve installed all of the appropriate software required by Sencha Touch. These requirements are laid out in the Getting Started guide.
Create a Starting Environment
Choose or create a directory where your application will reside, change to that directory, and issue the following command:
$ sencha -sdk /path/to/touch generate app MyApp .Where:
- /path/to/touch is the directory where you unzipped the Touch software.
- MyApp is the name you give your application.
This generates a starting Sencha Touch application namespaced to the MyApp variable and located in the current directory.
The starting app contains all the files you need to create a Sencha Touch application, including the default index.html file, a copy of the Touch SDK, the CSS file, and images and configuration files for creating native packages for your app.
You can verify if your application has generated successfully by opening it in a web browser. If you extracted the SDK to your webroot folder, navigate to http://localhost/MyApp. If you are using the Sencha Cmd web server, you can access served applications with the http://localhost:1841/ URL.
What We Are Creating
We are creating a simple mobile web app to use for a company’s mobile site. The app includes a home page, a contact form, and a simple list that fetches Sencha’s recent blog posts and allows visitors to read them on a mobile device.
After you have unzipped Sencha Touch, you can replace the code in the app.js file with the example that follows.
Note: The starting content in the app.js file contains extra code you can ignore for this example.
The following is an interactive sample app that you can change the code and preview the results:
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create('Ext.data.TreeStore', {
storeId: 'TreeStore',
fields: ['title', 'link', 'author', 'contentSnippet', 'content', {
name: 'leaf',
defaultValue: true
}],
root: {
leaf: false
},
proxy: {
type: 'jsonp',
url: 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&q=http://feeds.feedburner.com/SenchaBlog',
reader: {
type: 'json',
rootProperty: 'responseData.feed.entries'
}
}
});
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
tabBarPosition: 'bottom',
items: [
{
title: 'Home',
iconCls: 'home',
cls: 'home',
html: [
'
',
'Welcome to Sencha Touch
',
"We're creating the Getting Started app, which demonstrates how ",
"to use tabs, lists, and forms to create a simple app.
",
'Sencha Touch
'
].join("")
},
{
xtype: 'nestedlist',
title: 'Blog',
iconCls: 'star',
displayField: 'title',
store: 'TreeStore',
detailCard: {
xtype: 'panel',
scrollable: true,
styleHtmlContent: true
},
listeners: {
itemtap: function(nestedList, list, index, element, post) {
this.getDetailCard().setHtml(post.get('content'));
}
}
},
// this is the new item
{
title: 'Contact',
iconCls: 'user',
xtype: 'formpanel',
url: 'contact.php',
layout: 'vbox',
items: [
{
xtype: 'fieldset',
title: 'Contact Us',
instructions: '(email address is optional)',
height: 285,
items: [
{
xtype: 'textfield',
label: 'Name'
},
{
xtype: 'emailfield',
label: 'Email'
},
{
xtype: 'textareafield',
label: 'Message'
}
]
},
{
xtype: 'button',
text: 'Send',
ui: 'confirm',
handler: function() {
this.up('formpanel').submit();
}
}
]
}
]
});
}
});Getting Started
Because the app uses a tab panel that holds the four pages, we start by creating the UI. The entry point for Sencha Touch is the launch function of an Ext.application. Consider this the main part of the application, and the place that contains the application logic.
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
items: [
{
title: 'Home',
iconCls: 'home',
html: 'Welcome'
}
]
});
}
});If you run this code in the browser (by clicking the Preview button), a Ext.tab.Panel appears on top of the screen. Since the home page could be a bit more welcoming, add some content to it and reposition the tab bar at the bottom of the page. By default, the tab bar is positioned at the top of the page, but setting the tabBarPosition config moves it to the page bottom. Then we add HTML into the items array to create content. Use items arrays to add child items into a container, as shown in the following code:
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
tabBarPosition: 'bottom',
items: [
{
title: 'Home',
iconCls: 'home',
html: [
'',
'Welcome to Sencha Touch
',
"We're creating the Getting Started app, which demonstrates how ",
"to use tabs, lists, and forms to create a simple app.
",
'Sencha Touch
'
].join("")
}
]
});
}
});You can click the Preview button next to the example to inspect the result: you should see some HTML content, but it will not look very good. We add a cls config to the panel, adding a CSS class that we can target to make things look better. The CSS we add is in the examples/getting_started/resources/css/app.css file in the SDK download. Here is how the home page looks at this point:
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
tabBarPosition: 'bottom',
items: [
{
title: 'Home',
iconCls: 'home',
cls: 'home',
html: [
'',
'Welcome to Sencha Touch
',
"We're creating the Getting Started app, which demonstrates how ",
"to use tabs, lists, and forms to create a simple app.
",
'Sencha Touch
'
].join("")
}
]
});
}
});Adding the Blogs Page
Now that we have a decent looking home page, we move to the next screen. To keep the code for each page easy to follow, we create one tab at a time and then combine them all together at the end.
For now, we remove the first tab and replace it with a List. We use Google’s Feed API service to fetch the feeds. Because there is more code involved, first we take a look at the result, then we explain how we accomplish it:
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
tabBarPosition: 'bottom',
items: [
{
xtype: 'nestedlist',
title: 'Blog',
iconCls: 'star',
displayField: 'title',
store: {
type: 'tree',
fields: [
'title', 'link', 'author', 'contentSnippet', 'content',
{name: 'leaf', defaultValue: true}
],
root: {
leaf: false
},
proxy: {
type: 'jsonp',
url: 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&q=http://feeds.feedburner.com/SenchaBlog',
reader: {
type: 'json',
rootProperty: 'responseData.feed.entries'
}
}
},
detailCard: {
xtype: 'panel',
scrollable: true,
styleHtmlContent: true
},
listeners: {
itemtap: function(nestedList, list, index, element, post) {
this.getDetailCard().setHtml(post.get('content'));
}
}
}
]
});
}
});You can click the ‘Code Editor’ button above the example code to see the full code, but we will go over it piece by piece. At this point, instead of a panel, we use a nestedlist, and populate the list with the most recent blog posts fetched from sencha.com/blog. We use a Nested List component so that we can drill down in the blog entry by tapping the list.
Let us break down the previous code, starting with the list itself:
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
tabBarPosition: 'bottom',
items: [
{
xtype: 'nestedlist',
title: 'Blog',
iconCls: 'star',
displayField: 'title',
store: {
type: 'tree',
fields: [
'title', 'link', 'author', 'contentSnippet', 'content',
{name: 'leaf', defaultValue: true}
],
root: {
leaf: false
},
proxy: {
type: 'jsonp',
url: 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&q=http://feeds.feedburner.com/SenchaBlog',
reader: {
type: 'json',
rootProperty: 'responseData.feed.entries'
}
}
}
}
]
});
}
});In the previous code, we gave the Nested List a number of one-line configurations - title, iconCls, and displayField - and a more detailed one called store. The Store config tells the nested list how to fetch its data. Let’s examine each Store configuration:
- type: tree - Creates a tree store, which NestedList uses.
- fields - Tells the Store what fields we expect in the blog data (title, content, author, and so on).
- proxy - Tells the Store from where to fetch its data.
- root - Tells the root node it is not a leaf. Since earlier in the code, we set the leaf defaultValue to true, we need to override that for the root.
Of all the Store configurations, proxy is doing the most important work. We are telling the proxy to use Google’s Feed API service to return our blog data in JSON-P format. This allows us to grab feed data from a blog and view it in our app (for example, try swapping the Sencha blog URL for http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot in the previous example to fetch Slashdot’s feed).
The last part of the proxy definition is a Reader. The reader is the entity that decodes the response from Google into useful data. When Google sends back the blog data, they nest it inside a JSON object that looks a bit like in the following example:
{
responseData: {
feed: {
entries: [
{author: 'Bob', title: 'Great Post', content: 'Really good content...'}
]
}
}
}In this code, the important part is the entries array, so we set our Reader’s rootProperty to ‘responseData.feed.entries’ and let the framework do the rest.
Digging In
Now that we have our nested list fetching and showing data, we need to allow users to tap an entry to read it. To add this functionality, we add two more configurations to our Nested List, as follows:
{
xtype: 'nestedlist',
//all other configurations as above
detailCard: {
xtype: 'panel',
scrollable: true,
styleHtmlContent: true
},
listeners: {
itemtap: function(nestedList, list, index, element, post) {
this.getDetailCard().setHtml(post.get('content'));
}
}
}In this code sample, we create a detailCard, which is a useful feature of Nested List that allows you to show a different view when a user taps on an item. We configured our detailCard to be a scrollable Panel that uses styleHtmlContent to make the text look good.
The final step is adding an itemtap listener, which calls our function whenever an item is tapped on. The function sets the detailCard’s HTML to the content of the post on which you tapped. The framework animates the detail card into view to make the post appear. This was the only line of code we had to write to make the blog reader work.
Creating a Contact Form
The final thing we do for our app is create a contact form. We take the user’s name, email address, and a message, and use a FieldSet to make it look good. T he code for this functionality is as follows:
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
tabBarPosition: 'bottom',
items: [
{
title: 'Contact',
iconCls: 'user',
xtype: 'formpanel',
url: 'contact.php',
layout: 'vbox',
items: [
{
xtype: 'fieldset',
title: 'Contact Us',
instructions: '(email address is optional)',
height: 285,
items: [
{
xtype: 'textfield',
label: 'Name'
},
{
xtype: 'emailfield',
label: 'Email'
},
{
xtype: 'textareafield',
label: 'Message'
}
]
},
{
xtype: 'button',
text: 'Send',
ui: 'confirm',
handler: function() {
this.up('formpanel').submit();
}
}
]
}
]
});
}
});This time we create a form that contains a fieldset. The fieldset contains three fields - one for a name, one for email address, and one for a message. We use a Ext.layout.VBox VBox layout to arrange the items vertically on the page, one above the other.
At the bottom of the panel we added a Button with a tap handler. The handler uses the up method, which returns the form panel containing the button. We then call submit to submit the form, which sends it to the specified URL (‘contact.php’).
Putting It All Together
After creating each view individually, let’s bring them all together into a complete app:
// We've added a third and final item to our tab panel - scroll down to see it
Ext.application({
name: 'Sencha',
launch: function() {
Ext.create('Ext.data.TreeStore', {
storeId: 'TreeStore',
fields: ['title', 'link', 'author', 'contentSnippet', 'content', {
name: 'leaf',
defaultValue: true
}],
root: {
leaf: false
},
proxy: {
type: 'jsonp',
url: 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/feed/load?v=1.0&q=http://feeds.feedburner.com/SenchaBlog',
reader: {
type: 'json',
rootProperty: 'responseData.feed.entries'
}
}
});
Ext.create("Ext.tab.Panel", {
fullscreen: true,
tabBarPosition: 'bottom',
items: [
{
title: 'Home',
iconCls: 'home',
cls: 'home',
html: [
'',
'Welcome to Sencha Touch
',
"We're creating the Getting Started app, which demonstrates how ",
"to use tabs, lists, and forms to create a simple app.
",
'Sencha Touch
'
].join("")
},
{
xtype: 'nestedlist',
title: 'Blog',
iconCls: 'star',
displayField: 'title',
store: 'TreeStore',
detailCard: {
xtype: 'panel',
scrollable: true,
styleHtmlContent: true
},
listeners: {
itemtap: function(nestedList, list, index, element, post) {
this.getDetailCard().setHtml(post.get('content'));
}
}
},
// this is the new item
{
title: 'Contact',
iconCls: 'user',
xtype: 'formpanel',
url: 'contact.php',
layout: 'vbox',
items: [
{
xtype: 'fieldset',
title: 'Contact Us',
instructions: '(email address is optional)',
height: 285,
items: [
{
xtype: 'textfield',
label: 'Name'
},
{
xtype: 'emailfield',
label: 'Email'
},
{
xtype: 'textareafield',
label: 'Message'
}
]
},
{
xtype: 'button',
text: 'Send',
ui: 'confirm',
handler: function() {
this.up('formpanel').submit();
}
}
]
}
]
});
}
});Next Steps
You can find the full source code of the Getting Started app in Sencha Fiddle.
After you create your app, you can build it using this command:
sencha app buildFor more information on building your app, see the following guides: