Framework

Basic Idea

The usage of a framework should basically help us with two things:

• Make development for iOS and Android simpler (reuse as much code as possible)
• Customization

Review frameworks

• Flutter (Google/ Dart - "Mixture of Java and JS", since 2018)

  • code is compiled in byte code (JIT during development, hot reloads)
  • Firebase without problems
  • Customization via Dart-File /Themes
  • Languages (Title, About) via JSON file
  • documentation: ++
  • IDE: Android Studio
  • BSD 3-clause
  • tests: integrated: Unit tests, Widget tests, Integration tests.

• React-Native (Facebook/ Javascript, Typescript, since 2015)

  • Javascript interpreted
  • Firebase with plugin, which currently suffers a version change
  • Customization via kind-of-css
  • Languages (Title, About) via Plugin with Javascript Object
  • documentation: +
  • IDE: WebStorm (-)
  • MIT
  • tests via plugins

• both

  • no template - UI is coded
  • QR Code via plugins
  • Secure Storage via plugins: TODO check a bit deeper?

Todos

• Check the Secure Storage handling
• PoC for style exchange

Requirements

Used components

The following components are used by the apps and must be doable with the framework:

• Firebase (for push notifications)
  • reacting to events while the app is not running
• Scanning QR-Codes
• Secure Storage
• asynchronous HTTPS Connection
• converting e.g. Hex to binary

Customization

The framework should allow us to customize the app more freely, things that should be customizable are:

• colors
• icons / logos
• position of screen elements
• title of the app
• "about" information (containing a custom text)
• custom language
• custom constrains: e.g. forcing to use password, constraining number / kind of tokens, constrain if tokens can be manually added, only allowing tokens from a specific source

For better user-experience the customization should be possible via a web page. Ideally a preview of the application is available.

Other Aspects

• programming / template language
  • how is the UI created (e.g. html, xml, css, programing)
  • how common are the languages
• documentation:
  • tutorials
  • sample code
  • articles
  • installation
• IDE support for languages:
  • what IDEs support the framework
  • syntax highlighting
  • static code analysis
  • highlighting
  • code completion
  • debugging
• on the market since when...
• actively developed
• license
• maintainer
  • what additional services are offered (e.g. SLAs)
• what other target devices are supported (e.g. web)
• how are components (see) integrated
  • part of core library or through other libraries
  • how are they licensed
• how are device features (storage, camera) accessed
• what is the expected performance of the apps
  • ahead-of-time-compilation
  • just-in-time-compilation
  • interpreter
• how are languages / translations handled
• how big will the apps be
• possibility to use android or iOS native UI elements / code
• is testing supported (and if so how)
  • (J)Unit tests
  • UI tests