Adam Paxton's Blog

Simple Custom Maps in Appcelerator with titanium-mapbox and Mapbox.com

Adam — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 19:32:00 GMT

A fun project I've been working on recently is an Appcelerator module called titanium-mapbox that wraps the Mapbox iOS SDK for use in Titanium projects. I will be giving a talk about this at tiConf New York in May, so get your tickets!

Here is a quick example of how to create, style and add Mapbox.com-hosted map to your Titanium app using titanium-mapbox.

Get Cookies from a Webview in Titanium

Adam — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 18:27:00 GMT

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I needed to fetch a value out of a cookie in a Titanium Webview for both iOS and Android. I had been using evalJS, but it recently broke on Android, so I was out of luck. At the same time, Ti SDK 3.2 introduced Ti.Network.Cookie, but it appears to only be for Android, and I wanted to keep the code pretty similar for both platform, so that brings us to: titanium-cookies.

Unable to Run or Debug Titanium Alloy Project After Importing From Git

Adam — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 16:18:00 GMT

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If you have imported a Titanium Alloy project into Titanium Studio using File > Import, and then find that none of the Run/Debug options are available (iPhone Simulator, Android Emulator, etc), then follow these steps to do a simple config change to get Studio to recognize your app as an Alloy project.

Custom Android Action Bar and Holo Themes in Titanium

Adam — Thu, 30 May 2013 14:00:00 GMT

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I recently created AlloyActionJackson to test Action Bar and Tab Bar functionality in Appcelerator Titanium. I am also using it to test out some custom Holo styling, which I'll detail here.

If you are looking for info on Action and Tab bar stuff, check out this post. If you want to create custom Action Bar and Holo themes for Android apps using Titanium, read on.

When looking around on how to do this, I came upon Rafael Kellermann Streit's very handy post on adding custom Holo themes to Android/Titanium, as well as Juhani Lehtimaki's (I hope I said that right) useful post on how to use both custom themes at once. and I'd like to expand on it a bit and share my experiences. There is some stuff here that is a repeat of his post, and some new stuff as well.

There are some excellent tools and resources for creating custom Holo Themes at the Android Asset Studio. We'll go through two of the tools for generating custom colors.

Alloy Action Jackson: An Android Action Bar Demo App for Appcelerator Titanium

Adam — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:30:00 GMT

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Appcelerator added Action Bar support for Android around Titanium SDK 3.0, and has been adding more support/changes for stuff like Action Bar Tabs and the Android Search View with each new SDK update.

Alloy Action Jackson demonstrates various Action Bar-related functionality using Titanium Alloy. I'll add more examples as I come across them, and maybe even post a how-to or three.

Titanium Developer Conference June 28th and 29th 2013

Adam — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:18:00 GMT

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Appcelerator recently announced 450 thousand registered developers, which is quite a milestone in a world that celebrates numbers that end in 5 or 0. Or both!

Joking aside, a larger community is full of good things, like more support for the product, more 3rd party development and more clients asking for Titanium development by name. That last one is good for me, since that is how I pay the bills.

Larger communities also mean more conferences. Since I have missed the first two official Appcelerator conferences due to scheduling conflicts (Saturdays in the fall === College football, not conferences!), I've been looking for other meetups or events to attend either online or in person. When I got news of a community supported conference taking place this summer in Baltimore, I thought: Why Baltimore? Then I thought: Why not? Let's go!

Details

2013.ticonf.us
June 28th, 29th -- Baltimore, MA
Earlybird tickets: $249 per person until May 19th.

Polanco Media is a sponsor, so I was hooked up with a promo code. Enter: SPONSOR to receive $25 off the ticket price.

If you do plan to attend and want to meet up, feel free ping me or leave a comment.

Find/Replace in Titanium Studio Using Regular Expressions

Adam — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:05:00 GMT

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I recently needed to clean up a data file in an Appcelerator Titanium project I was working on by removing the double quotes surrounding some numbers. This is pretty simple to do using Titanium Studio's handy regular expression functionality with Find/Replace.

5 Years in Mexico

Adam — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:47:00 GMT

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Today marks five years since I flew out of Tulsa to move to Mexico and continue life with Gretchen. Man, what an experience! When we first started discussing moving to Mexico, we didn't have a set timeframe for either moving back or on to the next place. I suppose I thought it would be 2 years, maybe 3, before we would be ready. As each year has passed, we occasionally ask each other 'everything good?' and the response has always been 'yeah!'.

How to Switch Between iPhone Standard and Retina Simulators for Appcelerator Titanium

Adam — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:18:00 GMT

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Switching between standard and retina simulators is useful for checking your app's 2x graphics, but takes a few extra steps for switching using Titanium Studio and Xcode 4.3 and newer.

Titanium Studio Prompting for Username and Password when connecting to Github

Adam — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:37:00 GMT

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One of the great things about remote source control (aside from saving your skin when you mess up some code or when a hard drive goes bad) is that it enables you to easily move or duplicate your development environment from one computer to another. I like to be able to work on the big desktop in the office, then switch to the smaller laptop when I am traveling, or sitting outside, or at the kitchen table, or just anywhere that's not behind this desk otherwise I'm going to go nuts aaah! But, I digress.

I noticed recently that on a single repository on my laptop I was being prompted for my github username and password in order to do pulls or pushes. I thought maybe there was an issue with a keystore or global setting somewhere, but all my other github repos were working just fine, without the authentication prompts.

Cause

Turns out that when I cloned the repo on this computer, I had connected via the https url rather than the git url. And, one of the features of the git url is that you don't have to mess with stuff like authentication (without making other changes).

Fix

There is a pretty easy solution for this. All we need to do is switch our repo's url from the https:// version to the git:// version. I haven't seen a way to do this via a Studio menu, but we can handle it through a git command, and we can even do that via Studio's terminal window (or another terminal window of your preference).

I am using github.com, and have created the examples using the github url. If you are using a different repo, or even your own local repo, just replace the url with your own.

1) First, let's verify that we are actually using the https url in our repo.

From your repo directory, do:

git remote show origin

You will be prompted for a username and password (arrgh, again!) then you should see:

* remote origin Fetch URL: https://github.com/username/repo Push URL: https://github.com/username/repo ...

This verifies that we do have the https urls.

2) From the same terminal window and directory, do the following, replacing username/repo with those you saw in the command above. Don't forget the .git at the end!

git remote set-url origin git@github.com:username/repo.git

If you need to verify the url, on github, go to your repo and click the SSH button next to the clone url.

3) Verify that the change worked by doing the same command from Step 1 -- you shouldn't be prompted to login in order to do it, either!

Now you should be able to push, pull, etc. from Titanium Studio without those pesky login prompts. For more info on switching your git url to SSH, go here.

Appcelerator Cloud Services Demo App Shipping in your Ti SDK

Adam — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:12:00 GMT

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I just heard about a nice little gem that is definitely useful for getting up to speed with the new Appcelerator Cloud Services API: Inside the ti.cloud module that is shipping with the Ti 2.0.1 SDK is a 'kitchen sink' style app covering pretty much everything in the Ti.Cloud API.

Paging Through a Large Result Set with Titanium and Appcelerator Cloud Services

Adam — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:24:00 GMT

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Titanium 2.0 was released today, and a big feature is Appcelerator's new Cloud Services (formerly Cocoafish). I have been beta testing the past few weeks, and I'm getting pretty excited about the release and new features!

One thing I ran into while working on an integration into a client's app is that we will want to be able to update some records (or documents, since we are talking mongo-type stuff) that are kept locally on the app. There should only be a few new/changed records to be downloaded on an irregular basis, but for the first update, everything is new, so there will be hundreds of records to download.

Tabbing Through a Form in Titanium

Adam — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:00:00 GMT

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I saw a recent post on Appcelerator Q&A asking if it were possible to simulate the 'tab' key functionality for moving the focus down to the next textfield in a form, as opposed to having to manually set an event listener on each text field to listen for the 'return' key to be pressed, then setting the focus on the next field. I'm not sure if the tab option is possible in Ti, but we can automate the latter option a bit by keeping track of our fields in an array.

First Ever Mexico City Titanium Titans Meetup

Adam — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:03:00 GMT

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I went back to Mexico City for the first time since we moved last year, and aside from getting to see the old neighborhood and visit with friends in the area, which was great, I also took the opportunity to connect with some other Appcelerator Titanium Titans that are based D.F. What resulted is what I'd call a 'mini' Titanium Titans meetup

Appcelerator Titanium Training and TCAD, TCMD Certification Recap

Adam — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:50:00 GMT

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Last week I traveled to Mountain View, CA to attend 4 days of Titanium training at Appcelerator's new offices. I decided in late spring to commit to using Titanium as my main mobile development product, and moved forward by getting a paid support subscription and start planning on attended training. I chose to attend training at Appcelerator HQ over closer locations offered by 3rd party training companies because 1) Appcelerator was offering a discount for on-site training, and 2) more importantly, I wanted to have the opportunity to meet the Appcelerator team in person. Not only was it great to shake hands with folks I only new previously via twitter,email or dev forums, but it was also very interesting to see the company from the inside and get a feel for all of the great work that they are doing.

Managing Multiple Apps in a Single Git Repository with Titanium Studio

Adam — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:30:00 GMT

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I was very excited to hear about the recent beta release of Titanium Studio (formerly Aptana Studio), as it now gives us the ability for real live debugging! An added bonus was integrated git support, allowing us to do stuff like view diffs, blames, commit, push and pull, right from the IDE.

One thing I ran across, however, is if the Titanium project is not in the root directory of the git repository, then Studio won't see the app project, and not be able to run from within the IDE.

This can occur, if like me, you have a git repository that contains multiple Titanium projects, each in their own sub directories within the repository.

What Happened Here?

Adam — Wed, 04 May 2011 04:23:00 GMT

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My guess is "It's been a while since posting" is a tough keyword search phrase to win on the search results page for many professional bloggers out there, as just about every blog goes through a dormant phase, and a 'hey, we are back!' post after x amount of time.

So, it's time to restart the postings now that I've given nearly a year to let things settle down. We've been busy since announcing our move to Cancun exactly one year ago, the most important thing being that we got married on November 11, 2010. We had our families meet us in Cozumel for a week of beach, food, golf, fishing, snorkeling, spa, and wedding fun.

Norval Hilton “Butch” Paxton - February 6, 1943 - June 27, 2010

Adam — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:58:00 GMT

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"Butch" Paxton of Tulsa, Okla., passed away Sunday, June 27, 2010, at the age of 67. He is preceded in death by his parents, Norval A. "Red" and Geneva F. Paxton of Sapulpa, Okla. He is survived by his son, Christopher, and wife Sharla, grandson Dylan and granddaughters Paige Leeann and Haylee Renee all of Oklahoma City; Sammie Paxton King of Tulsa and brother Michael Paxton of Sapulpa; two nephews, Brian Paxton of Tulsa and Adam Paxton of Cancun, Mexico.

We are Moving to Cancun

Adam — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:09:00 GMT

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It is somewhat official now: Gretchen and I are relocating to Cancún. Gretchen will still be doing her same job there, just more focused on the Caribbean side of things. I'll be doing my same stuff too, just on the beach. I've already had a little practice, as the picture indicates.

What Does Mexican Sushi Taste Like?

Adam — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:49:00 GMT

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Answer: Same as sushi anywhere else, I suppose. Just more cream cheese, avocado, and lime juice.

Long Weekend at the Las Brisas Hotel, Acapulco

Adam — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:30:00 GMT

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We took advantage of the long weekend, or puente, to take a trip to Acapulco. It's about a 6 hour drive from Mexico City, unless there's traffic. There is always traffic.

This was our first trip by bus to a beach destination, and my first trip to Acapulco. Gretchen had gone there for a night for work and stayed at the Las Brisas Hotel, and had really liked it, so we headed there again. A friend hooked us up with a nice room upgrade with a private pool, and when we arrived, we were surprised by another upgrade to a junior suite. Very nice setup.

Styled all in in pink and white, Las Brisas Hotel in Acapulco was a Hollywood playground back in the 50s and 60s, and is still going strong. The hotel is actually a large property built on the side of a steep hill. Each room is in it's own cottage, and everything is accessible only by jeep. Most rooms have their own private pools, and there are over 250 pools at the hotel.

The hotel also has it's own beach club, with a large pool, restaurant, and saltwater swimming. We hit that up as well.

Tulsa Marathon 2009

Adam — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:00:00 GMT

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Gretchen recently ran her third marathon during a recent trip back to Tulsa. The Tulsa Route 66 Marathon is also the first of her runs where I've had access to a car to use to meet her at various spots on the route.

The photo below is from the start -- well, the race had started 5 minutes earlier, but we were still in the lines for the bathrooms. Note the people running in the background who were in the same situation.

Check out the rest of the photos here:

Adam Turns 30

Adam — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:10:00 GMT

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Whoa, what happened to the 20s? Ah yes, good times.

Sunday Morning / Scrambled Eggs

Adam — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:18:00 GMT

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Sometimes the world tries to cheer you up in interesting ways. Like when you're making breakfast on a Sunday morning. Thanks to Gretchen for the photo and the scrambled eggs.

Adam vs. The Mummies of Guanajuato

Adam — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:24:00 GMT

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Mexico's most popular lucha libre wrestler of all time, El Santo, made dozens of films throughout his career, most of them having titles beginning "El Santo contra ... " and then insert the name of the villain of that particular film, such as Zombies, Female Vampires, Dr. Death, etc.

One of the better known titles is "El Santo contra Las Momias de Guanajuato", perhaps this is because there actually are mummies in Guanajuato. Although, when we toured the mummy museum on a recent trip to Guanajuato, they didn't seem to be in fighting shape. Probably because of that mind hex El Santo put on them to send them back to their coffins.