Native Mobile Vaadin

With all buzz surrounding native mobile applications, an article was to tackle the subject. Given iOS proprietary nature, this article will show us how to wrap a Android application around a Vaadin one. Be warned, this means there will be more talk about Android than Vaadin. The first step is to create a simple WebView in XML.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<WebView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/vaadinview"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent" />

Once created by Android, just get it from the resources and call the loadUrl() method with the Vaadin application URL. 

WebView vaadinView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.vaadinview);
 
vaadinView.loadUrl("http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler");

There are only two requirements:

1. Enable JavaScript on the Android side like so:

   vaadinView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);

2. Request Internet access in the Android manifest:

   <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

• First, pinching the screen to zoom in or out has no effect. Thus, you have to adapt to the initial viewpoint and orientation of the device programmatically in the onStart() method of the activity. It can be achieved by getting a handle on the Display.
• Then, scrolling the screen is impossible. As soon as the finger is off the screen, the viewpoint scrolls back again to its initial position.