Hotwire Native for Rails Developers: Build Native Mobile Apps Using Your Server - Softcover

Masilotti, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798888651513

Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2025

Synopsis

Create intuitive and maintainable mobile apps powered by the technology you already know, Ruby on Rails. Add Hotwire Native to your new or existing Rails app and start creating native iOS and Android applications. You'll learn how to enhance your apps, progressively adding native components and screens. Bring your existing or new web apps to a much wider mobile audience, and make the app look and feel native to their platform.
 
You know how to create a great web app using Rails. But how do you also create native apps for iOS and Android when you don't want to reimplement everything in Swift and Kotlin? Fully native iOS and Android apps are expensive to build and even more expensive to maintain. And, of course, you have to deal with the app stores.
 
Hotwire Native builds hybrid mobile apps by rendering HTML directly from your Rails server. Build your screens once and deploy across web, iOS, and Android simultaneously. No repackaging apps or resubmitting to app stores.
 
You'll build a hiking tracker app on iOS and Android. Start by creating a bare-bones app and build new features into it with each new chapter. Set up remote path configuration to navigate gracefully and route forms efficiently. Determine when it makes sense to upgrade your screens to native. Build native components and screens to enhance the apps progressively, with full access to iOS and Android SDKs and APIs, such as push notifications and native maps. And deploy to physical devices for beta testing.
 
You’ll drive the content and behavior of your apps directly from the server, without changing any native code. And you'll keep your business logic in one place, making your apps more resilient to future changes and easier to maintain. Along the way, you'll learn just enough Swift and Kotlin to confidently build functional, user-friendly mobile apps.
 
What You Need:

• macOS with Ruby 3.4.2
• SQLite
• Xcode 16
• Android Studio Meerkat

About this title

About the Author

Joe Masilotti is a Hotwire Native developer and consultant who is on a mission to make mobile app development easier for Rails developers. He's been working with Hotwire Native since 2016 and is a maintainer of the library. Since then, he's helped dozens of businesses bring their Rails apps to the app stores.

From the Back Cover

"Joe has long been a leading light in the Hotwire Native and Rails community, sharing blog posts and videos and contributing to the frameworks directly. This book is the culmination of all that work and is immediately the definitive reference for building Hotwire Native apps with Rails." - Miles Woodroffe, CTO, Mindful Chef

From the Inside Flap

Early Praise for Hotwire Native for Rails Developers: Build Native Mobile Apps Using Your Server

"Joe teaches Hotwire Native wonderfully from a Rails developer's perspective. He translates ideas you already know from Ruby on Rails into the new mental models you need for iOS and Android development. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to build Hotwire Native apps for their Ruby on Rails applications!" - Chris Oliver, Founder of GoRails

"This is the missing Hotwire Native manual. Hotwire Native is the fastest, easiest way to deliver a mobile Rails app, and Joe's instruction is clear, focused, and readable. If you're a Rails developer interested in mobile apps, this book is for you." - David L. Bean, Startup CTO and Faculty, University of Utah Kahlert School of Computing

"Reading this book is like listening to a knowledgeable and enthusiastic teacher. That enthusiasm is infectious, and it enhances learning by building and maintaining interest in the topic. This is especially noticeable when reading about the ways that Hotwire Native makes life easier as a developer." - André Brown, Rails Developer

"Hotwire Native empowers small teams to rapidly deploy across multiple platforms with very little native code. Joe's work throughout the years sets a great example that has personally inspired me to pursue Hotwire Native development. This book is the perfect blueprint to help you deploy your Hotwire Native-enabled web app straight to the Apple and Google app stores." - William Kennedy, Freelance Web Developer

Edition details

• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798888651513
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 270