4 ms·

Show HN: Painless, productive views on iOS with Formotion for RubyMotion

49 points by 10char 14y ago

DenisM 14y ago
I looked at page and could not figure out what it is. Is this a server-side html generator? And AJAX library? A native iOS control library? I guess I will never know.
- 10char 14y ago
  It's a library for RubyMotion http://RubyMotion.com http://RubyMotion.com
  - DenisM 14y ago
    Perhaps I did not make myself clear, so let me try again: The posted article does nothing to describe what it is about to an average person who will wander into it. Most people have no idea what is rubymotion, and which problem it solves, or why they should care. Having read up on it now, I suggest to try this instead: Rubymotion is a toolchain for ruby developers to create native-looking, native-performing, AppSore-compliant iOS apps. Formotion is a RubyMotion library that provides for declarative UI layout description, making for much faster UI development. At long last, Ruby devs can create first-class iOS apps as quickly as they can create first-class web apps.
    - Kerrick 14y ago
      Most jQuery Plugins don't explain what jQuery is. Why should a RubyMotion Library be responsible for explaining what rubyMotion is? At most, Formotion they should link the word "RubyMotion" in their headmast to the RubyMotion project website.
      - 10char 14y ago
        Ah definitely, done. Thanks!
      - DenisM 14y ago
        Because one is well known and the other one is obscure: http://www.google.com/trends/?q=rubymotion,jquery http://www.google.com/trends/?q=rubymotion,jquery
        jcoder 14y ago
        Ah it is googleable then. So whats the problem again?
        xiaoma 14y ago
        For their target audience, ruby programmers who want to write iOS apps, RubyMotion is very well-known. https://www.google.com/search?q=use+ruby+to+write+ios+apps https://www.google.com/search?q=use+ruby+to+write+ios+apps
tjarmain 14y ago
This is insanely awesome, thanks a lot!
_frog 14y ago
This is one of those things that makes Rubymotion am increasingly attractive prospect for me as an iOS developer. I wouldn't be ready to move off my familiar Objective-C stack quite yet, but if more projects like this one come along i might just consider it. One thing I'm curious about is the support for TDD when using Rubymotion, there's a lot of Rspec clones out there for Objective-C but they all feel a bit hacky due to the language's less than stellar support for DSLs. On top of that, testing doesn't seem to be all that big a deal in the iOS world. I'm wondering if a healthy dose of the Ruby ethos changes this.
- 10char 14y ago
  Yes! RubyMotion ships with a port of Bacon, which removes all the friction from testing in the traditional iOS stack (setting up Xcode, adding multiple targets, verbosity...). Just have to add tests in ./specs and run 'rake spec' Glance at the docs, especially the section about testing views. Much cleaner API than anything in Objective-C: http://www.rubymotion.com/developer-center/articles/testing/ http://www.rubymotion.com/developer-center/articles/testing/ (also a recent blog post on testing if you're still curious: http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/26489000626/functional-view-and-controller-testing-with-rubymotion http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/26489000626/functional-view-...)
- flatline3 14y ago
  > This is one of those things that makes Rubymotion am increasingly attractive prospect for me as an iOS developer. I've written form-creation and model-syncing code that looks almost exactly like this, but in ObjC. I'm just not seeing it.
poblano 14y ago
How hard would it be to adapt this for Ruby written for iOS using RhoMobile? I'm looking into whether to start learning RubyMotion vs. RhoMobile, and don't know much about either yet.

49 points by 10char 14y ago

I looked at page and could not figure out what it is. Is this a server-side html generator? And AJAX library? A native iOS control library? I guess I will never know.

10char 14y ago
It's a library for RubyMotion http://RubyMotion.com http://RubyMotion.com
- DenisM 14y ago
  Perhaps I did not make myself clear, so let me try again: The posted article does nothing to describe what it is about to an average person who will wander into it. Most people have no idea what is rubymotion, and which problem it solves, or why they should care. Having read up on it now, I suggest to try this instead: Rubymotion is a toolchain for ruby developers to create native-looking, native-performing, AppSore-compliant iOS apps. Formotion is a RubyMotion library that provides for declarative UI layout description, making for much faster UI development. At long last, Ruby devs can create first-class iOS apps as quickly as they can create first-class web apps.
  - Kerrick 14y ago
    Most jQuery Plugins don't explain what jQuery is. Why should a RubyMotion Library be responsible for explaining what rubyMotion is? At most, Formotion they should link the word "RubyMotion" in their headmast to the RubyMotion project website.
    - 10char 14y ago
      Ah definitely, done. Thanks!
    - DenisM 14y ago
      Because one is well known and the other one is obscure: http://www.google.com/trends/?q=rubymotion,jquery http://www.google.com/trends/?q=rubymotion,jquery
      - jcoder 14y ago
        Ah it is googleable then. So whats the problem again?
      - xiaoma 14y ago
        For their target audience, ruby programmers who want to write iOS apps, RubyMotion is very well-known. https://www.google.com/search?q=use+ruby+to+write+ios+apps https://www.google.com/search?q=use+ruby+to+write+ios+apps

tjarmain 14y ago

This is insanely awesome, thanks a lot!

_frog 14y ago

This is one of those things that makes Rubymotion am increasingly attractive prospect for me as an iOS developer. I wouldn't be ready to move off my familiar Objective-C stack quite yet, but if more projects like this one come along i might just consider it. One thing I'm curious about is the support for TDD when using Rubymotion, there's a lot of Rspec clones out there for Objective-C but they all feel a bit hacky due to the language's less than stellar support for DSLs. On top of that, testing doesn't seem to be all that big a deal in the iOS world. I'm wondering if a healthy dose of the Ruby ethos changes this.

10char 14y ago
Yes! RubyMotion ships with a port of Bacon, which removes all the friction from testing in the traditional iOS stack (setting up Xcode, adding multiple targets, verbosity...). Just have to add tests in ./specs and run 'rake spec' Glance at the docs, especially the section about testing views. Much cleaner API than anything in Objective-C: http://www.rubymotion.com/developer-center/articles/testing/ http://www.rubymotion.com/developer-center/articles/testing/ (also a recent blog post on testing if you're still curious: http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/26489000626/functional-view-and-controller-testing-with-rubymotion http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/26489000626/functional-view-...)
flatline3 14y ago
> This is one of those things that makes Rubymotion am increasingly attractive prospect for me as an iOS developer. I've written form-creation and model-syncing code that looks almost exactly like this, but in ObjC. I'm just not seeing it.

poblano 14y ago

How hard would it be to adapt this for Ruby written for iOS using RhoMobile? I'm looking into whether to start learning RubyMotion vs. RhoMobile, and don't know much about either yet.