System

#The System

One of the main advantages of building a native application is having more direct access to system resources, such as device sensors and APIs that aren't typically accessible inside a browser's sandbox.

NativePHP makes it trivial to access these resources and APIs.

One of the main challenges - particularly when writing cross-platform apps - is that each operating system has its own set of available APIs, along with their own idiosyncrasies.

NativePHP smooths over as much of this as possible, to offer a simple and consistent set of interfaces regardless of the platform on which your app is running.

While some features are platform-specific, NativePHP gracefully handles this for you so that you don't have to think about whether a particular feature is specific to iOS or Android.

Most of the system-related features are available through the System facade.

use Native\Ios\Facades\System;

#Camera

You may request the native camera interface to take a photograph by calling the camera method:

$imageData = System::camera()

If the user takes a photograph, the function will return a Base64-encoded string of JPEG data.

If they cancel or there was a problem, it will return an empty string.

If your app hasn't been granted permission to use the camera, this function will return false.

Note: The first time your application asks to use the camera, the user will be prompted to grant permission. If they decline, triggering the camera API will silently fail.

#Video

COMING SOON

#Microphone

COMING SOON

#Vibration

You may vibrate the user's device by calling the vibrate method:

System::vibrate()

#Push Notifications

NativePHP makes it dead simple to enrol your user's device in push notifications from your app.

Simply use the enrolForPushNotifications method to trigger enrolment. If this is the first time that your app tries to enrol this device for push notifications, the user will be presented with a native alert, allowing them to opt-in.

Then use the getPushNotificationsToken method to retrieve the token. If enrolment was unsuccessful for some reason, this method will return null.

System::enrolForPushNotifications();
 
// Later...
 
if ($token = System::getPushNotificationsToken()) {
    // Do something with the token...
}

Once you have the token, you may use it from your server-based applications to trigger Push Notifications directly to your user's device.

Find out more about what's required to use Push Notifications in Apple's Developer docs.

#Accelerometer

COMING SOON

#GPS

COMING SOON

#NFC scanner

COMING SOON

#Wallet

COMING SOON

#Encryption / Decryption

COMING SOON

Almost every non-trivial application will require some concept of secure data storage and retrieval. For example, if you want to generate and store an API key to access a third-party service on behalf of your user.

You shouldn't ship these sorts of secrets with your app, but rather generate them or ask your user for them at runtime.

But when your app is running on a user's device, you have far less control and fewer guarantees over the safety of any secrets stored.

On a traditional server-rendered application, this is a relatively simple problem to solve using server-side encryption with keys which are hidden from end users.

For this to work on the user's device, you need to be able to generate and store an encryption key securely.

NativePHP takes care of the key generation and storage for you, all that's left for you to do is encrypt, store and decrypt the secrets that you need to store on behalf of your user.

NativePHP allows you to encrypt and decrypt data in your application easily:

if (System::canEncrypt()) {
    $encrypted = System::encrypt('secret_key_a79hiunfw86...');
 
    // $encrypted => 'djEwJo+Huv+aeBgUoav5nIJWRQ=='
}

You can then safely store the encrypted string in a database or the filesystem.

When you need to get the original value, you can decrypt it:

if (System::canEncrypt()) {
    $decrypted = System::decrypt('djEwJo+Huv+aeBgUoav5nIJWRQ==');
 
    // $decrypted = 'secret_key_a79hiunfw86...'
}

#Biometric ID

For devices that support some form of biometric identification, you can use this to protect and unlock various parts of your application.

if (System::promptForBiometricID()) {
    // Do your super secret activity here
}

Using this, you can gate certain parts of your app, allowing you to offer an extra layer of protection for your user's data.

Note: Despite the name, Biometric identification only gives you greater confidence that the person using your app is someone who has the capacity to unlock the device your app is installed on. It does not allow you to identify that user or prove that they are willingly taking this action.

#Time Zones

COMING SOON

PHP and your Laravel application are configured to work with the time zone that the device reports it is currently operating in.

This means that, for the most part, any dates and times your show will already be in the appropriate time zone for the user without having to ask your users to manually select their current time zone.

Your app will also be responsive to changes in the system's time zone settings, e.g. in case the user moves between time zones.