Native Functions

Our custom PHP extension enables tight integration with each platform, providing a consistent and performant abstraction that lets you focus on building your app. Build for both platforms while you develop on one.

Native device functions are called directly from your PHP code, giving you access to platform-specific features while maintaining the productivity and familiarity of Laravel development.

These functions are called from your PHP code using an ever-growing list of classes. These classes are also wrapped in Laravel Facades for ease of access and testing, such as:

Native\Mobile\Facades\Biometrics
Native\Mobile\Facades\Browser
Native\Mobile\Facades\Camera

Each of these is covered in our APIs section.

#Run from anywhere

All of our supported APIs are called through PHP. This means NativePHP for Mobile is not reliant upon a web view to function, and eventually we will fully support apps that don't use a web view as their main tool for rendering the UI. Though this will be optional, so you have total freedom of choice and could even build completely hybrid solutions.

When using a web view and using JavaScript you may also interact with the native functions easily from JavaScript using our convenient Native library.

This is especially useful if you're building applications with a SPA framework, like Vue or React, as you can simply import the functions you need and move a lot of work into the reactive part of your UI.

#Install the plugin

To use the Native JavaScript library, you must install the plugin in your package.json file. Add the following section to the JSON:

{
    "dependencies": {
        ...
    },
    "imports": { 
        "#nativephp": "./vendor/nativephp/mobile/resources/dist/native.js"
    } 
}

Then in your JavaScript, simply import the relevant functions from the plugin:

import { on, off, Microphone, Events } from '#nativephp';
import { onMounted, onUnmounted } from 'vue';
 
const buttonClicked = () => {
    Microphone.record();
};
 
const handleRecordingFinished = () => {
    // Update the UI
};
 
onMounted(() => {
    on(Events.Microphone.MicrophoneRecorded, handleRecordingFinished);
});
 
onUnmounted(() => {
    off(Events.Microphone.MicrophoneRecorded, handleRecordingFinished);
});

The library is fully typed, so your IDE should be able to pick up the available properties and methods to provide you with inline hints and code completion support.

For the most part, the JavaScript APIs mirror the PHP APIs. Any key differences are noted in our API docs.

This approach uses the PHP interface under the hood, meaning the two implementations stay in lock-step with each other. So you'll never need to worry about whether an API is available only in one place or the other; they're all always available wherever you need them.