Getting Started with Mobile Development with Ionic and Vue

If we know how to create Vue web apps but want to develop mobile apps, we can use the Ionic framework.

In this article, we’ll look at how to get started with mobile development with the Ionic framework with Vue.

Getting Started

We can get started by installing a few things.

First, we install the Ionic CLI globally by running:

npm install -g @ionic/cli@testing

Next, we can create our Ionic app project by running:

ionic start ionic-vue-app blank --type vue --tag vue-beta

tabs adds tabs to the app.

type set to react means we’ll create a React project

--capacitor means we add Capacitor so we can run and build a native app from our project files.

To run our app with Genymotion and built a native app, we need to do more things.

Next, we add some scripts to our package.json file.

We write:

"ionic:serve": "vue-cli-service serve",
"ionic:build": "vue-cli-service build"

to into the scripts section.

Then, we run:

ionic build

to create the assets folder.

Then we run:

npx cap add android
npx cap sync

to add the Android dependencies.

Then we need to install Android Studio and Genymotion.

After we install Android Studio, we install the Genymotion plugin for Android Studio.

Once we did that, we run:

ionic capacitor run android --livereload --external --address=0.0.0.0

which runs our ionic:serve scripts with Genymotion.

We should see the app in Genymotion and any changes will be loaded automatically.

Creating a Camera App

We can create a camera with Ionic Vue by doing a few simple steps.

To write it, we add the following to views/Home.vue :

<template>
  <ion-page>
    <ion-content>
      <ion-grid>
        <ion-row>
          <ion-col>
            <ion-button @click='takePhoto'>take photo</ion-button>
          </ion-col>
        </ion-row>
        <ion-row>
          <ion-col size="6" :key="photo" v-for="photo in photos">
            <ion-img :src="photo.webviewPath"></ion-img>
          </ion-col>
        </ion-row>
      </ion-grid>
    </ion-content>
  </ion-page>
</template>

<script lang="ts">
import {
  IonContent,
  IonHeader,
  IonPage,
  IonGrid,
  IonRow,
  IonCol,
  IonImg,
  IonButton
} from "@ionic/vue";
import { defineComponent } from "vue";
import { ref, onMounted, watch } from "vue";
import {
  Plugins,
  CameraResultType,
  CameraSource,
  CameraPhoto,
  Capacitor,
  FilesystemDirectory,
} from "@capacitor/core";

interface Photo {
  filepath: string;
  webviewPath?: string;
}

function usePhotoGallery() {
  const { Camera } = Plugins;
  const photos = ref<Photo[]>([]);
  const takePhoto = async () => {
    const cameraPhoto = await Camera.getPhoto({
      resultType: CameraResultType.Uri,
      source: CameraSource.Camera,
      quality: 100,
    });
    const fileName = new Date().getTime() + ".jpeg";
    const savedFileImage = {
      filepath: fileName,
      webviewPath: cameraPhoto.webPath,
    };
    photos.value = [savedFileImage, ...photos.value];
  };

  return {
    photos,
    takePhoto,
  };
}

export default defineComponent({
  name: "Home",
  components: {
    IonContent,
    IonHeader,
    IonPage,
    IonGrid,
    IonRow,
    IonCol,
    IonImg,
    IonButton
  },
  setup() {
    const { photos, takePhoto } = usePhotoGallery();
    return {
      takePhoto,
      photos,
      close,
    };
  },
});
</script>

We add the usePhotoGallery function that gets the camera.

Then we call Camera.getPhoto method to get the camera.

We get the CameraResuultType.Uri property to get the resule type for the camera.

quality has the quality to for the photos.

Then we set the photos.value propety with the new image adter taking the image with the camera, which is stored in the photo.value property.

Then we loop through the photos object to loop through the photos that are taken.

Conclusion

We can create mobile apps easily with Ionic and Vue.