Swift + Bubble for Native Mobile iOS Applications

Hello all.

I want to share a screencast of a native iOS app built in Swift, connected to a Bubble database. I figure this might be of interest to those of you who are looking to build mobile apps, or extend your existing Bubble applications to iOS. This is intriguing particularly because you can achieve a true native experience, and cut down on development time by handling server-side workflows in Bubble.

Take a peek and let me know what you think.

If anybody would like help building a native iOS app, feel free to reach out.

Swift + Bubble

13 Likes

This is really, really awesome. I’ll watch this when on the treadmill tomorrow! Question: did you experiment with having online actions that sync back to Bubble when the app regains connectivity?

Thank you. Not on this particular app, but it is possible with Core Data.

2 Likes

That’s awesome! Let us know when we can download something :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thanks for sharing a glimpse of your experience. I developed apps in Obj-C but have been using Bubble exclusively for sometime. When I eventually start working on a mobile version, I’ll be going the native route, so any future experiences you share will be quite invaluable.

If you have used other SDKs in the past, could you comment on Bubble’s capabilities so far and what hurdles you came across? I really enjoyed the features offered by Parse, so I’m hoping I can replicate the experience through Bubble.

Firebase has some really great stuff, and Google keeps updating it. If I’m not mistaken, Bubble is leveraging some of Firebase’s capabilities already. Several of my friends are running little one-person mobile dev shops using Java/Swift and Firebase, and have no issues.

+1 for Firebase. Firebase probably would have been my go-to had I not discovered Bubble and was in the middle of an existing project. It’s a bit hard now to not use Bubble as it’s so easy to provide a web version to a mobile app.

Right on the money. Firebase is phenomenal. I’d be curious to hear how Bubble is using Firebase, if so.

@Scott, so far I haven’t encountered anything noteworthy, but I also haven’t published to the App Store with Bubble as a backend. There are tradeoffs. I think Firebase would be necessary if you want a realtime database, like you would in a chat application, but Bubble can replace most server-side code, so development can be faster. Of course the two could be used in tandem. They aren’t mutually exclusive.

1 Like

Incredible, it really comes off as a native experience! I’ve done some interesting things on mobile, but the experience is not this seamless. Nicely done @csblack!

1 Like

I really like how the navigation flow with the other part of the app, how long did it take you create it? I am interest in creating a native IOS app for a University project. Awesome work using Swift and Bubble for Native IOS app.

Thank you. I have been working on this in and around other projects over the past week. It is still far from production ready.

1 Like

This looks great, but just so I’m clear, and please excuse my ignorance, is Bubble only providing the data here and not application logic? In other words, when you click on a button in the UI and something happens, that is swift at work and not Bubble workflows? I’m trying to understand how much swift coding something like this would require.

Correct. All of the UI is Swift. Data is fetched from Bubble within a view controller. Bubble workflows can be triggered on the press of a button by using your Bubble app’s API.

4 Likes

[details=Summary]This text will be hidden[/details]Hi there, I have also been trying to sync a native iOS and android app with my bubble app backend but I have been using a service called configure.it ( very similar to bubble but for native apps. I have got very far with bubble and configure.it very quickly, but I have now got stuck trying to use the bubble api . The problem I am having is getting the constraints parameters into my get request on configure.it. Their api builder is pretty similar to bubbles. Is there any examples of how to use the get request with constraints to call bubble api? The docs shows a json object or the URL encoded example but none of them seem to be working for me . Any example would be great , postman or even using bubbles own api connector to call the bubble api? Below are screenshots of configure.it api builder

Configure It looks interesting. Has anyone experimented with ionic framework and Bubble?

Are you able to tell me who these friends are as I may have a lot of work for them.

@z111 friends?

@robertmramsden Were your ever able to get this figured out? I believe that I am having a similar issue using Kinetise to build a native app using my Bubble db. Using Kinetise’s web simulator, my GET response comes back as expected including the constraints that I put on the request. However, when I preview the app on my mobile device, it seems to ignore the constraints.

Have you figured it out? I am thinking of using Kinetise bit wondering if it can work with bubble

Can you please send some tutorials? how we can connect our bubble DB to native iOS app written in swift ?
Do we just have to consume APIs created in the Bubble App.