Five tools to help you speed up application development

【51CTO.com Quick Translation】Generally speaking, building an app is a time-consuming and laborious process, and often you need to launch the "expensive" app into the market as quickly as possible without sufficient budget to seize business opportunities. So, will you "cut off" some functions of the application or look for "secrets" to speed up the app development process?

In this article, let’s look at five different tools you can use to speed up your app development process in two main ways: reducing the cost of building your app and accelerating the release of your app.

At the same time, most of the following tools can also help you speed up project iterations. For example, Fastlane can automate the original manual application deployment process, so you can shorten the release cycle and spend more time fixing bugs and implementing features.

Let’s get started!

1. Parse Server

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The first tool is Parse Server. It has an open source backend cloud and provides value-added services such as database, push notifications, file storage, and user management.

Its working principle is:

• Create an instance of Parse Server in a common Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment (such as Heroku).
• Connect your Parse Server instance to a common Database as a Service (DaaS) environment such as mLab, https://mlab.com/.
• Integrate your app with your newly generated Parse Server instance and start using the various tools it provides.
• At this point, you have a comprehensive set of backend cloud-based services.

Parse Server is the reincarnation of parse.com, which was shut down in early 2017. Unlike the off-the-shelf services provided by parse.com, Parse Server allows you to customize your own cloud-based backend services.

Since it’s open source, you can provision your own Parse Server instance on many infrastructure providers including: AWS, Heroku, Google App Engine, Azure, and Digital Ocean.

Parse Server can also connect to various backend tools such as push notifications and file storage, which is very useful for application developers. Of course, you may need each service to connect to another service provider, such as Amazon S3 or OneSignal. So, while these tools may be cool, you need to do relatively complex installation and maintenance for multiple service providers. After all, Parse Server is not as "big and complete" as other platforms.

Parse Server's various cloud-related features are particularly eye-catching. Through JavaScript, you can simply code tasks to trigger and execute an event on Parse Server, such as uploading a file or storing a database object.

For example, if you have a movie recommendation application, such as IMDB, then when a user generates a movie review, you can "hook" the event through a server-side script and push notifications to other members who have followed the user to inform them of the new review.

With Parse Server, application developers will save time on building backend services and maintaining web servers, so they can focus more on the application itself and its functions. Its features also include: scalable, affordable, easy to maintain, customizable, and equipped with a large number of practical built-in tools.

Advantages:

• Supports a wide range of platform types, including IoT
• Excellent online documentation and code examples
• Active open source community

Disadvantages:

• Requires a standalone platform, such as Heroku
• Scaling depends on infrastructure
• Not a one-stop tool

Pricing:

Open source and free, but you need infrastructure like Heroku to run Parse Server. Of course, some simple entry-level setups cost $20/month.

platform:

iOS, MacOS, tvOS, Android, JavaScript, React, .NET, Unity, PHP, Arduino and Embedded C

2. Fastlane

Fastlane is a tool that is primarily used for continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). That is, when you create a new version of an application, it is automatically pushed or released to end users or beta testers. Fastlane can support your various automation tools and workflows.

Let's say you create an app and release version 1.0 on the App Store. A few weeks later, you find and fix some bugs and implement a new app feature. You want to release the improved version 1.1 to beta testers and then roll it out to everyone. You can do the following:

• Create a new version and publish it to App Store Connect
• Manually create screenshots of the new app for each device model
• Update your app metadata, screenshots, etc.
• Use TestFlight to build and push beta versions to test users

For individual developers, the above process is completely controllable. But if you are in a distributed team and developing multiple versions of the application at the same time, the situation is different. You need to push and release certain fixes and new features to its 2.0 version every one to two weeks. It can be seen that some manual tasks in your application deployment process are quite time-consuming. Therefore, we need to speed up the process and implement automated methods.

Fastlane was born. Let’s see how it accelerates the process and release of applications:

• Automatically generate corresponding program screenshots for multiple device models and languages
• Automatically distribute beta versions of your app, including setting build numbers, managing code signatures, uploading apps, and recording app changes
• Automate the app publishing workflow, including setting metadata, uploading screenshots, and submitting the app for review
• Automate code signing within a team, including sharing development keys and certificates between developers within the team

In fact, Fastlane consists of a series of "actions", including uploading applications that need to be compiled and associating different workflows with various operations. For these actions, you can completely implement them through custom scripts. At the same time, Fastlane integrates popular CI/CD tools, including CircleCI, Jenkins, and Travis CI.

And it is open source, which means that developers can contribute their own tools, define their own actions and plug-ins. At the same time, each tool of Fastlane has a matching online documentation, including: various examples and best practices, which are essential tools for application developers.

Advantages:

• Can save you a lot of time
• Automate various tedious tasks
• Less manual work means less chance of error

Disadvantages:

• Requires effort to set up
• For single developers and occasional compilation workloads, there is no improvement

Pricing:

Free and open source!

platform:

iOS and Android

3. App Design Templates

Nowadays, users are more concerned about whether the application can bring them a good user experience. After all, it takes less time to install the applications we are familiar with. Therefore, on the one hand, users are unwilling to take the risk of installing applications they are not familiar with; on the other hand, application developers hope to "stand out" through novel and impeccable UI/UX design.

Generally speaking, designing an app from scratch often requires a lot of time, money, and resources. Maybe your designer doesn’t have much experience in mobile apps, or your budget is not enough to support a lean app prototype, but only enough to design a plain product surface.

In fact, we need to use a design template to prepare a finished graphical interface for your application in advance. You can either select your favorite components and styles, or directly copy and paste the entire graphic design.

Here are some of my favorite design templates:

• NOW, TETHR, and InVision’s DO
• Facebook’s iOS 11 iPhone GUI
• Stark UI kit by Baianat
• Stitch by Lina Seleznyova
• Phoenix by Adrian Chiran
• Apply Pixels by Michael Flarup

Many of these templates are designed specifically for application types, such as social, productivity, and e-commerce, but you can also use them to create your own application mockups.

For example, you can use Facebook's iOS GUI template to create your own app based on the default layout and components of iOS. And Apply Pixels' various templates can also help you design the app's icons and screenshots, as well as achieve the display effect of the App Store.

It is important to note that when you use a design template, be sure to check its license and terms of use. Although they can be obtained for free, it does not mean that you can use, change or use them for profit. Their copyright always belongs to the creator of the template. If in doubt, do not use it without permission.

Advantages:

• Saves a lot of time and money
• Affordable and often high quality
• Most templates can be customized

Disadvantages:

• It takes time to customize
• It takes time to find what you need
• License terms are not always clear

Pricing:

Free/Paid

platform:

Any

4. PaintCode

PaintCode is a simple and efficient tool that is best at generating program code for visually designed UI components.

Here’s how it works:

• In PaintCode's visual interface, you first design a UI component, such as a button
• PaintCode quickly generates its corresponding Objective-C, Java, C#, JavaScript or SVG code
• You apply this code to your own application so that its UI components appear on the screen.

In the past, the traditional way was that developers manually wrote code to create a button in the application, including its color, text, border settings, and button display. As UI components become more and more complex, the time consumption is also increasing. Designers can use PaintCode to create the most advanced UI components and vivid applications. At the same time, developers will no longer complain that they "can't do it".

PaintCode can export its "sketch" as a file, so that you can reload it directly when the UI component is updated. Of course, you can also use various parameter variables and expressions, for example: update a certain color shade to a new color scheme.

In addition, PaintCode also has a plug-in for Sketch (a UI design tool). With this plug-in, you can directly export Sketch sketches to Swift or Objective-C. So you don’t have to recreate the sketch in PaintCode, just export it directly from Sketch!

PaintCode has extensive tutorials, excellent online documentation, and responsive support.

Advantages:

• Save time for developers and designers to argue
• Flexible and customizable
• Support four major application platforms

Disadvantages:

• Design and development skills are required
• Some developers don't like the way code is automatically generated
• Limited support for Interface Builder-oriented workflows

Pricing:

Free trial, $99/year for teams of 1–3 people

platform:

iOS, MacOS, Android, and Web

5. Awesome iOS and Android

To be precise, Awesome is not a tool, but a resource, and a resource worth sharing!

Awesome is a list of resources, including frameworks, libraries, courses, books, blogs, podcasts, application development tools and templates. If you do a simple search on GitHub, such as: https://github.com/search?q=awesome, you can find lists of almost all resources from iOS to Swift, to Android, to JavaScript.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Awesome iOS by Vinicius Souza
• Awesome Android by Jürgen Stumpp
• List of awesome lists by Sindre Sorhus

Further reading

By standing on the shoulders of giants, you can build better and more beneficial applications faster. So, with ready-made tools, do we still need to "reinvent the wheel"?

Although it is convenient to build applications based on backend cloud services, there are still some cases where you should build web services yourself. Therefore, smart developers will know when to use which tools in their toolkit. Of course, no matter what, a fast and smart development process will always benefit you!

Original title: 5 Tools to Speed ​​Up Your App Development, author: Reinder de Vries

[Translated by 51CTO. Please indicate the original translator and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]