gliechtenstein

Thanks!

> Does it work offline by default? Is the JSON app cached and updated again when the user is online?

It's online default, hence the subtitle "Native app over HTTP". Think of it like a web browser for building native apps. Instead of HTML you use JSON markup.

That said, it also allows various ways of implementing offline http://docs.jasonette.com/local/

> What is preventing you from writing an HTML version of Jasonette

Nothing! Stay in touch to hear more! :D

I made a browser-based bot that can literally speak out any words to Google Home and Alexa.

You can control it by:

1. Directly typing any sentence into the browser

2. Remote control it from another browser (even from a phone, as seen in the video)

3. Or use its API to trigger it to say whatever you want, whenever you want.

It's really nifty. For example, I have connected “Hey Google, play Chuck Mangione” API to IFTTT, so every morning at 6am IFTTT triggers hey.run (I keep the web page open, and at 6am the webpage gets a push from IFTTT and redirects to “Hey Google, play Chuck Mangione” page and stars speaking), and then Google starts playing the music to wake me up. I also have an Amazon Echo, so I have set up IFTTT so that it triggers “Hey Alexa, what’s my briefing”, about ten minutes later.

I don’t have to say a single thing. It’s all bots talking to bots to do stuff for me.

You can try it at https://hey.run Would appreciate feedback!

I am working on an open source project that makes building cross-platform mobile apps as easy as writing ONLY a JSON markup https://www.jasonette.com

I did a Show HN about three months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179) and was so grateful for all the great constructive feedback I received, it really encouraged me to keep evolving the project. And I really have come very far since then.

So I thought I would share what I have achieved so far:

1. The original release was iOS only, but so many people told me I should build an Android version, so I did. Now both iOS and Android are completely open source on Github and they both use the same JSON grammar. Here's a recent post where I talk about how I designed the JSON-to-Native mappings on both iOS and Android: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform-...

2. I've implemented functional programming in JSON. Yes, a function in JSON. I had to come up with a JSON grammar that can represent all aspects of a function like invocation, arguments, callbacks, call stack, recursive calls, subroutines, etc. If you're interested, check out the post I wrote about this: http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/15/functional-programming-...

3. I've implemented a "require" for JSON, so it can be used to parallel process multiple JSON objects from different sources, which I think is great for people who want to build a mobile app for their decentralized apps. I personally think decentralized apps will take off in 2017 and going forward for many different reasons, so this means a lot to me: I wrote about this here: http://blog.jasonette.com/2017/02/17/require/

These are just some I have worked on personally, but the REAL cool part is that the community has really picked up and many people have been contributing to the project. And I think THAT's the main reason why it's awesome. The fact that some nobody with no track record can just release something that resonates with enough people and anyone from around the world can just jump in and help. This is my first ever experience with an open source project and everything feels so magical to me. I hope to update you guys with even better news in the future!

Hey thanks for the question. I think, just for trying it out you don't even need heroku, you should be able to run it from localhost.

BTW the original author of the app is @shaunymca, so I think he'll be able to help you better than me :)

Maybe try asking on https://github.com/shaunymca/coffeeapp/issues ?

Thanks!

It appears that HN automatically added the (2016) tag by looking at the permalink, which I mistakenly set as 2016 (still need to get used to 2017!), and that was what I was trying to say, because it looked as though the post was written a year ago.

Sorry for the confusion!

Update: This is not from 2016, but actually a Fresh New post I published this morning (in 2017!) but messed up the timestamp with jekyll, sorry for the confusion!

Hi guys, I wrote the post, but the creator is @smcavinney1 on this thread, please ask him any questions :)

I personally thought this was really cool because it's a Slack bot that actually does something useful, and am super glad Jasonette enables cool projects like these.

p.s. Could someone with the permission update the title so it doesn't say 2016?

A couple of months ago I released Jasonette with a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879179

We've made a lot of progress since I open sourced it, so I thought I would share my experience.

This is my first blog post to share my experience working on Jasonette.

Would appreciate feedback!

Yes, it's called Jason, it's on the appstore https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jason./id1095557868?mt=8

In fact, I first created Jason about 5 months ago, and have since been working on open sourcing it, which became Jasonette.

One warning though, note that this current version of Jason is not completely up to date with the most recent version of Jasonette (I've been too busy trying to release the open source), which means about 95% of the apps should work but not all. I plan to push an update soon, please follow the project or join the slack channel to stay updated :)

Answer: Please try Jason on the appstore https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jason./id1095557868?mt=8

Note that this current version of Jason is not completely up to date with the most recent version of Jasonette, so some apps may not work. I plan to push an update soon, please follow the project or join the slack channel to stay updated :)

Thank you! If you thought these JS based app development was fast, you're in for a real treat! Check out these apps I wrote as exercise: https://github.com/gliechtenstein/botlist.json & https://github.com/gliechtenstein/kitty.json

I built these in around 15 minutes each, and you can too, once you get used to the markup you can too (which also is great since all you need to learn is the consistent JSON syntax which works for actions, view layouts, and styling. There is no real "environment setup" and "becoming a programmer" process that most people need to go through just to get anything running).

I didn't start from a grandeur goal, but had an existing app on the appstore and was frustrated with every single aspect of the app development process. So I started implementing little by little just to make it easier, and ended up with an app that's actually a precursor to Jasonette.

I extracted Jasonette out from that app so others can use it too :)

Thanks! You'd be pleasantly surprised to learn what's coming up, please follow the project to stay in touch :)

what kind of app permissions?

Thank you! Please follow the project and join the Slack channel if you can :)

can you elaborate?

Thank you for the encouraging words!! { ˃̵̑ᴥ˂̵̑}b

Thank you! Why stop at prototype though? All you need is a couple of more lines to actually make it work (make network requests, call native functions, react to user interaction etc) :)

Yeah we were actually discussing whether we should support HJSON natively or not https://github.com/Jasonette/JASONETTE-iOS/issues/5

But as for HTML, I decided to incorporate it natively because it's def worth it: https://jasonette.github.io/documentation/templates/#html

Interesting, I haven't thought of that idea. I'll make a note so when we get to it we'll make sure to look into the option. Thank you so much for the advice!

Thank you for noticing! :)

Thank you! I think this thread is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12879487

Thanks! I think the best way to see is to actually jump in and try it out. I tried my best to make the onboarding as seamless as possible, so normally it should take like 20 seconds from download to having the app on your phone (assuming you already have latest XCode installed)

It does handle switching back and forth and everything else you would expect from a native app, because it is native (and not an emulation) :)

I think I need to make some changes to the main screenshots, those are actually one of the most advanced features of Jasonette.

You don't really need to use those templates at all. What those templates do is let you do advanced stuff like client-side rendering, dynamic data processing, etc.

But you can build a full fledged app WITHOUT any of those advanced stuff. Watch the video on the website and you'll get it immediately!

Yup, try this https://jasonbase.com/things/zn1/edit

nope!

Yup I worked on open sourcing it for 6 months! This is the open source version of Jasonclient

Thank you for the advice! Honestly it means a lot!

I totally understand where you're coming from. Here's my rationale: Most mobile devices and future devices will already use JSON as main method of data transmission.

And I'm trying to build something that's optimized for the future devices, and when you're building something from scratch you have freedom to make a choice, and I think JSON makes a lot of sense going forward, since this is just the beginning of this project.

Hope this makes sense!

Currently, it is possible to set a data-uri as the root url (in a correct format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme) I think that's one way you could handle this situation.

Or one could fork the code and change a couple of lines to make this work, technically it would be just a couple of lines of code, but I think policy-wise it needs to be thought out.

Please follow the project and feel free to start an issue thread, we can discuss further! :)

Thanks for the article. I am sorry to hear what happened to your project, but I think, in my case because I didn't build this from scratch, but it was extracted out from an existing app, I was able to get this to a point where I'm very satisfied with the result.

My goal was to make something that will help myself build, iterate, extend my existing app much faster, and it really did, so that's when I realized it would be great if I can open this up so others can use it as well.

To be more specific, nowadays I can build, iterate, and extend apps significantly faster, as in what used to take couple of days I can now build in 30 minutes. Maybe it's just me but I'm sure if I can do it, anyone can do it.