Mobile devices and SharePoint 2013 – Part V: Custom Applications

In this series of blog posts, I want to give you an overview on the most notable new features for support of mobile devices in SharePoint 2013.

Other blog posts in this series:

• Mobile devices and SharePoint 2013 – Part I: Overview
• Mobile devices and SharePoint 2013 – Part II: Device channels and the SharePoint page model
• Mobile devices and SharePoint 2013 – Part III: Push Notifications
• Mobile devices and SharePoint 2013 – Part IV: Location
• Mobile devices and SharePoint 2013 – Part V: Custom Applications

Custom Applications

SharePoint 2013 now provides better tools if you want to create custom mobile applications. There is a series of how-to articles in the MSDN library dedicated to this topic.

Windows Phone

Templates

Microsoft provides ready to use Windows Phone SharePoint 2013 application templates for Visual Studio.

• Windows Phone Empty SharePoint Application
• Windows Phone SharePoint List Application

So if you stay within the Microsoft Universe you can get the full advantage with predefined templates and built in support for push notifications.

The template generates a Silverlight-based Windows Phone app and uses the MVVM design pattern, so you will benefit from easily manageable layers, which can be independently developed, tested, and modified.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sharepoint/jj163209(v=office.15)

The SharePoint Phone Application Wizard will you guide you through the project setup in 5 easy steps.

With the help of this template, you can go from this SharePoint list

to this Windows Phone mobile application within hours.

See also:

• MSDN library: Overview of Windows Phone SharePoint 2013 application templates in Visual Studio
• MSDN library: Architecture of the Windows Phone SharePoint List Application template

Development environment

Important note:

Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on client operating systems (such as Windows 7) is not supported, and installing the tools necessary for Windows Phone development is not supported on server operating systems (such as Windows Server 2008). (source)

So in order to develop Windows Phone applications for SharePoint you will need two systems. Which should be no problem for you, as you can get a free developer version of SharePoint Online directly from Microsoft.

See also:

• MSDN library: How to: Set up an environment for developing mobile apps for SharePoint
• Download: Windows Phone SDK 7.1

iOS, Android and the REST

For all the other systems SharePoint 2013 provides just the right API set for you:

• CSOM: ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) object model architecture
• REST endpoints in SharePoint 2013
• OData / OAuth

You can interact with SharePoint sites by using JavaScript that executes as scripts in the browser, or remotely by using any technology that supports standard REST capabilities.

Client-side object model (CSOM)

• script that executes in the browser, code that executes in a .NET Framework-managed application, code that executes in a Silverlight 2.0 application
• proxy .js and managed .dll files, client.svc web service for batching, serialization of requests, and parsing of replies
  

  Source: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/SharePoint2010Developer/ClientObjectModel/ECMAScriptClientObjectModel

REST endpoints

• RESTful HTTP request, using the Open Data Protocol (OData) standard
• client.svc web service handles the HTTP request and serves the appropriate response, in either Atom (default response) or JSON format
  

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp142385(v=office.15)

Important note: Read-only in SharePoint 2013 Preview! 

Currently, the REST service in SharePoint 2013 Preview is read-only. That is, only REST endpoints that represent an HTTP GET operation are available. In future milestones, we plan to add functionality for update (HTTP PUT requests), create and insert (HTTP POST requests), and delete (HTTP DELETE requests). (source)

The SharePoint 2013 Preview REST service supports the following OData query operators: Filter, Take, Expand

Mobility object model

There is a new and enhanced mobility object model in SharePoint 2013. Two interesting additions are: