Mobile enablement of existing web sites
Mobile enablement of a web site, in one aspect, may comprise separating the web application into a static content and a dynamic content, the dynamic content comprising one or more data sources from which to retrieve data at runtime of the web application; rendering the static content as one or more hypertext markup language pages with one or more links between the hypertext markup language pages converted to local links; changing one or more references to the dynamic content to representational state transfer requests; enabling the representational state transfer requests from said one or more hypertext markup language pages; and packaging said one or more hypertext markup language pages as the mobile application.
1. A method of converting a web application to a mobile application, comprising:
separating the web application into a static content and a dynamic content, the dynamic content comprising at least dynamic scripting that is executed on a server side and object names to be dynamically resolved at runtime, the object names remaining in the dynamic content without being resolved at the time of separating;
rendering the static content as one or more hypertext markup language pages with one or more links between the hypertext markup language pages converted to local links;
changing one or more references to the dynamic content to representational state transfer requests;
enabling the representational state transfer requests from said one or more hypertext markup language pages;
creating a mobile gateway storing representational state transfer interfaces that service the representational state transfer requests and connecting to back-end data accessed by the web application; and
packaging as the mobile application said one or more hypertext markup language pages with an icon, an interface to an operating system of a mobile device, scripting resources to make calls to the representational state transfer request, scripting resources that bridge to native application programming interface calls, cascading style sheet resources for formatting and styling the one or more hypertext markup language pages, and a client-side aggregator for assembling multiple requests for dynamic data for sending the multiple requests from the mobile application in a single message to the mobile gateway, the client-side aggregator for receiving a single response and breaking the single response into separate responses corresponding to the multiple requests respectively,
wherein the dynamic content remains unresolved in the packaged mobile application for downloading to the mobile device,
the mobile application further programmed to selectively open up functionality to different sets of users,
wherein a plugin created to run in an integrated programming development tool reads the web application and automatically identifies the dynamic content based on a hint in the web application.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the packaged mobile application is stored to an application store for downloading to a user's mobile device.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein a mobile gateway on a remote server is utilized for accessing the dynamic content with the data sources.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the packaged mobile application further comprises a native library for accessing device specific features associated with a mobile device.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the packaged mobile application further comprises an application manifest that identifies a version number associated with each of components in the packaged mobile application.
6. The method of claim 5 , further comprising updating the mobile application selectively on a component-basis based on the version number associated with said each component.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the web application comprises a web site.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the changing one or more references to the dynamic content to representational state transfer requests comprises parsing the dynamic content of the web application, generating a data model comprising the one or more data sources, and refactoring the web application by removing one or more references to dynamic scripting that is executed on a server side, and inserting one or more of the representational state transfer requests for retrieving said one or more data sources.
9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the inserting one or more of the representational state transfer requests for retrieving said one or more data sources comprises creating a JavaScript that includes the one or more of the representational state transfer requests and referencing the JavaScript from the one or more hypertext markup language pages.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mobile application is programmed to determine whether a version of the mobile application downloaded to the mobile device is different from a version of the mobile application specified by a mobile server,
the mobile application programmed to mark one or more components of the mobile application having different versions responsive to finding that the version of the mobile application downloaded to the mobile device is different from the version of the mobile application specified by a mobile server,
the mobile application programmed to detect a user navigating to the one or more components that are marked,
the mobile application programmed to update the one or more components responsive to detecting the user navigating to the one or more components that are marked.