[Jan 14, 2021] BDK Native Apps v1.9 Released

gaurav · January 13, 2021, 6:59pm

Hello Bubblers,

Hope you are having a good and safe new year. Happy to introduce a new version of BDK Native Apps - v1.9. This release brings new capabilities around deep linking and growing your user base. We have integrated tools from Firebase such as dynamic links, analytics, and in-app messaging. All of it in the same seamless no-code, no-complexity fashion

Details of the v1.9 release are here.

We wrapped up 2020 with customers of all sizes, apps of all kinds, all the way from New Zealand to San Francisco. BDK Native is now used by bubblers in 35+ countries, across all continents. Antarctica however, is still beyond our reach

Looking forward to working with more of the bubble community in 2021. If you’re haven’t heard of BDK before (or in a while), do check it out at thebdk.com

Cheers & Happy Bubbling,
Gaurav

hacker · January 16, 2021, 7:12pm

Hey, @gaurav,

I´m looking to buy the native app service and it´s very cool.

The “Offline Detection” feature doesn´t appear in my workflow element. How can I solve this?

P.S. I´m from Mexico
Thanks in advance

susanmariosarsfield · January 16, 2021, 7:32pm

Hello Gaura

Does your product convert Bubble’s html dom to native code or is this another Webview wrapper with some native functions? Are you using jasonelle also?
https://jasonelle.com/ or perhaps cordova?
https://cordova.apache.org/

What I am after is something that can create clean IOS code without wrapper from Bubble code. This is mainly for performance and general styling, less limitations. From what I have seen by your exhibitions these apps are clearly webview based, maybe i’m missing something here to your expensive price.

Would you think about creating a good fullproof service by Nativescript or React Native?

Webview apps to me are just so much inferior to native code. This a very old obsolete approach.

gaurav · January 17, 2021, 8:04pm

Hi @susanmariosarsfield

I don’t believe any tech exists today (atleast to my knowledge) that converts html to native code. That actually doesn’t make any sense from a technical standpoint.

If you want to use Nativescript or React Native why even bother with bubble? There are no-code pure native code generators like Adalo, Thunkable etc. If you’re looking for native code, bubble is not the right place to look. The only place for bubble in such an approach is as-a-backend. For this you’re probably better off using a non-bubble solution like AWS amplify admin or something else so that you have unrestricted access to your backend with great performance.

BDK Native isn’t just a webview, but rather a native environment that plugs into the bubble app. There are lots of native feature & modules of the device, which bubble app gets to control. Also, our customers don’t need to do technical stuff like app compilation, deal with provisioning & keystores, or generate certificates. This is the same philosophy as bubble wherein a bubbler doesn’t need to provision databases or servers to build webapps.

The objective behind bdk native is to extend the power & flexibility of bubble into the native environment without reducing the speed of development and iteration for bubblers. Hence I don’t have any plan to remove bubble from that equation. Fwiw regarding price, by the time you are done with a 4-hour introductory meeting with a react / pure native developer, you would have already spent more on development than entire bdk native solution.

I’d recommend also to take a alternate perspective from bubblers who have built bubble-based apps & native apps. They serve tens of thousands of users, while already fundraising and without having spent thousands of dollars on hiring coders. I think the response you will hear is that native code is superior in performance but vastly inferior in building & iterating a business fast.

gaurav · January 17, 2021, 8:00pm

Thank you @hacker

It should show up in your list of bubble events for workflows if you have the native apps (bdk) plugin installed and placed an app info element on the page. Here’s where you will find the workflow trigger (just search for BN)

gaurav · January 17, 2021, 8:56pm

Hi @hacker,

I think your bubble development environment is password protected for version-test site. Thats why it shows blank (since you can’t enter username password on that browser prompt). You’ll need to either deploy live or remove the password protection from your version test site in bubble settings.

hacker · January 18, 2021, 5:00am

Ohh, thanks @gaurav. Now it works

jon4 · January 22, 2021, 6:26pm

Thanks @gaurav, just giving this plugin a go now.

We are also wondering about the build fee you show here: https://www.thebdk.com/. Do the fees shown take our existing bubble app and get it compiled as a native app on iOS and/or Android? That is essentially a one-time fee, and then we bay for re-builds as needed?
Thanks,
Jon

nedbrush · February 20, 2021, 7:20pm

I have a question about BDK notifications on Android, specifically regarding clearing the bubble notification on the icon. On iOS, the notification bubble shows up and is automatically cleared when the app is exited. On Android, the bubble stays indefinitely even if the notifications have been cleared. Question #1) Is there any way to clear the Android notifications? Question #2) Are there any plans to enhance BDK to give more control over notifications?

messly · February 23, 2021, 10:29pm

@gaurav Question on the native transitions - I’m currently testing the BDK app you’ve built for me. I’m finding that using the native page transitions (i.e. ‘BN - Navigate to Link’) to move between pages in my app increases the page load speed by an average of 30-40% in comparison to a standard ‘Go To Page’ link. Are you aware of this feature causing page speed issues, or is this an issue with my configuration?

jakob · March 21, 2021, 11:03am

Hi, I’m running into issues with the GPS functionality. What I am trying to do is to set a marker on the map (Google Maps Extended plugin) that is pegged to the GPS address output of the BN native GPS function. Address output itself works, but it fails to set the marker on the map.

Any ideas?

ICONIFY · March 26, 2021, 7:17pm

Hey @gaurav - I‘m a HUGE fan of the BDK native and I was wondering if there is any way to hide the scroll bar (on pages & repeating groups) for an even smoother app-like user experience?

Thanks in advance and utmost appreciation for your work

Greetings from Berlin,
Kevin

aculebrasj93 · April 13, 2021, 9:49am

Hi @gaurav how are you? I’ve just installed the bdk app in order to preview my app but I’m struggling a bit to show the page as it should. For some reason, sometimes the content is shifted upwards. I’ve tried other similar services and this is not happening. Do you have a clue of what could be going on? Thanks!

NigelG · April 20, 2021, 6:04am

Hi @gaurav

A long time ago there was an issue with native apps running OAUTH signups… not sure this even got fixed (this was 2016!).

Can a BDK wrapped app use the OAUTH signup page on another Bubble apps which is a web app?

Thanks.

Tristan7577 · April 24, 2021, 1:31am

Is there a way to make the status bar transparent? Get rid of the white strip?

Thankyou

jakob · May 17, 2021, 3:27pm

Hi!
Unfortunately I’m running into two issues:

Storage on the device: The wrapped BDK app seems to accumulate all data that is ever downloaded in the cache, meaning my app users need >200mb of data on their device after a while. What is wrong there?
Loading screen at app-start sometimes just won’t disappear: The app loading animation oftentimes just keeps on going even though I trigger the remove loading workflow multiple times at page loaded. When clicking on the animation, it immediately disappears. This seems broken to me, how can I fix this?

Many thanks!!

rob8 · August 18, 2021, 7:45am

@gaurav I’m hoping you can help me out with a testing situation I have.

I’m building an app which has a Buddy system. Users can search for other users and request to add them to their Buddly List.

I’ve managed to get BN Push Notifications working - somewhat - in that I can send a notification when a user sends a Buddy request.

But, when I’m creating a new user, I’m getting the oneplayerID from the appinfo element and storing it against the user.

The main issue I’m having is trying to test this out. The oneplayerID that is getting stored on user creation is the same for every user, I’m guessing because the oneplayerID in the appinfo element is always the same on the device that I’m testing on. And hence when I send a Buddy Request every user I’ve created on the same phone gets the notification.

Is there a way I can test this properly - currently using he BDK Native App via testflight - so that I can properly test notifications are only going to specific users.

I’m thinking that it needs to create a unique oneplayerID per user signup when a new user is created but not sure how to go about this.

Looking forward to your response.

fahey.chris · September 12, 2021, 12:00pm

Im having a similar issue with the Loading screen not disappearing dispite the remove loader triggered on page load.
It only seems to be a problem on the android version.

Did you ever get a solution for this issue?