Developing Native Salesforce SDK Apps with Smartface

With the plugin support in Smartface, it is possible to implement any native SDK in Smartface apps. and as an example and the first of many, we would like to introduce the Salesforce native iOS and Android plugin for Smartface.

You can find more information about native plugin support in our previous article “Extending Smartface with Native iOS and Android Plugins

Smartface is a JavaScript based cross-platform native framework and it already provides a JavaScript interface to native OS components in iOS and Android. However, there might cases where you need to use a specific SDK for a specific purpose.

One of the most common use cases is the enterprise connectors. Most enterprise systems offer SDKs as well as web APIs and it is a matter of choice which one to use. Each has different use cases and advantages over the other. Web APIs offer granular control over the integration, whereas the SDKs handle some portion of the integration such as sessions automatically for eaiser development.

Smartface offers the flexibility of using both options for native apps. There is full support for web connectivity APIs so that you can consume web services in SOAP or REST from any enterprise software that provides them and the plugin support allows native SDKs to be used for enterprise connectivity.

Similarly, Salesforce developers have the choice of using either the Web APIs or the SDKs. Both Salesforce web services and native SDKs are supported by Smartface.

Smartface has wrapped the Salesforce Mobile SDK for iOS and Android and it is provided as a plugin to be used freely by all Smartface developers who want to add Salesforce capabilities to their mobile apps. Source codes of the plugin are available on GitHub and everyone is free to contribute:

This implementation is provided as a reference. You are invited to extend the plugin freely as per your requirements in your mobile apps that utilize Salesforce.

Actually, there are some naming and function differences in iOS and Android SDKs provided by Salesforce and Smartface offers a solution to disregard such differences to develop with a single JavaScript codebase.

Smartface plugin interface is designed to map native objects with JavaScript objects and it is possible to develop a JavaScript library which enables single codebase behavior. If a native plugin developer follows the necessary steps and develops the plugin with single codebase in mind, Smartface developers do not need to worry about OS differences, things are handled by Smartface native engine.

As we always emphasize, the possibilities are endless with Smartface plugins and Salesforce is just an example of many new enterprise plugins to come.

And you can always develop your own plugins from any SDK. The development and usage of Smartface plugins is free for all users, including the community license.

Download Smartface now and start developing native Salesforce mobile apps for iOS and Android.