SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

• US 20120284686A1
• Filed: 04/10/2012
• Published: 11/08/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 04/11/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mobilous, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Mobilous, Inc.
• Inventors: Miyata, Akira, SHARRMA, Rakesh, Bhattacharjee, Sujoy
• Granted Patent: US 9,081,579 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/109
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/30 Creation or generation of source code
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/34 Graphical or visual programming
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/36 Software reuse
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/38 for implementing user interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/64 Retargetable
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/76 Adapting program code to run in a different environment; Porting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/453 Help systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/454 Multi-language systems; Localisation; Internationalisation

Abstract

The present invention relates to the field of mobile applications and, more specifically, to a system and method for building a mobile application in a mobile application development environment in a simple and cost effective manner.

Claims

1. A method for creating an application for execution on mobile devices, said method comprising the steps of:

a. providing a wizard based environment to a user and allowing the user to interact with the wizard to create at least one user interface page for the application;

b. detecting an input from the user indicative of completion of the application creation;

c. automatically creating a definition file for the application thus created, said definition file comprising definitions regarding user interface page hierarchy, user interface page(s), user interface object(s), action(s), device setting(s) and region; and

d. combining the contents of the definition file with an operating system specific run-time file to generate an application file.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the wizard based environment allows the user to create said at least one user interface page fir the application using a drag-and-drop function.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the step of automatically creating definition file fir the application comprises:

(a) automatically detecting user interface objects that are defined by the user on the said one or more user interface pages of the application;

(b) automatically detecting regions that define GPS location regions for CPS application events used by the application;

(c) automatically detecting device settings which defines initial settings for each device like GPS, watch or accelerometer used by the application;

(d) if application contains plurality of user interface pages, automatically detecting hierarchy between the plurality of user interface pages;

(e) in respect of each of the user interface page, automatically detecting the user interface page setting;

(f) in respect of each of the user interface page, automatically detecting functionality contained in the user interface page;

(g) in respect of each of the user interface page, automatically detecting actions to be orchestrated for each event triggered from the User Interface or from the device; and

(h) automatically writing software codes corresponding to the items detected in (a) to (g).

4. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the step of combining the contents of the definition file with an operating system specific run-time file comprises:

(a) preparing libraries necessary for linking;

(b) receiving the definition file in an compiler environment; and

(c) linking at least a part of the definition file and the libraries by a binary generator to generate the application file.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising if characteristics of a particular mobile device are not compatible with the contents of the definition file, providing a wizard based environment to a user and allowing the user to interact with the wizard to modify the contents of the definition file.

6. An apparatus for creating an application for execution on mobile devices, said apparatus comprising:

a module (401) configured to;

provide a wizard based environment to a user and allowing the user to interact with the wizard to create at least one user interface page for the application;

detect an input from the user indicative of completion of the application creation; and

automatically create a definition file for the application thus created, said definition file comprising definitions regarding user interface page hierarchy, user interface page(s), user interface object(s), action(s), device setting(s) and region; and

a binary generator module (402) for combining the contents of the definition file with an operating system specific run-time file to generate an application file,