Softwire Blog

Cross platform phone apps

28 October 2016, by

If you want to write a phone app, and want it to run on multiple platforms, but don’t want to spend large amounts of time maintaining two code bases, then there are several solutions that allow writing one app, and deploying it to several platforms.

These multi-platform apps work by running a mini website on a phone, which is accessed via a web view, which is how the app appears native.

In this post, we’ll discuss several different approaches to writing a multi-platform app, and have a look which situations you should choose each option.

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2016 internships

21 October 2016, by

As a second year Computer Science student at Cambridge without much free time, I had learnt a lot of theory but had done surprisingly little useful programming. I therefore applied for a summer internship at Softwire to change this. I wanted to gain experience working a proper project from beginning to end and Softwire did not disappoint. I did a four-week training internship starting at the end of July.

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Tips for managing technical people – Blog Post wrap up

14 October 2016, by

Galvanizing the geeksOver the past few months, we’ve been posting excerpts from my new book, “Galvanizing the Geeks – Tips for Managing Technical People”. You can buy the full book on my website, here.

This post serves as a reference to all the snippets that are freely available here.

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Submitting your cordova app to the apple app store

12 October 2016, by

These days, everyone has an app. If you are one of the people who decided to write a cross platform app using cordova and would like to now post it to the app store, then keep reading and I’ll explain how to go about doing that.

Just a word upfront, in order to build your app, and to post the built app to the app store, you will need an apple machine.

Building your app

There are three steps required to build a release version of your app. Create a certificate, create an app identifier and create a provisioning profile. Once you have done these steps, you will be able to build a signed ipa of your app.

Create a certificate

First, you will need to login to Apple’s developer website. If you do not have an app id, you will need to create one, and you will also need to register as an Apple Developer, which will cost you $99.

Now that you are logged in, go to the distribution certificates page, and create a new certificate by clicking the plus button, marking your certificate as Production > “App Store and Ad Hoc”, and then following through the instructions on the website, which involve creating a signing request.

Create an app identifier

Again, the first step is to login to Apple’s developer website. This time, go to the app identifier page.  Fill in a short description, and then specify the app identifier for your app (this is stored in the config.xml in your cordova project:

<widget id="com.softwire.exampleApp" ... >

At this stage, if you want to add any extra services to your app (e.g. PushNotifications) then you will need to mark them on the app identifier.

Create a provisioning profile

As with the other steps, you need to login to Apple’s developer website. Head over to create a new Provision Profile. Select Distribution > “App Store” then continue.

On the next page, you will need to select the App ID that you have just created and click continue.

On the final page, you will need to select the certificate that you have just created and click continue.

Finally, give the provisioning profile a name, and click continue again.

You do not need to download the provisioning profile, we will get XCode to do that for us in the “Submitting your app”.

Submitting your app

In order to submit your app to the app store, you will need to build the signed ipa file, create an app store listing, and then finally submit the app you have built.

Building a signed IPA

Now that you have created a provisioning profile (see above if not), you must get xcode to download it. To do this, login to your Apple account on XCode (Preferences > Accounts), and then click the + button and follow the instructions to add your account.

Once your account has been added, select your account in the left panel, and click “View Details…” in the right panel. On the screen that opens, you should see the provisioning profiles attached to your account. One of these will be the Provisioning Profile you created above. Select the Provisioning Profile and click download. This will now be available to xcode when building your project.

The next step is to inform cordova of which provisioning profile to use when building. This is done using a build.json file. You should create a build.json file, and include in it the id of the provisioning profile that you downloaded.

Finally, you can now run a build on your mac using:

cordova build ios --device --release --buildConfig build.json

This will create a signed ipa of your app under

platforms/ios/build/device/*.ipa

Creating an app listing

Login to iTunes Connect. From here, you can go to the apps page, and then create a new project. You will now need to fill in details for your app (there are lots to fill in, but the help Apple provides is quite useful), and ensure that you have uploaded screenshots of the app running on both phone and tablet (if relevant).

Once you are happy with the details, save them.

Submitting the IPA to the app store

Now that an app listing has been created, the next step is to upload the build (created above) to Apple.

To perform this upload, you will need Application Loader 3.0. You can download this from the “Prepare for submission” page on the app listing.

Once you have Application Loader installed, login and click choose. Select the ipa that was built earlier, which will upload the app to Apple. It will automatically be linked to your app listing, as the app’s id will match the one specified on the app listing.

After upload, the ipa will be processed by Apple, and following that, can be selected as the version that should be published to the store. If you’re happy with everything, then submit the app to review.

Apple will now review your app, and it will appear in the app store when it is ready. The review process will take a couple of days, and you will receive an email when the submission is complete.

Tips for managing technical people – Recommended reading

7 October 2016, by

Galvanizing the geeksThe following is an excerpt from my new book, “Galvanizing the Geeks – Tips for Managing Technical People”. You can buy the full book on my website, here.

These are some of the books – not all of them aimed specifically at the technology sector – that I’ve found useful throughout my career.

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Sponsoring Diversity in Tech

5 October 2016, by

As a company, we have the opportunity to sponsor a number of worthy events. We have decided to formulate a policy to help us to decide which events to sponsor.

Overarching Cause: Diversity In Tech

We feel a good first step to filter out opportunities is to pick one cause that we as a company feel strongly about. We have chosen Diversity in Tech as our sponsored cause.

We know that many people care about this topic, and we feel that one of the ways for us to help is by championing events and initiatives that promote diversity in the tech industry as a whole. We’ve decided to ring-fence a budget of £6000 per year towards this cause, and our intention is to sponsor two or three events each year.

Prioritisation Criteria: Engagement and Promotion

When deciding which events in the field of Diversity in Tech we should sponsor, we use the following criteria:

  • Are Softwire employees likely to want to get involved in the event, or to otherwise get something valuable from it?
  • How much do we like the event’s stated aims and rate their chances of success?

Sponsored events in 2016

To inaugurate our new sponsorship policy, we have sponsored Rails Girls Summer of Code this summer! This program aims to foster diversity in Open Source. Selected teams of women from around the world receive a three-month scholarship to work on Open Source projects of their choice. They receive a stipend as well as access to close mentoring and coaching from professional developers. We’re hoping to extend our involvement to coaching and mentoring next summer.

We are currently also looking for other suitable programs to sponsor. If you know of any, please get in touch via the comments section, or drop us an email at [email protected].