Is Corona appropriate for app that talks to Azure services?

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hello,

I am just getting started with Corona SDK(working on simple game to get the basics down).  However if it pans out and I like the environment I am wondering if it would be appropriate for the following:

  • non game app for a bar/restaurant that handles basic things like menus, latest events/news/etc.

  • talk to Microsoft Azure SDK’s such as their authentication libraries which are native Android/iOS/Windows UWP

  • basic web services calls to a REST API

  • able to launch other games/apps by same developer on the device?

  • Maps functionality with GPS location

Any information as whether this would be appropriate/feasible would be great.  I have already built out the REST API and Azure backend so I won’t be changing that piece but looking at alternatives for a “gaming style” frontend on mobile without having to maintain Swift/Java/C# versions of the same thing(plus I love Lua).

#2

- non game app for a bar/restaurant that handles basic things like menus, latest events/news/etc.

Sure, Corona can handle all of this.

- talk to Microsoft Azure SDK’s such as their authentication libraries which are native Android/iOS/Windows UWP

Corona SDK cannot link to SDK’s that we have not built either into the core or into a plugin. It appears they support .NET and Node.JS, so if they have web API endpoints, you can use network.request() to talk with them (basically REST api).  You can also use Corona Enterprise to link to native libraries. Now for Windows, today we support Windows Phone 8 and Windows Desktop x86 .exe builds. We don’t support Window’s universal builds.  But with WP8 you can do native things like an Enterprise developer.  For windows desktop, it’s possible to build plugins with Visual Studio using our Windows libraries. That part is in a bit of a hard to explain state. We don’t have Enterprise working on Windows yet, but Enterprise contains the libraries you need to use Visual Studio.

- basic web services calls to a REST API

Yes as long as you don’t run into odd authentication problems. Some people have gotten oAuth2.0 working. We have an example of oAuth1.0 in the Twitter sample code. Basic authentication should work with no problems.

- able to launch other games/apps by same developer on the device?

As long as you’ve set up the right URL scheme’s in your apps (or the android equiv.) then Yes!

- Maps functionality with GPS location

This one is a bit harder to explain. We offer a native.newMapView() and you can add pins to the map and have the pins show custom information. Because we are using OpenGL, any native UI feature (all of the native.* API calls) generate UI objects that sit on top of the Corona SDK OpenGL canvas. In other words, you cannot draw on top of them, and you never will be able to. We encourage people to get more votes in for maps using our feedback site:  If you want improved mapping, then I would suggest voting up some of the existing mapping requests.

That said, we also have a native.newWebView() which also draws on top of other things. But you can use Google (Bing, Yahoo, MapQuest whatever)'s JavaScript APIs to build out advanced mapping features and just drop it into a webView.

Rob

#3

Thanks for the quick response, that seems pretty feasible then.  The area I would really need to test is the linking to native libraries as I’m not really keen on writing the Azure web services stuff from scratch, using their SDK is just easier(and handles securing the Rest API via OAuth 2.0/OpenID to 3rd party token providers).  If this means using enterprise that is not a problem just wanted to see if that sounded sane.

Rest of it sounds pretty straightforward, thanks!

#4

- non game app for a bar/restaurant that handles basic things like menus, latest events/news/etc.

Sure, Corona can handle all of this.

- talk to Microsoft Azure SDK’s such as their authentication libraries which are native Android/iOS/Windows UWP

Corona SDK cannot link to SDK’s that we have not built either into the core or into a plugin. It appears they support .NET and Node.JS, so if they have web API endpoints, you can use network.request() to talk with them (basically REST api).  You can also use Corona Enterprise to link to native libraries. Now for Windows, today we support Windows Phone 8 and Windows Desktop x86 .exe builds. We don’t support Window’s universal builds.  But with WP8 you can do native things like an Enterprise developer.  For windows desktop, it’s possible to build plugins with Visual Studio using our Windows libraries. That part is in a bit of a hard to explain state. We don’t have Enterprise working on Windows yet, but Enterprise contains the libraries you need to use Visual Studio.

- basic web services calls to a REST API

Yes as long as you don’t run into odd authentication problems. Some people have gotten oAuth2.0 working. We have an example of oAuth1.0 in the Twitter sample code. Basic authentication should work with no problems.

- able to launch other games/apps by same developer on the device?

As long as you’ve set up the right URL scheme’s in your apps (or the android equiv.) then Yes!

- Maps functionality with GPS location

This one is a bit harder to explain. We offer a native.newMapView() and you can add pins to the map and have the pins show custom information. Because we are using OpenGL, any native UI feature (all of the native.* API calls) generate UI objects that sit on top of the Corona SDK OpenGL canvas. In other words, you cannot draw on top of them, and you never will be able to. We encourage people to get more votes in for maps using our feedback site:  If you want improved mapping, then I would suggest voting up some of the existing mapping requests.

That said, we also have a native.newWebView() which also draws on top of other things. But you can use Google (Bing, Yahoo, MapQuest whatever)'s JavaScript APIs to build out advanced mapping features and just drop it into a webView.

Rob

#5

Thanks for the quick response, that seems pretty feasible then.  The area I would really need to test is the linking to native libraries as I’m not really keen on writing the Azure web services stuff from scratch, using their SDK is just easier(and handles securing the Rest API via OAuth 2.0/OpenID to 3rd party token providers).  If this means using enterprise that is not a problem just wanted to see if that sounded sane.

Rest of it sounds pretty straightforward, thanks!