Ionic-based WhereYouAt app

WhereYouAt app is meant to let you keep track of people you meet via Meetup. It was created using Ionic framework and Angular.js. Data is fed to the app by a backend running the TVSD/where_you_at_server Node.js/MongoDB code. In its current incarnation the app only works with the TVSD Meetup group.

Installation

We assume that you already have Node.js and npm installed on your system. (Which you should, because they are awesome!)

You will need to install ionic and cordova like so:

$ npm install -g cordova ionic

Now the reason why the following is kind of awkward is because ionic project contains a lot of files that we didn't want to keep track of in this ionic_wya repo. So those files we will have to grab from an ionic starter project.

Change to your working directory and do:

$ ionic start ionic_temp
$ git clone https://github.com/TVSD/ionic_wya.git

These operations will create two new directories for you: ionic_temp and ionic_wya. Now from the ionic_temp copy ONLY the directories hooks, platforms, and plugins to ionic_wya.

And that's it! You should now be able to use ionic_wya directory to run the project as described below. Git will keep track of all the "important" changes, i.e. mostly those in www directory.

Running the app in a browser

Go to ionic_wya directory and type in

$ ionic serve

This will start a local web server and open a tab in your browser where your app will be running (being served from said web server).

Just make sure that you are running in a "normal" browser. I.e. avoid Internet Explorer. If ionic serve opened the app in Internet Explorer, you can simply copy the URL from the navigation bar to a different browser, to run it there.

Running the app on a device/simulator

Ionic wraps some of the Cordova functionality, so for example to run the app on an Android device you can do:

$ ionic platform android
$ ionic run android

Note that ionic platform android command only needs to be given once to create the Android project structure in platforms directory.

Of course you will only be able to run the app on a device if you have the Android development environment fully installed and configured. That can be tough and you should look for info about that elsewhere, for example here: http://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/2.5.0/guide_getting-started_android_index.md.html