AWS Mobile Hub streamlines app dev
With today's debut at the Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Mobile Hub features a console integrating discovery, configuration, and access to AWS for bulding, testing, and monitoring mobile apps. It features AWS options, client SDKs, and client integration code, as well as capabilities for push notifications and analytics. Mobile Hub supports both Android and Apple iOS mobile platforms.
Mobile Hub, currently listed in beta, will help developers offload responsibilities for dealing with back-end cloud services. Rapid development is a key benefit, according to Amazon. “This is really going to help you speed up your mobile development so that you only have to focus on the functionaIity that you really want to deliver to your customers,” Amazon CTO Werner Vogels said. "It makes it easy for mobile developers to get really started by having the cloud as their back-end service.”
A Mobile Hub Project is a collection of AWS functions and features. Developers can configure application sign-in, either via social log-ins such as Facebook, an identity system chosen by the developer, or as unauthenticated guest users. Mobile Hub offers cloud storage for user data, and an app content delivery feature sets up cloud storage for application assets such as resource files or audio/video files. Also, cloud functions can be built for functions such as validating in-app purchase receipts.
“By putting your application logic in the cloud, you can share common functions across your iOS and Android apps without writing and maintaining two different versions. You can also modify your cloud functions on the fly without having to build, test, and submit new versions of your mobile app to the app store,” Amazon said on the website. “The AWS Mobile Hub configures AWS Lambda to handle execution of your cloud functions.”
AWS Lambda, a compute service launched last year for building applications in the cloud, was expanded today to support Python 2.7, including the AWS SDK for Python. Previously, AWS Lambda supported Node.js and Java. “I never knew that programming languages with significant white space were still popular,” Vogels said in detailing the Python support.