Tutorial: jQuery Mobile, HTML5 Mobile App Connected to Parse Mobile Backend

A few weeks ago I promised to publish a tutorial on how to build a mobile app and connect it to Parse backend.

You can get the full tutorial here.

You really have to try it yourself building a mobile app in Tiggzi app builder and connecting it to Parse mobile backend is amazingly easy. You can literally build a real mobile app in about 30 minutes. Creating the actual backend is fast as well, takes about 2 minutes. Any backend object is instantly available via REST API and then used in the mobile app.

Here is a general outline of the tutorial:

1. Sign up for Parse and create the mobile backend. The mobile backend object (class) is a list of text messages
2. Build the mobile UI with jQuery Mobile and HTML5 (see screen shot below)
3. Create and use REST service to load text messages (REST: https://api.parse.com/1/classes/Words, GET request)
4. Create and use REST service to create a new texg message, (REST: https://api.parse.com/1/classes/Words, POST request)
5. Update the mobile UI to include a Delete button (REST: https://api.parse.com/1/classes/Words/objectId, DELETE request)
6. Create and use REST service to delete a text message
7. At any step in the tutorial, you can test the actual app in Web browser
8. Optionally, update the look and feel of the app

The final app looks like this: