Pre-requisites and target audience

This guideline is aimed at eZ Publish developers, partners, and integrators who need to enable a mobile web channel for new or existing eZ Publish installations. It outlines general steps required for creating a mobile browser accessible site in eZ Publish and demonstrates how to wrap it in the basic application shell.

The instructions described herein assume that you have already set up eZ Publish 4.5 or later with the Website Interface 1.8 or later. You should also be familiar with some basics about setting up an iOS or Android application, although anybody should be able to copy and paste the code examples to create a working application.

What do I need before I can start?

General requirements

• Web server with PHP
• Relational Database Management System
• eZ Publish 4.5 instance with Website Interface 1.8
• To build the hybrid application: a configured development environment for at least one platform: iOS or Android

eZ Publish Requirements

• OS: Linux 2.6, Windows 2008 (IIS 7 only)
• Web Server: Apache 2.2.x (prefork mode), MS IIS 7 (with Microsoft URL Rewrite Module 1.1 )
• DBMS: MySQL 5.0.x, MySQL 5.1.x, PostgreSQL 8.4, Oracle 11g
• PHP (mod_php) + PHP CLI + apache: PHP 5.2.1 -> PHP 5.2.17, PHP 5.3.x
• PHP (FastCGI) + PHP CLI + IIS: PHP 5.3.x
• Graphics handler: ImageMagick >= 6.4.x, PHP extension GD2

General guidelines for mobile web applications

• List all the features necessary for the application
• Determine who your users are and define a usage context
• Re-think and reduce the amount of content and tailor it for mobile consumption
• Design the web application for the device
• Create a dedicated eZ Publish mobile siteaccess
• Create the dedicated mobile web interface as a new design for eZ Publish
• Consider creating a hybrid mobile application as a basic shell for the mobile site

In this tutorial, we will be covering the last 3 items on the list above.