Setting up the Persistent Mobile Foundation development environment

Overview

Persistent Mobile Foundation is made up of several components: the client SDKs, adapter archetypes, security checks, and authentication tools.

These components are available from online repositories and can be installed using package managers. These online repositories provide the latest release of each component. The same component is also available to download from the PMF Developer Kit for local use. Note that the version that is available from the PMF Developer Kit represents the version that was available at the time the specific PMF Developer Kit build was released, and that downloading a new PMF Developer Kit build will be required in order to use the latest.

Continue reading to learn more about the components of PMF.

Jump to:

• Installation guide
• PMF Developer Kit
• PMF components
• Applications and Adapters development
• Tutorials to follow next

Installation guide

Read the installation guide to quickly setup PMF in your workstation.

PMF Developer Kit

The PMF Developer Kit provides a ready-for-development environment with minimal configuration needed. The kit consists of the following components: PMF & PMF Operations Console, Persistent Mobile Foundation Developer Command-line Interface (CLI), as well as optionally provides client SDKs and adapter tooling for download.

PMF Developer Kit Installer

The components are available through the Download Center of the PMF Operations Console.

To download the installer, visit the downloads page.

Note: PMF DevKit is available as a zip file. To install, you only need to download and unzip the file. Run the PMF DevKit from the extracted folder.

PMF components

PMF Server

As part of the PMF Developer Kit, the PMF server is provided pre-deployed on a WebSphere Liberty profile application server. The server is pre-configured with an “mfp” runtime and uses a filesystem-based Apache Derby database.

In the PMF Developer Kit root directory, the following scripts are available to run from a command-line:

• run.[sh|cmd]: Run the PMF with trailing Liberty Server messages
  • Add the -bg flag to run the process in the background
• stop.[sh|cmd]: Stop the current PMF instance

.sh file extensions are for Mac and Linux, and .cmd file extensions are for Windows.

PMF Operations Console

The PMF Operations Console exposes the following functionalities.
A developer can:

• Register and deploy applications and adapters
• Optionally download native/Cordova application and adapter starter code templates
• Configure an application’s authentication and security properties
• Manage applications:
  • Application Authenticity
  • Direct Update
  • Remote Disable/Notify
• Send Push Notifications to iOS and Android devices
• Generate DevOps scripts for continuous integration workflows and faster development cycles

Learn more about the PMF Operations Console in the Using the Mobile Foundation Operations Console tutorial.

PMF Command-line Interface

You can use the PMF CLI to develop and manage applications, in addition to using the PMF Operations Console. The CLI command are prefixed with pmfdev and support the following types of tasks:

• Registering apps with the PMF
• Configuring your app
• Creating, building, and deploying adapters
• Previewing and updating Cordova apps

To download and install the PMF CLI, visit the downloads page.
Learn more about the various CLI commands in the Using CLI to manage Mobile Foundation artifacts tutorial.

PMF client SDKs and adapter tooling

PMF provides client SDKs for Cordova applications as well as for Native platforms (iOS, Android). Adapter tooling for adapters and security checks development is available as well.

• To use the PMF client SDKs, visit the Adding the PMF SDK tutorials category.
• To develop adapters, visit the Adapters tutorials category.
• To develop security checks, visit the Authentication and security tutorials category.

Applications and adapters development

Applications

• Cordova applications require NodeJS and the Cordova CLI. Read more about setting up the Cordova development environment.

  You can use your preferred code editor, such as Atom.io, Visual Studio Code, Eclipse, IntelliJ and others, to implement applications and adapters.

• Native applications require either Xcode, Android Studio or Visual Studio. Read more about setting up the iOS/Android development environment.

Adapters

Adapters require Apache Maven to be installed. Refer to the Adapters category to learn more about adapters and how to create, develop and deploy.

Tutorials to follow next

Visit the All Tutorials page and select a tutorials category to follow next.