The BarBands mobile app started a couple of years ago, when Ionic 1.x and AngularJS were in full swing. I’ve always liked this app and the potential it has, so I decided to upgrade it.

Since I’ve begun building my newer mobile apps with Ionic 3.x and Angular 5.x, I decided to take this one and upgrade it. This was not a difficult task, but a little time consuming as I was also building new processes/flows in my upgrade and build process. I want it to be smooth when I upgrade some of my older apps.

In addition, I added a few new features to the app which included:

• a map of gigs closest to you
• an easier way to submit gigs
• an easy way to contact support with an email

The new Android version is finally complete and has been released. Take a look at it on Google Play.

What’s next for the app? iOS.

Once you have the Android version of the app built with Ionic, an iOS version is not difficult at all. For a developer that works in a Windows environment, like myself, it just becomes a little time consuming. I just simply need to build the app for iOS (usually using PhoneGap Build or Ionic Package) and then install and test on my various iPhones. I make sure all the plugins work and that my build scripts are kept up-to-date. But, I still use the same source code as the Android version. Most of the time spent on the iOS version is actually testing, which is a good thing, right?