Does Your Mobile App Work Without an Internet Connection?
Open Source For You|December 2016

Native mobile apps act as the interface between the user and the users’ data and require uninterrupted connectivity. A native app with offline capability stores both the mobile app’s software and its data locally on the mobile device. Offline mobile apps allow the user to run the app, regardless of connectivity.

Minni Arora
Does Your Mobile App Work Without an Internet Connection?

How many times have you opened a mobile app, filled out a lengthy form that runs across multiple screens, and passed through validation errors only to see a message stating, “No Internet connection” when you finally click Submit? Most mobile applications are simply clients that send and receive data in real-time and become unusable without an active Internet connection.

As per the ICT Facts and Figures 2016, only 40.9 per cent of the population in developing countries has a mobile broadband subscription. And those who have it often complain about fluctuations, especially in crowded places or while travelling. Even in metro cities, the continuity of the network is not perfect. With unreliable networks, limited bandwidth and high latency, it becomes really challenging for engineering teams to come up with solutions that enable users to use an app, regardless of network connectivity. An approach where you make a network request, wait for the response and then display it, is quite unappealing. Ideally, you should have the data already, which you can display immediately, with a separate mechanism to update it.

Adding the offline capability to apps

Here are a couple of questions that must be answered before taking the plunge. What are the key features of the app that render it unusable due to no/flaky network conditions? How many users are affected due to this? How does it affect the key metrics of your business? Answers to these will help reveal the areas where there is an opportunity to provide offline support. There may not be a need to take the complete app offline. Features that cannot work offline can be redesigned, disabled or even be hidden.

Offline views

In order for the app to function in unsteady and offline environments, the data that the application needs must be persisted locally on the device for subsequent lookups.

Caching

This story is from the December 2016 edition of Open Source For You.

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This story is from the December 2016 edition of Open Source For You.

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