Liferay provides two ways to create native Android and iOS apps that work with your Liferay instances: Liferay Screens and the Liferay Mobile SDK. Liferay Screens does this via ready-to-use components called Screenlets. Since Screenlets already contain the code required to call your Liferay instance–and a complete UI–all you need to do is insert and configure them in your Android or iOS app. Screens provides Screenlets for common tasks such as logging in, viewing web content, adding DDL records, and more. You can also customize each Screenlet to fit your specific needs, or write your own Screenlet. Behind the scenes, Screenlets use the Liferay Mobile SDK to call Liferay’s remote services.
The Liferay Mobile SDK is a lower-level tool that lets you manually invoke Liferay’s remote services. You’ll need to use the Mobile SDK to write your own Screenlets, or call Liferay’s remote services independent of Screens. In most cases, you’ll find that using Screens saves you time and effort. For example, although you can use the Mobile SDK to implement login in your app, Screens already provides this via Login Screenlet. There are certain cases, however, where using the Mobile SDK makes sense. For example, if you need to call one or more Liferay remote services but your app’s UI doesn’t need to reflect this, then it doesn’t make sense to use Screenlets for this purpose. Each Screenlet must contain a UI.
Regardless of your specific needs, Liferay has you covered with Liferay Screens and the Liferay Mobile SDK. This section of tutorials contains the following sections that show you how to use both:
Venture forth to become a mobile guru!