We’ve just launched Hotwire Native v1.2 and it’s the biggest update since the initial launch last year. The update has several key improvements, bug fixes, and more API consistency between platforms. And we’ve created all new iOS and Android demo apps to show it off!
Improvements
There are a few significant changes in v1.2 that are worth specifically highlighting.
Route decision handlers
Hotwire Native apps route internal urls to screens in your app, and route external urls to the device’s browser. Historically, though, it wasn’t straightforward to customize the default behavior for unique app needs.
In v1.2, we’ve introduced the RouteDecisionHandler concept to iOS (formerly only on Android). Route decisions handlers offer a flexible way to decide how to route urls in your app. Out-of-the-box, Hotwire Native registers these route decision handlers to control how urls are routed:
AppNavigationRouteDecisionHandler: Routes all internal urls on your app’s domain through your app.SafariViewControllerRouteDecisionHandler: (iOS Only) Routes all externalhttp/httpsurls to a SFSafariViewController in your app.BrowserTabRouteDecisionHandler: (Android Only) Routes all externalhttp/httpsurls to a Custom Tab in your app.SystemNavigationRouteDecisionHandler: Routes all remaining external urls (such assms:ormailto:) through device’s system navigation.
If you’d like to customize this behavior you can register your own RouteDecisionHandler implementations in your app. See the documentation for details.
Server-driven historical location urls
If you’re using Ruby on Rails, the turbo-rails gem provides the following historical location routes. You can use these to manipulate the navigation stack in Hotwire Native apps.
recede_or_redirect_to(url, **options)— Pops the visible screen off of the navigation stack.refresh_or_redirect_to(url, **options)— Refreshes the visible screen on the navigation stack.resume_or_redirect_to(url, **options)— Resumes the visible screen on the navigation stack with no further action.
In v1.2 there is now built-in support to handle these “command” urls with no additional path configuration setup necessary. We’ve also made improvements so they handle dismissing modal screens automatically. See the documentation for details.
Bottom tabs
When starting with Hotwire Native, one of the most common questions developers ask is how to support native bottom tab navigation in their apps. We finally have an official answer! We’ve introduced a HotwireTabBarController for iOS and a HotwireBottomNavigationController for Android. And we’ve updated the demo apps for both platforms to show you exactly how to set them up.
New demo apps
To better show off all the features in Hotwire Native, we’ve created new demo apps for iOS and Android. And there’s a brand new Rails web app for the native apps to leverage.
Clone the GitHub repos to build and run the demo apps to try them out:
Huge thanks to Joe Masilotti for all the demo app improvements. If you’re looking for more resources, Joe even wrote a Hotwire Native for Rails Developers book!
Release notes
v1.2 contains dozens of other improvements and bug fixes across both platforms. See the full release notes to learn about all the additional changes:
Take a look
If you’ve been curious about using Hotwire Native for your mobile apps, now is a great time to take a look. We have documentation and guides available on native.hotwired.dev and we’ve created really great demo apps for iOS and Android to help you get started.
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