The OpenHarmony Project Group Technical Steering Committee (hereinafter referred to as "TSC") - a cross-platform application development framework TSG incubation project - ArkUI-X, has recently been officially open-sourced.
Based on a set of main code, developers can run the exquisite and high-performance applications developed on OpenHarmony on other OS platforms such as Android and iOS at the same time.
ArkUI-X open source project address: https://gitee.com/arkui-x
01 The birth background of ArkUI-X
As more and more devices become intelligent, new scenarios and new requirements are becoming more and more scattered, including support for various screens (different resolutions, sizes, etc.), and support for various interaction modes (touch, voice, Gestures, etc.), various devices with different capabilities, and continuous interaction between devices, etc. For application developers, how to meet the above requirements and develop applications with exquisite smoothness and consistent experience is becoming more and more challenging.
Based on the above technical challenges, OpenHarmony TSC formally established the cross-platform application development framework TSG in April 2022, with members including Huawei, Alibaba, Midea and many other senior technical experts. Cross-platform application development framework TSG conducts insight and analysis of the key technologies involved in industry-related cross-platform application development frameworks, formulates key evolution strategies, and begins to build a cross-platform application development framework project - ArkUI-X.
02 ArkUI-X main introduction
ArkUI-X is based on the extension of OpenHarmony's official native framework ArkUI. At the beginning of the architecture design of ArkUI, cross-platform was considered as an important feature. From the code architecture, each platform is decoupled, which can be easily ported to different platforms. At the same time, key modules such as the core engine, graphics engine, and ArkTS runtime used by ArkUI are cross-platform. The purpose is to allow developers to run exquisite and high-performance applications developed on OpenHarmony on other different OS platforms at the same time based on a set of main code. The "X" of the ArkUI-X open source project can be understood as "Cross", which extends ArkUI to different platforms, and also represents unlimited possibilities in the future.
The application engineering of ArkUI-X is consistent with the latest OpenHarmony, and currently supports building OpenHarmony, Android and iOS applications. The main functions of ArkUI-X are as follows:
-
Support the latest Stage development model: support basic capabilities such as AbilityStage and UIAbility, and also support the development and operation of multiple modules.
-
Support cross-platform UI basic components, and support complete state management capabilities.
-
The resource format of Resource is also cross-platform. It does not need to consider resource processing under different platforms. The resource configuration and access methods are consistent, and it supports multi-language capabilities.
-
The APIs used for development are standard APIs of the OpenHarmony ecosystem. On cross-platform, standard APIs are supported and packaged as needed in the form of plug-ins.
-
ArkUI-X also provides a lightweight cross-language bridging mechanism to facilitate developers to quickly expand the existing capabilities on the corresponding platform.
-
ArkUI-X also provides a test framework consistent with OpenHarmony: the directory structure of the test project is also consistent with the OpenHarmony project. When developing a test case, you first need to import the API of the test framework, which includes the basic process of the test script and the API of the UI simulation operation.
03 ArkUI-X practice case
The complex single product details page in the Huawei Smart Life app was previously developed separately on different platforms (Android, iOS), and the maintenance cost is relatively high. After using the ArkUI-X cross-platform project, the code for the complex item details page can be written once and run on the three platforms of Android, iOS and HarmonyOS (OpenHarmony commercial version). The ratio is as high as 75%, and it has a better performance experience. It has truly achieved "one-time code development and three-platform deployment".
04 ArkUI-X Open Source Community
ArkUI-X is an open source project incubated by OpenHarmony TSC-cross-platform application development framework TSG, more about ArkUI-X-based application development manual, framework development manual, ArkUI-X version package, ArkUI-X sample code, community Roadmap and other information can be found in the Gitee ArkUI-X code warehouse.
ArkUI-X code warehouse address: https://gitee.com/arkui-x
ArkUI-X-v1.0.0-Canary1 version note address: https://gitee.com/arkui-x/docs/blob/master/zh-cn/release-notes/ArkUI-X-v1.0.0-canary1.md