Coding with Stackblitz on my Android mobile device
In the past I would have blogged about my experience coding on my mobile with tech like Termux, NodeJS, MariaDB, Hugo, and Firebase. I am always looking for ways to code on my android mobile. This time I am experimenting with Stackblitz. Stackblitz is an online code editor for web apps and powered by Visual Studio Code. Below has been my experience getting started.
I chose the free tier and signed in to stackblitz.com using my GitHub account. I created a typescript project. Stackblitz website is very user friendly. Next I looked for a good tutorial on youtube.
You can debug using chrome dev tools but looks like this is not available on chrome mobile.
I have seen stackblitz being compared to glitch.com and codesandbox.io and I am guessing that there are others out there.
There is an option to deploy to Firebase from within stackblitz but I don't want to trust stackblitz with my firebase just yet.
I downloaded my typescript project and headed over to termux. I then had the following question.
If I view source the stackblitz preview there is no html in the body tag but some script tags to load javascript files. Which leads me to say that stackblitz has their specific build and serve process and chances are you will have to modify your projects to build locally which could bring problems.
Next, I needed to figure out how to select over multiple lines. This would have been a deal breaker. I do have a wireless keyboard but then I would need a USB adapter for the dongle. But I prefer to not have to use a keyboard. I asked the question on stack overflow but I figured it out myself before someone could answer.
The other thing I need to figure out is how to uplaod project files. I can connect my github but I prefer not do that as yet. On your desktop you can drag and drop files but on android that is not an option.
I would love to see online developer environments like this progress. Maybe all you have is a tablet or chromebook or mobile. I can see me using this to test and demo code but I would need to learn more to decide on using for production web app. I would have to plan and test my deployment process first. Then consider support for unit testing. Let's say I wanted to develop a CRUD web app using Stackblitz, React, Express, Heroku and PostgreSQL. How would that work?
I read that Stackblitz now supports SQLite3. That would be one way to create a quick CRUD demo.
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