From the Forum — Issue #137

19 August 2016

From the Forum — Issue #137

Welcome to the latest installment of From the Forum. In this series, guest blogger Alex Jackson highlights outstanding threads from the Corona Forum. The goal is to bring attention to the most captivating, interesting, and thought-provoking discussions taking place in our very own backyard.

Please visit the forum to join these conversations or start your own!

Backend open-source server gets Corona plugin

If you’ve been in the tech industry for awhile, you know that having a server-side strategy for your apps and games can put you ahead of the competition.

With so many big-time games and apps being produced, Corona is becoming a popular destination for backend developers to ply their wares. Coronium is clearly the leader for mind-share, but another option is BaaSBox which has the additional distinction of having a new GitHub-hosted plugin created for its service. It bills itself as being “free to download and free to use! You can install the software on your own platform, at any time, and then manage your own backend as you like!”

Head over to the original thread to grab the link to the plugin and, if you have any additions to the code, remember to fork and put in a pull request to the plugin owner!

Every good encoder needs a decoder!

If you’re talented, maybe you can create base64 encryption and security protocols and meld them together in perfect harmony without any outside assistance. For the rest of us, a bit of third-party help can go a long way.

To that end, one of our magnanimous developers decided to share his encoding and decoding snippets on the forum, allowing us to benefit from his hard work. This is useful when transmitting any kind of file and can be considered mandatory when trying to come up with a player-to-player system of communication.

Click through to the original thread to grab the info and don’t forget to say thanks to the author!

HTML, PHP, and Lua, all playing nicely together

Speaking of encryption and security, I have been looking for the best way to incorporate non-Lua technology into this blog series. So many of our apps and games rely on additional intelligence, for instance HTML and PHP. Finding quality threads that give more than a passing glimpse at coupling these options with a Corona-built app has been somewhat difficult, as you can imagine.

That is, until now. This forum thread brings it all to the table, and then some. Forum maestro Rob Miracle runs down some serious assistance, going above and beyond by pulling from his wealth of experience with HTML and web tech to drop some very useful code snippets.

About Alex

Alex Jackson is an indie developer and the founder of Panc Interactive, specializing in retro-style gaming. He has created several mobile applications, enjoys long walks on the beach, pixel art, and reading the Corona forums. Contact him by email or follow him on Twitter: @pancinteractive. Check out his new game Segreta on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Amazon devices.