One of my favorite parts of the Ionic framework is the ion-slide-box. It is a simple directive that allows you to create a pretty handy little widget for your mobile application. (Widget isn't really the best word.) The ion-slide-box directive lets you embed a set of images (or random HTML) and then display one item at a time. Their docs have a great little animated gif that I'm going to steal to demonstrate exactly what this looks like:

slideBox

What makes this feature so cool is how darn easy it is to use. For example, here is the sample code to create a slide box:

<ion-slide-box on-slide-changed="slideHasChanged($index)">
  <ion-slide>
    <div class="box blue"><h1>BLUE</h1></div>
  </ion-slide>
  <ion-slide>
    <div class="box yellow"><h1>YELLOW</h1></div>
  </ion-slide>
  <ion-slide>
    <div class="box pink"><h1>PINK</h1></div>
  </ion-slide>
</ion-slide-box>

This is incredibly simple. I thought I'd build a simple demo of this feature that tied the slides to a dynamic result. I thought I'd use the Bing Image Search API since it worked well for me in the past (Adding voice-based search to a PhoneGap app). I set up a simple view that included a form field and button top.

iOS Simulator Screen Shot Sep 16, 2015, 10.42.15 AM

When you enter a term, it will then display the results in a slidebox:

iOS Simulator Screen Shot Sep 16, 2015, 10.44.18 AM

Notice the little gray balls at the bottom - they provide a way for you to know where you are in the slide list (and you can turn that feature off if you want). Now let's take a look at the code. First, I'll show the HTML.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no, width=device-width">
    <title></title>

    <link href="lib/ionic/css/ionic.css" rel="stylesheet">
    <link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet">

    <!-- IF using Sass (run gulp sass first), then uncomment below and remove the CSS includes above
    <link href="css/ionic.app.css" rel="stylesheet">
    -->

    <!-- ionic/angularjs js -->
    <script src="lib/ionic/js/ionic.bundle.js"></script>

    <!-- cordova script (this will be a 404 during development) -->
    <script src="cordova.js"></script>

    <!-- your app's js -->
    <script src="js/app.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body ng-app="starter">

    <ion-pane>
      <ion-header-bar class="bar-stable">
        <h1 class="title">Image Search</h1>
      </ion-header-bar>
      <ion-content class="padding" ng-controller="MainCtrl">
						
				<div class="list">
				<label class="item item-input">
					<input type="search" placeholder="Search" ng-model="search">
				</label>
				<button class="button button-full button-assertive" ng-click="doSearch()">Search</button>
				</div>

				<ion-slide-box>
					<ion-slide ng-repeat="image in images">
						<img ng-src="{{image.MediaUrl}}" style="width:300px;height:300px;margin:auto;display:block" >
					</ion-slide>
				</ion-slide-box>
				
      </ion-content>
    </ion-pane>
  </body>
</html>

Most of this is boilerplate Ionic code, but you can seem my ion-slide-box is using a dynamic ion-slide list. That's really all there is to it. I could include more in the slide, like the image title, source, etc., but I wanted it simple. Now let's look at the code.

// Ionic Starter App

// angular.module is a global place for creating, registering and retrieving Angular modules
// 'starter' is the name of this angular module example (also set in a <body> attribute in index.html)
// the 2nd parameter is an array of 'requires'
angular.module('starter', ['ionic'])

.controller("MainCtrl", function($scope, ImageSearch, $ionicSlideBoxDelegate) {

	$scope.images = [];
		
	$scope.doSearch = function() {
		if(!$scope.search) return;
		console.log("search for ", $scope.search);	
		ImageSearch.getImages($scope.search).then(function(results) {
			$scope.images = results.data.d.results;
			setTimeout(function() {
				$ionicSlideBoxDelegate.slide(0);
				$ionicSlideBoxDelegate.update();
				$scope.$apply();
			});
		});
	};
	
})

.service("ImageSearch", function($http) {
	
	return {
		getImages:function(term) {
			var appid = "fgQ7ve/sV/eB3NN/+fDK9ohhRWj1z1us4eIbidcsTBM";
			$http.defaults.headers.common['Authorization'] = 'Basic ' + btoa(appid + ':' + appid);
			return $http.get("https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/Search/v1/Image?$format=json&Query='"+escape(term)+"'&$top=10");
		}	
	};
	
})

.run(function($ionicPlatform) {
  $ionicPlatform.ready(function() {
    // Hide the accessory bar by default (remove this to show the accessory bar above the keyboard
    // for form inputs)
    if(window.cordova && window.cordova.plugins.Keyboard) {
      cordova.plugins.Keyboard.hideKeyboardAccessoryBar(true);
    }
    if(window.StatusBar) {
      StatusBar.styleDefault();
    }
  });
})

The Bing API changed a bit since my last demo, but for the most part is still relatively easy to use. Their documentation wasn't always very direct. Outside of that I had no real issues. And yes - that's my appid included in the source code. This is a perfect example of where I could use a MobileFirst HTTP Adapter. I described this process here: Working with MP3s, ID3, and PhoneGap/Cordova – Adding IBM MobileFirst. Using the adapter would also let me modify how Bing returns results. I could use lowercase and I could return just the URLs, making my mobile perform better since less network data would be going back and forth.

Outside of the service it is a simple matter of updating the scope - but I ran into an interesting issue. I noticed that if I was on slide X and searched for something else...

iOS Simulator Screen Shot Sep 16, 2015, 10.52.39 AM

then the "current slide" remained at where you were before. That's where $ionicSlideBoxDelegate.slide(0) comes into play. But doing so introduced a weird bug involving AngularJS and digests. I hate those things. Mike Hartington from the Ionic team helped me out on Slack and recommended the timeout/$scope.$apply() solution you see above. That made it work perfectly.

All in all, a simple demo, but I hope this is useful for folks. You can find the complete source code for this demo here: https://github.com/cfjedimaster/Cordova-Examples/tree/master/ionicslidebox1