Contents

Preface

Who this book is for

Background to the book

Other learning materials

Acknowledgments

Important websites

The TouchDevelop Team

List of figures

List of tables

Chapter 1        Introduction to TouchDevelop

1.1        Computers want to be programmed

1.2        What is TouchDevelop?

1.3        The TouchDevelop ecosystem

1.4        History and Future

1.5        Platforms

1.6        The scripting language

Chapter 2        The Scripting Language

2.1        Introduction – the language flavor

2.2        Datatypes and variables

2.3        Expressions

2.4        Statements

2.5        Actions

2.6        Events

2.7        Pages

2.8        Creating library scripts

Chapter 3        The Wall – using the screen

3.1        Output – the writing on the wall

3.2        Input of values from the touchscreen

3.3        Updating the wall’s content

3.4        Events on the touchscreen

3.5        Pushing and popping pages

3.6        Titles and subtitles

3.7        Wall buttons

3.8        On-demand creation of output

Chapter 4        The Web

4.1        URLs and webpages

4.2        Downloading and uploading files

4.3        Downloading structured data

4.4        REST guidelines and web requests

Chapter 5        Audio

5.1        Music

5.2        Sounds

5.3        Microphone

Chapter 6        Camera, Graphics and Video

6.1        Camera

6.2        Working with pictures

6.3        Static graphics drawing and display

6.4        Playing videos from the internet

Chapter 7        Sensors

7.1        The sensors

7.2        Sensor-driven events

7.3        Accelerometer

7.4        Compass

7.5        Gyroscope

7.6        Motion

Chapter 8        Interactions

8.1        Social messages

8.2        Locations, places, maps

8.3        Emails

8.4        Phone Calls

8.5        2D barcodes

8.6        SMS messages (WP8 only)

8.7        Calendar and appointments (WP8 only)

8.8        Contacts (WP8 and Android only)

Chapter 9        Game Board

9.1        Introduction

9.2        The Board datatype

9.3        The Sprite datatype

9.4        The Sprite Collection datatype

9.5        Touching and board events

9.6        Debugging games

Chapter 10        UI with Boxes and Pages

10.1        Page Overview

10.2        Box Overview

10.3        Examples of Boxes and Pages

10.4        Working with Pages

10.5        Live Editing of the User Interface

10.6        API Support for Boxes and Pages

Chapter 11        Authenticating Web Services

11.1        Registering your app

11.2        Authenticating

11.3        Libraries

11.4        Advanced topics

Appendix A        Editing TouchDevelop Scripts

A.1        The starting point

A.2        The editing steps

A.3        Additional steps

A.4        More advanced editing features

Appendix B        TouchDevelop Services

B.1        bazaar

B.2        box

B.3        collections

B.4        colors

B.5        contract

B.6        invalid

B.7        languages

B.8        locations

B.9        maps

B.10        math

B.11        media

B.12        phone

B.13        player

B.14        senses

B.15        social

B.16        tags

B.17        tile

B.18        time

B.19        wall

B.20        web

Appendix C        TouchDevelop Datatypes

C.1        Appointment

C.2        Appointment Collection

C.3        Board

C.4        Boolean

C.5        Camera

C.6        Color

C.7        Contact

C.8        Contact Collection

C.9        DateTime

C.10        Form Builder

C.11        Json Builder

C.12        Json Object

C.13        Link

C.14        Link Collection

C.15        Location

C.16        Location Collection

C.17        Map

C.18        Matrix

C.19        Message

C.20        Message Collection

C.21        Motion

C.22        Number

C.23        Number Collection

C.24        Number Map

C.25        OAuth Response

C.26        Page

C.27        Page Button

C.28        Page Collection

C.29        Picture

C.30        Picture Album

C.31        Picture Albums

C.32        Pictures

C.33        Place

C.34        Place Collection

C.35        Playlist

C.36        Playlists

C.37        Song

C.38        Songs

C.39        Song Album

C.40        Song Albums

C.41        Songs

C.42        Sound

C.43        Sprite

C.44        Sprite Set

C.45        String

C.46        String Collection

C.47        String Map

C.48        TextBox

C.49        Vector3

C.50        Web Request

C.51        Web Response

C.52        Xml Object

Appendix D        Platform Capabilities

D.1        Supported Browsers

D.2        General Features

D.3        Supported Sensors and Devices

D.4        Support for Services/Resources

D.5        Support for Created Apps

Appendix E        TouchDevelop Editor on a Windows Phone

E.1        The sample program

E.2        The back button, undo and mistakes

E.3        The editing example

E.4        Additional steps

E.5        Refactoring code into a new action

Index