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Facebook F8 Apps for iOS and Android Now Open-Source

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Facebook-owned DBaaS platform Parse has open-sourced the full source code of the official Facebook f8 apps for iOS and Android, Parse Developer Advocates Christine Abernathy announced. The apps are aimed to provide guidance for how to build apps on Parse as well as a starting point for similar apps.

The F8 app, which is available on the App Store as well as on Google Play, enabled Facebook f8 developer conference attendees to stay up-to-date with upcoming talks, get to know the speakers, and receive push notifications on talks they had marked as favourites. According to Christine, "it took one iOS and Android developer around two weeks to deliver the apps," which leveraged a previously open-sourced project, the Parse Developer Day app.

One notable feature of the F8 apps is that the Parse platform was used to store much of the User Interface (UI) customisation options and assets, in addition to all the conference data. "This enabled quick iteration on design changes across iOS and Android and last minute UI updates that did not required touching the code," wrote Christine.

In order to be able to run the app, developers are required to create a Parse app as well as a Facebook app. For simplicity, the repository includes a JSON export of the f8 app data which can be used to populate the Parse app with some data which can be later customised.

The app is released under a slightly modified MIT license to take into account the integration with Facebook, which requires acceptance of the Facebook Developer Principles and Policies.

This announcement echoes Google open-sourcing its own conference app for Android last month.

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