The most important feature of NativeScript is the ability to access native platform APIs directly from JavaScript.

::: tip Note When trying to figure out how to execute some native Android or iOS code in your NativeScript app, you can search the Android & iOS documentation, StackOverflow or other resources.

The key is knowing how to call those APIs from JavaScript instead of writing the code in Java, Objective-C, Kotlin, or Swift.

The core of NativeScript is all written in TypeScript and you can view the source on Github for many examples of calling native platform APIs. :::

The Java code below will get the Android device battery level. This example is only for Android API 21+. To get the battery level prior to Android 21 a different approach was necessary. The purpose of this example is to explain walking through an approach of converting Java to JavaScript.

BatteryManager bm = (BatteryManager) context.getSystemService(BATTERY_SERVICE);
int batLevel = bm.getIntProperty(BatteryManager.BATTERY_PROPERTY_CAPACITY);

Now we need to take this and write JavaScript (TypeScript in this example) calling the same methods the java sample calls. Below is the working code to achieve the same end result that Java code would provide.

import { Utils, Device } from '@nativescript/core'

if (global.isAndroid && Device.sdkVersion >= '21') {
  const bm = Utils.android
    .getApplicationContext()
    .getSystemService(android.content.Context.BATTERY_SERVICE)
  const batLevel = bm.getIntProperty(android.os.BatteryManager.BATTERY_PROPERTY_CAPACITY)
}

::: warning Note The code block is wrapped with global.isAndroid so that it is only executed on Android. Otherwise, the app will crash on iOS when it tries to access APIs that are not part of the iOS platform.

Since this code is only for Android API 21+ we have also included a sdk version check so that you can copy and paste this code in your application. :::

Now for a short walk through of one way to go about translating Java to JavaScript.

1. JavaScript uses const, let, var to declare variables. So we can not use the types to declare what variable in this way. Using TypeScript you can assign a variable a native type using the @nativescript/types developer dependency.

2. Next we see the method getSystemService(BATTERY_SERVICE) is being executed. We can search the Android docs for this method. The getSystemService method is documented here.

   The method is a public abstract of the android.content.Context. In the Java code you typically see context which will be an instance of the application context. In NativeScript you can get the Android context a couple ways, the Utils of @nativescript/core provides a method to get the Android context: Utils.android.getApplicationContext().

3. The getSystemService(java.lang.String) method accepts a String. When programming in Android you can use BATTERY_SERVICE if the import android.content.Context is declared in the .java file. The compiler will know that BATTERY_SERVICE is the static final string declared here.

   You could also write the getSystemService("batterymanager") using the statics constant value: "batterymanager". In your NativeScript code, you could do the same, but if you prefer to use the full namespace path to the static value, you can write it like the example does with android.content.Context.BATTERY_SERVICE.

4. Now we have an instance of the Android BatteryManager which is what the docs state as the return value for this system service.

5. The next line we see getIntProperty() method called on the BatteryManager instance we have from the first line.

   We see that the method expects an int id as the argument and returns an int. Now we need to determine what the BatteryManager.BATTERY_PROPERTY_CAPACITY value is. You can see that BatteryManager is the class and what looks like a static value. Searching the Android BatteryManager docs for BATTERY_PROPERTY_CAPACITY you will find the constant value of the static final: Constant Value: 4 (0x00000004).

   You could execute the getIntProperty(int id) method passing in 4 as the argument in Java and it would work, same as you could in NativeScript. In order to use the full namespace in NativeScript you would use the fully qualified namespace path to the static int android.os.BatteryManager.BATTERY_PROPERTY_CAPACITY. Again, you typically do not use the full namespace path to values in Java because you can import the class. So import android.os.BatteryManager would be in the example java file allowing you to use the static value and the compiler know what you are trying to do and compile correctly at build time.

Here is the Objective-C code to get the current battery level of the iOS device.

float batteryLevel = [[UIDevice currentDevice] batteryLevel];

Now we convert this to JavaScript to execute in NativeScript to read the iOS device battery level.

if (global.isIOS) {
  UIDevice.currentDevice.batteryLevel
}

::: warning Note The code block is wrapped with global.isIOS so that it is only executed on iOS. Otherwise, the app will crash on Android when it tries to access APIs that are not part of the Android platform itself. :::

Now for a short walk through of one way to go about translating Objective-C to JavaScript.

1. In the Objective-C code we see UIDevice, so you can search for UIDevice on the iOS Documentation.

2. Next we see currentDevice property being accessed. In the iOS documentation for UIDevice you will find the currentDevice property of the UIDevice class.

::: tip Note In NativeScript iOS code, the translating of Objective-C to JavaScript is not always 1:1, this is where using intellisense and the @nativescript/types package during development will help complete the native API calls where they may slightly differ. :::

3. Last, the Objective-C code is accessing batteryLevel to get the value. So we can do the same direct call in our JavaScript code to read the battery level of the iOS device.