Initiating a phone call

You might be developing a mobile application that requires users to be able to make a phone call to a specific number. For example, you might have a hotline for animal abuse. In this recipe, you will learn how to use LiveCode to instantiate the mobile device's phone software and dial a number.

How to do it...

Perform the following steps to prepare your mobile app to initiate a phone call:

1. Create a new LiveCode main stack.

2. Set the background color of the default card to black.

3. Drag a new button to the card and set the following properties:

   • Name: btn_callHotline

   • Label: Call Hotline

   • Width: 144

   • threeD: Keep it unchecked

   • showBorder: Keep it unchecked

   • hiliteBorder: Keep it unchecked

   • backgroundColor: White

4. Add the following code to the btn_callHotline button:

   on mouseUp
     launch url "tel:[phone]" 
   end mouseUp

5. Test this application on an actual device.

How it works...

We just need to make a call to the launch url command and pass it the telephone number and tel: prefix.

There's...