Phonegap API & Phonegap Bridge CIS 136 Building Mobile Apps 1

Mobile Apps 2 A mobile application (or mobile app) is a software application designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices Hybrid Mobile Apps are developed using frameworks and make use of API’s

API - Application Programming Interface 3  sets of tools/requirements that govern how one application can talk to another  APIs make the modern Web what it is today  APIs make it possible for big services like Google Maps or Facebook to let other apps "piggyback" on their offerings  Yelp, for instance, displays nearby restaurants on a Google Map in its app  APIs do all this by "exposing" some of a program's internal functions to the outside world in a limited fashion  makes it possible for applications to share data and take actions on one another's behalf without requiring developers to share all of their software's code.

Phonegap API 4  a free and open source framework that allows you to create mobile apps using standardized web APIs for the platforms you care about  Has a set of device plug-ins that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript  Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Phonegap API 5  PhoneGap solves two problems for developers:  Can use familiar web languages like HTML and JavaScript to create a working mobile application  Can port code to another platform quickly and easily  Reduces the complexity of supporting multiple platforms

Phonegap Bridge 6  Bridges the Gap  between your standard web technologies, and the unique capabilities inherent in your smartphone  Uses plug-ins to bridge to native device  Contains minimal set and there are lots of 3 rd party plug-ins to choose from  Learning how and when to use the plug-in is key  Requires writing Javascript/jQuery code

Core plug-ins 7  Battery  Camera  Console  Contacts  Device  Accelerometer  Compass  Dialogs  File System  File Transfer  Geolocation  Globalization  inApp Browser  Media  Media Capture  Network Information  Splashscreen  Vibration  StatusBar

Config.xml 8  Many aspects of an app's behavior can be controlled with a global configuration file  Defines global and platform-specific options  core set of images for each target platform  icons and splash screens  If you do not specify an icon then the Apache Cordova logo is used  Global preferences  Fullscreen  Orientation

Core components 9

Preferences 10

Plug-ins 11

Icons 12

Screen densities 13

Origin policy 14  the set of external domains the app is allowed to communicate with  Domain whitelisting is a security model that controls access to external domains over which you application has no control.  formulate a whitelist and allow access to specific network domains and subdomains