PhoneGap Plugins Joe Bowser joe.bowser@nitobi

PhoneGap Plugins
Joe Bowser
joe.bowser@nitobi.com


About PhoneGap
●
PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that
allows you to author native applications with
web technologies and get access to APIs and
app stores
●
Exists on iPhone, Android, Blackberry
WebWorks, Windows Mobile 7, Symbian,
WebOS and Samsung bada
●
Allows developers to get the majority of their
app developed quickly


PhoneGap Application Examples
●
Android Examples:
●
National Film Board of
Canada
(NFB Films)
●
DiaryMobile
●
Logitech Squeezebox
●
Registered Nurses of
Ontario (RNAO)
●
Vimeo Mobile (by
Dreamcarved)


NFB Application (Honeycomb)


Why plugins exist
●
When working on projects (including the NFB
project), we needed to extend PhoneGap
●
The NFB Application has these Native Features
●
Video Player
●
NFB Desktop Widget
●
Native Menus
●
We had to extend PhoneGap with native code
to step in where the browser stopped working


Do I need to write a plugin?
●
PhoneGap Android currently supports:
●
Geolocation (HTML5 replacement)
●
Accelerometer
●
Compass
●
Camera
●
Contacts
●
FileReader/FileWriter
●
Network Status/Reachability
●
Storage


Do I need to write a plugin (cont)?
●
Temperature
●
File Transfer
●
Capture
●
Battery
●
These features are themselves plugins and will
become more modular
●
If you need features, other than this, or if the
web performance would be too slow, you need
a plugin


PhoneGap Plugins?
●
There is a phonegap-plugins repository with
various plugins
●
Plugins are written in the native language of the
platform (iOS plugins are in Objective-C,
Android plugins are written in Java)
●
Plugins consist of a native library or source file,
and a Javascript interface file
●
Plugins are the preferred way of extending
PhoneGap without running into errors


Examples of Plugins
●
Found at https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins
●
WebIntents
●
NFC
●
PayPal
●
TTS
●
Barcode Scanner
●
Google Analytics
●
Video Player


Installing a Plugin on Android
●
Create a PhoneGap Project
●
Copy the Java files to where their package
would be
●
Edit the resource file res/xml/plugins.xml
●
Build the Application


Writing an Android Plugin
●
Android plugins are written in Java
●
Some people are fine with this and use vim to
write Java
●
I am not one of these people. I still use Eclipse
to do Java Development (I write all my other
code in vim)
●
We're going to work on a plugin LIVE!


The Live Demo
Warning:
Live Coding will be involved
(sort-of)
http://bit.ly/pg_android_tutorial


Summary of the Demo
●
Get PhoneGap-Android Source
●
Create a project to develop the plugin
●
Create a class to extend the Plugin object
●
Implement native methods in that package
●
Write a JS layer to use PhoneGap.exec()


Conclusion
●
PhoneGap plugins are useful when you need
the following
●
Native Functionality that isn't in any W3C
specification
●
Optimized APIs for when Javascript today just isn't
the right choice (Cryptography, for example)
●
Integrating 3
rd
Party APIs for Android to add a more
smooth user experience


For more information
●
PhoneGap website: http://phonegap.com
●
IRC: #phonegap on irc.freenode.net
●
Twitter: @phonegap
●
Code Examples from this presentation:
●
http://bit.ly/pg_android_tutorial