2. Installing the Cordova and PhoneGap Frameworks

The traditional way of installing Apache Cordova or Adobe PhoneGap is to download the framework’s files and optionally (depending on which version of the framework you download) perform some additional configuration. Although Apache Cordova and Adobe PhoneGap are, at their core, very similar (the differences between the two are described in Chapter 1), the steps performed to get your development environment ready to work with the frameworks are different.

In this chapter, I walk you through the process of downloading and setting up the framework. Subsequent chapters illustrate how to install and use the command-line tools as well as how to set up and use development environments for several of the Cordova-supported mobile device platforms.

Figure 2.1 Apache Cordova Project Home Page

Figure 2.2 Apache Cordova Current Version Download Folder

Click on the source.zip link to download the most recent version of the Cordova framework. You will be taken to an Apache download page, which will allow you to select the mirror from which to perform the software download. To download an earlier version of the framework, click the archive link shown at the bottom of Figure 2.2. The website will open the archives page shown in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3 Cordova Archives

The listing shows the framework download file (the .zip file shown in the figure) plus some output files from cryptographic hash functions used to help identify whether the .zip file has been modified. As you can see from the screenshot in Figure 2.2, the file access is provided over an HTTPS connection, so it is not likely that your download can be intercepted and a bogus file substituted. However, if you’re appropriately paranoid, you can validate the source files using the keys provided. The .sha file is generated using the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), the .md5 file is generated using Message Digest Algorithm-5 (MD5), and the .asc file contains the PGP signature for the file.

If downloading the file using Safari on later versions of Macintosh OS X, the files will be automatically extracted after they download. On Windows, or if you are using a different browser on your Macintosh, you’ll have to manually extract the files.

There is no installer for the Apache Cordova files; once extracted, the Cordova download will expand to the file listing shown in Figure 2.4. As you can see, the download includes a separate .zip file for each of the mobile device platforms supported by Cordova plus some additional files, which are described in Table 2.1.

Figure 2.4 Apache Cordova Download File Listing

Table 2.1 Cordova Archive .zip File: List of Additional .zip Files

In order to build applications locally for each mobile device platform, you need to extract the .zip file(s) for each platform. Each .zip file contains a text file called readme.md; you can open the file in any standard text editor and quickly learn what the files in the folder are used for. In most cases, there are simply instructions for how to use the files, but in some cases, such as with the Android Cordova implementation, there are additional instructions you will need to follow to complete the setup.

To configure development environments for the different supported mobile device platforms, you need to install the platform’s native software development kit (SDK) or integrated development environments (IDE). For some platforms, you may also need additional tools such as Java, Ant, make, and Cygwin. Except for the cost of joining the appropriate developer programs, pretty much all of the tools you need for local Cordova development are free.

In older versions of Cordova, you had IDE tools (like plugins for Xcode for iOS and Eclipse for Android) plus the CLI at your disposal. Unfortunately, the Ant-based CLI was implemented inconsistently across the different mobile platforms, so you couldn’t use it everywhere, and each implementation was in a different place, so you didn’t have a single tool you could use anywhere. The Node.js-based CLI (described in Chapter 3) replaces the Ant-based process and is implemented more consistently across platforms.

For that reason, I don’t cover the Ant-based tools in this book and instead focus on the Node.js-based tools. Over time, all of the Ant-based tools should be migrated to Node.js.

Figure 2.5 PhoneGap Installation Instructions

Beginning with PhoneGap 3.0, Adobe stopped making a specific download package and instead does everything through a Node.js package. So, when you click the Download PhoneGap button shown in the figure, you will be taken to the installation instructions shown in Figure 2.6.

Figure 2.6 PhoneGap Downloads Page

Installation is similar to what is described in greater detail in Chapter 3. To install PhoneGap, the PhoneGap website tells you that you simply have to install NodeJS (www.nodejs.org), then open a command prompt and type the following command:

npm install –g phonegap

Experience tells me that there’s a lot more to it, so jump to the next chapter to read about all of the requirements and issues you will face during the installation and afterwards.

If you’re looking for an older version of PhoneGap, you can scroll down on the page shown in Figure 2.6 and access the downloads for most earlier versions of the framework.