Random Code Solutions

Since the demise of AdWhirl and my previous post about how to set up ads with Cordova, I've had to revisit it and get it working with AdMob which now uses Google Play Services.  Again there are very few instructions around for this, though I did find this useful looking Cordova plugin  which seems to offer a neat solution which is likely easier than the solution I'm about to propose and is cross-platform where I am only working with Android.  However, for various reasons, I don't want to use the Cordova tools, I want to do it manually.  If you're like me then here is how to do it This How-To uses a mash of the Cordova official documentation  on WebViews, my previous post on AdWhirl and the Admob Quick Start guide .  The premise here is that, since Cordova can be made to display in an Android WebView, and AdMob also uses WebViews, we can combine the two and display one in front of the other I'll assume you have an AdMob account and know how to create an...

I have recently been trying to add a plugin to an existing Cordova app (using Cordova 3.7.0).  Since I didn't create my app using the CLI I had 2 options: Create a new app using the CLI and copy my source files over Add the plugin files to my existing app For some reason I don't really like the idea of the CLI and wanted to do do this manually into an existing Android app, using Cordova, rather than use the CLI.  Don't ask me why, I just like doing things manually so I know what's going on under-the-hood I guess If you are like me and want to add a plugin manually, this is how to do it.  These instructions, though written for Android, will work for any any supported platform.  I will call out any differences between platforms that I know of Get the plugin source files You need the source code files for your platform (so .java for Android, .m .h for iPhone etc) as well as the plugin javascript files.  You might be able to get the source files from ...

I hadn't upgraded Cordova for ages and was still on version 2.4.0 (now at 3.7.0 at the time of writing). so I was surprised, but mostly dismayed, that I now had to use the Cordova tools to create apps.  Maybe it is just me but I liked being able to copy the jar, javascript file and config into an Android app myself.  I did have a go at using the tool, but the npm still didn't create the jar I wanted and I'd be forever tied into using the tool.  So I spent some time working out how to upgrade manually, and this is how to do it.   This obviously relies on you having java and android installed, which I'd guess you have if you're upgrading an Android app Step 1 Download the latest zip file from  http://cordova.apache.org/  and unzip it. Step 2  Install android if necessary and add it to the OS path.  You need ANDROID_HOME set or the android executable on the path.  I added both. Make sure you have Android version 19 installed from Andr...

How to launch a website as a mobile app using PhoneGap/Apache Cordova I spent some time recently trying to find out how to launch my website as a mobile app.  The information was available around the internet but since it took me a while, I thought I'd collate it here in one simple post for anyone who wants to do the same I decided to use Apache Cordova since it gave me the framework for developing an HTML5 site as a mobile app already, meaning all I really needed to do was plug my website into it.  Their getting started guide has good information on how to create a Cordova project - I used Android but you can use whatever means you wish A basic Cordova app gives you a way to launch the app with an HTML page that you use to display your app contents.  The trick then is make the page load your website which you can do in one of 3 ways: 1. Package your site inside the app. This means it loads fast and without an internet connection.  The downside i...

How to bypass SSL certificate checking in Apache Cordova 2.2 on Android (or how to override CordovaWebViewClient in versions of Cordova 1.9+) I came across a strange issue where I was unable to access a secure URL using HTTPS.  At first I thought it was due to the Cordova whitelist since there was an issue with it in Cordova 2.1.  In order to access an external URL you have to whitelist them eg <access origin="https://www.wikipedia.org" subdomains="true"/> This didn't help though and even if I allowed all URLS using <access origin = "*"/> it still didn't work.  Strangely though it was only one secure URL I couldn't access, not all of them As it turns out, it was probably to do with the way Cordova assesses valid certificates.  When an Android app is signed and deployed it is deployed in 'production mode' which means that any secure URL accessed must have a valid certificate signed by a certificate authority (C...

The problem I wanted to be able to create cross-platform mobile applications whilst not having to do it in Javascript.  I've never liked Javascript, I'm not really sure why, maybe I don't fully understand it. The solution I had a brainwave that I could create a functional Java application using Processing (that I have used a lot and, hopefully, will be contributing author to a book on the subject if it ever gets published), port it to processing.js and deploy that as an Apache Cordova ( PhoneGap ) based mobile application.  As a short explanation, Apache Cordova is a cross-platform framework for writing and deploying HTML5 apps to most mobile platforms.  Processing is a graphical Java-based library of which processing.js is the Javascript equivalent.  Using both processing.js and Cordova, I should be able to deploy a java-based application into a cross-platform framework and run it as javascript The code This is the easiest way to do it (there are othe...

This is less a 'code solution' than it is a code issue, in that I don't know how to fix it and abandoned the solution.  I will likely go back and attempt to resolve at some point, but for now I just want to tell you about what I'd wanted to create, what the issues were and how it caused my PhoneGap app to be labelled as "sucks!!!!" As I previously blogged this solution, I figured I should also share these issues The problem I wanted to be able to create cross-platform mobile applications whilst not having to do it in Javascript.  I've never liked Javascript, I'm not really sure why, maybe I don't fully understand it. The solution I had a brainwave that I could create a functional Java application using   Processing  (that I have used a lot and, hopefully, will be contributing author to a book on the subject if it ever gets published), port it to   processing.js   and deploy that as an Apache Cordova ( PhoneGap ) based mobile ...

I spent quite some time today trying to figure out why, when I load an external HTML file into my PhoneGap (Apache Cordova) app, the viewport only filled part of the screen Notice the big space at the bottom and the side border. I couldn't figure it out, so I started searching on Google: Googled solution 1 - Set the viewport meta tag Lots of the solutions I found involved setting the meta tag for the viewport, eg <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, height=device-height, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0/> However, this seemed to have absolutely no effect whatsoever.  I tried many variations of this Googled solution 2 - Set the page to use all the space Other solutions involved setting CSS so that the page filled the screen, eg html, body {   width: 100%;   height: 100%;   padding: 0;   margin: 0; } This also had absolutely no effect.  I was getting confused by now Googled solution 3 - Set Android propert...