Ionic Framework + Phonegap Build : workflow

Question

I am trying to compile my Ionic app with Phonegap Build (I am working with a Mac so I can't compile to iOS otherwise).

What's is the best workflow ?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can do it with Ionic Package. They offer 100 builds/mo.

The docs for it are available here: http://docs.ionic.io/services/package/#summary

If you need to send it to Itunes Connect, you can use this: https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-xdk/topic/670364#comment-1895468

Answer 2

If you want to automatically generate the config file for PhoneGap build, use this:

npm install pgb-config-maker --save

./make-config-xml.sh

Next command:

phonegap remote build ios

Answer 3

w--'s post was helpful, but I really didn't need that many stages to my task. Also, my config.xml seems to work fine with PhoneGap Build. So, this single gulp task will zip up www and config.xml into a .zip file:

gulp.task('phonegap_zip', function(){
  return gulp.src(['./www/**', './config.xml'])
        .pipe(zip('phonegap.zip'))

        .pipe(gulp.dest('./phonegap/'));
});

Answer 4

After fighting this all night and all morning, i came up with a hackish solution.
Hope it helps someone.

As of ionic v1.0, at least for my simplistic project, the biggest difference is just

• config.xml
• all the image assets are in ./resources

What i did:
config.xml changes:

• created a new file in .www/config_phonegap.xml based on config.xml
• On widget node changed the namespace to phonegap (xmlns:gap="http://phonegap.com/ns/1.0")
• used regex search replace to change all the icon and splash tags to the corresponding phonegap equivalent
• manually created the necessary "gap:plugin" tags for any plugins

gulp additions:

• created a gulp task to copy .www/ into a ./phonegap folder
• gulp task also copies over resources
• gulp task coipies over config_phonegap.xml and renames it as config.xml
• gulp task to zip up our new www folder. (there should be no top level www in the zip file. i.e. we only want to zip the contents of www)

What this means is that my build workflow (until i need to change something in config.xml) now looks like this:

1. gulp phonegap
2. upload phonegap.zip to https://build.phonegap.com

Obviously lots of area for improvement here but I needed something i can use to publish now. Before just making a static config_phonegap.xml i explored a few ideas like xml parsing in JS or making an XSLT file. For the amount of effort, it seemed like low return at this point so i didn't follow through.

Here's relevant code bits for reference
Regex:

### icon regex
# android
<icon src="([\.\w\\-]+)" density="([\w-]+)"/>
<icon src="$1" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="$2"/>

# ios
<icon src="([@\.\w\\-]+)" width="([\d]+)" height="([\d]+)"/>
<icon src="$1" gap:platform="ios" width="$2" height="$3" />


### splash regex
# android
<splash src="([\.\w\\-]+)" density="([\w-]+)"/>
<gap:splash src="$1" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="$2" />

#ios
<splash src="([~@\.\w\\-]+)" width="([\d]+)" height="([\d]+)"/>
<gap:splash src="$1" gap:platform="ios" width="$2" height="$3" />

sample phonegap compatible config.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<widget id="com.yadda.yadda" version="2.0.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets" xmlns:gap="http://phonegap.com/ns/1.0">
  <name>my app name</name>
  <description>
        la di da desc
  </description>
  <author email="blah@diblah.com" href="https://harhar.com/">w--</author>

  <content src="index.html"/>
  <access origin="*"/>

  <preference name="webviewbounce" value="false"/>
  <preference name="UIWebViewBounce" value="false"/>
  <preference name="DisallowOverscroll" value="true"/>
  <preference name="BackupWebStorage" value="none"/>
  <preference name="SplashScreen" value="screen"/>
  <preference name="SplashScreenDelay" value="1500"/>

  <icon src="resources/android/icon/drawable-ldpi-icon.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="ldpi"/>
  <icon src="resources/android/icon/drawable-mdpi-icon.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="mdpi"/>
  <icon src="resources/android/icon/drawable-hdpi-icon.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="hdpi"/>
  <icon src="resources/android/icon/drawable-xhdpi-icon.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="xhdpi"/>
  <icon src="resources/android/icon/drawable-xxhdpi-icon.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="xxhdpi"/>
  <icon src="resources/android/icon/drawable-xxxhdpi-icon.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="xxxhdpi"/>
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-land-ldpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="land-ldpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-land-mdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="land-mdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-land-hdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="land-hdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-land-xhdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="land-xhdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-land-xxhdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="land-xxhdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-land-xxxhdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="land-xxxhdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-port-ldpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="port-ldpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-port-mdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="port-mdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-port-hdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="port-hdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-port-xhdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="port-xhdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-port-xxhdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="port-xxhdpi" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/android/splash/drawable-port-xxxhdpi-screen.png" gap:platform="android" gap:qualifier="port-xxxhdpi" />

  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon.png" gap:platform="ios" width="57" height="57" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon@2x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="114" height="114" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-40.png" gap:platform="ios" width="40" height="40" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-40@2x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="80" height="80" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-50.png" gap:platform="ios" width="50" height="50" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-50@2x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="100" height="100" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-60.png" gap:platform="ios" width="60" height="60" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-60@2x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="120" height="120" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-60@3x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="180" height="180" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-72.png" gap:platform="ios" width="72" height="72" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-72@2x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="144" height="144" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-76.png" gap:platform="ios" width="76" height="76" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-76@2x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="152" height="152" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-small.png" gap:platform="ios" width="29" height="29" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-small@2x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="58" height="58" />
  <icon src="resources/ios/icon/icon-small@3x.png" gap:platform="ios" width="87" height="87" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-568h@2x~iphone.png" gap:platform="ios" width="640" height="1136" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-667h.png" gap:platform="ios" width="750" height="1334" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-736h.png" gap:platform="ios" width="1242" height="2208" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-Landscape-736h.png" gap:platform="ios" width="2208" height="1242" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-Landscape@2x~ipad.png" gap:platform="ios" width="2048" height="1536" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-Landscape~ipad.png" gap:platform="ios" width="1024" height="768" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-Portrait@2x~ipad.png" gap:platform="ios" width="1536" height="2048" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default-Portrait~ipad.png" gap:platform="ios" width="768" height="1024" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default@2x~iphone.png" gap:platform="ios" width="640" height="960" />
  <gap:splash src="resources/ios/splash/Default~iphone.png" gap:platform="ios" width="320" height="480" />

  <icon src="icon.png"/>
  <gap:splash src="splash.png" />

 <!-- so android doesnt' go bat shit crazy -->
  <preference name="permissions" value="none"/>

 <!-- plugins -->
  <feature name="StatusBar">
    <param name="ios-package" value="CDVStatusBar" onload="true"/>
  </feature>
 <gap:plugin name="cordova-plugin-statusbar" source="npm" version="1.0.0">
   <param name="onload" value="true" />
 </gap:plugin>
 <gap:plugin name="cordova-plugin-splashscreen" source="npm" version="2.0.0" />
</widget>

gulp tasks:

// **** Build phonegap *****/
var PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER = '../phonegap',
      PHONEGAP_RAW_FOLDER = 'www',
      IONIC_SOURCE_FOLDER = './www',
      IONIC_RESOURCE_FOLDER = './resources'
      PHONEGAP_ZIP_FILE = 'phonegap_build.zip';

gulp.task('phonegap', function(cb){
  runSequence('clean_phonegap',
              'copy_www',
              'copy_resources',
              'copy_phonegap_config_xml',
              'copy_default_icon',
              'copy_default_splash',
              'zip_phonegap',
              cb);
});

gulp.task('clean_phonegap', function(cb){
  // clean our folder first
  var phonegap_del_pattern = PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER + '/*';
  del([phonegap_del_pattern], {force: true}, cb);
})

gulp.task('copy_www', function(){
  var target_phonegap_folder = PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER + '/' + PHONEGAP_RAW_FOLDER
  return gulp.src([IONIC_SOURCE_FOLDER + '/**'])
              .on('error', swallowError)
              .pipe(gulp.dest(target_phonegap_folder))
})

gulp.task('copy_phonegap_config_xml', function(){
  var target_phonegap_folder = PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER + '/' + PHONEGAP_RAW_FOLDER
  return gulp.src(['config_phonegap.xml'])
              .on('error', swallowError)
              .pipe(rename('config.xml'))
              .pipe(gulp.dest(target_phonegap_folder));
})

gulp.task('copy_resources', function(){
  var target_phonegap_folder = PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER + '/' + PHONEGAP_RAW_FOLDER + '/resources',
      exclude_pattern = '!' + IONIC_RESOURCE_FOLDER + '/_source_assets{,/**}'

  // exclude pattern needs to go first. mother fucker.
  return gulp.src([exclude_pattern, IONIC_RESOURCE_FOLDER + '/**'])
              .on('error', swallowError)
              .pipe(gulp.dest(target_phonegap_folder));
})

gulp.task('copy_default_icon', function(){
  var target_phonegap_folder = PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER + '/' + PHONEGAP_RAW_FOLDER;
  return gulp.src([IONIC_RESOURCE_FOLDER + '/ios/icon.png' ])
              .on('error', swallowError)
              .pipe(gulp.dest(target_phonegap_folder));
})

gulp.task('copy_default_splash', function(){
  var target_phonegap_folder = PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER + '/' + PHONEGAP_RAW_FOLDER;
  return gulp.src([IONIC_RESOURCE_FOLDER + '/splash.png' ])
              .on('error', swallowError)
              .pipe(gulp.dest(target_phonegap_folder));
})


gulp.task('zip_phonegap', function(){
  var sourcephonegap_folder = PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER + '/' + PHONEGAP_RAW_FOLDER
  return gulp.src(sourcephonegap_folder + '/**')
        .pipe(zip('phonegap.zip'))
        .on('error', swallowError)
        .pipe(gulp.dest(PHONEGAP_BUILD_FOLDER));
})

Answer 5

This is my own attempt to answer this (please help me update this so everybody can benefit):

Build your app with Ionic:

ionic start myApp sidemenu
etc...

In a default Ionic app the config.xml file is located in the root directory, above the www/ folder, so move it into the www/ folder for Phonegap Build to find it.

mv config.xml www/

Then zip the www/ folder or git push it from your local machine to the remote git repo that you have linked with Phonegap Build. Only zip or push this directory, because if you let the other directories present in the Ionic root directory, like node_modules, your app will be too large to compile on Phonegap Build.

Then compile on Phonegap Build.