Embedding Cordova WebView on Android

Beginning in Cordova 1.9, with the assistance of the CordovaActivity, you can use Cordova as a component in a larger native Android application. This component is known in Android as the CordovaWebView. New Cordova-based applications from 1.9 onwards will be using the CordovaWebView as its main view, whether the legacy DroidGap approach is used or not.

The prerequisites are the same as the prerequisites for Android application development. It is assumed that you are familiar with Android development. If not, please look at the Getting Started guide to developing a Cordova Application and start there before continuing with this approach. This is not the main approach used to author Android Cordova applications. Thus the instructions are currently manual. In the future, we may try to further automate project generation via this method.

Prerequisites

1. Cordova 1.9 or greater
2. Android SDK updated with 15

Guide to using CordovaWebView in an Android Project

1. Use bin/create to fetch the commons-codec-1.6.jar
2. cd into /framework and run ant jar to build the cordova jar (it will create the .jar file in the form cordova-x.x.x.jar in the /framework folder)
3. Copy the cordova jar into your Android project's /libs directory

4. Edit your application's main.xml file (under /res/xml) to look similar the following. The layout_height, layout_width and id can be modified to suit your application

    <org.apache.cordova.CordovaWebView
        android:id="@+id/tutorialView"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="match_parent" />
   

5. Modify your activity so that it implements the CordovaInterface. It is recommended that you implement the methods that are included. You may wish to copy the methods from /framework/src/org/apache/cordova/DroidGap.java, or you may wish to implement your own methods. Below is a fragment of code from a basic application that uses the interface (note how the view id referenced matches the id attribute specified in the above XML fragment from step 4):

    public class CordovaViewTestActivity extends Activity implements CordovaInterface {
        CordovaWebView cwv;
        /* Called when the activity is first created. */
        @Override
        public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
            super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
            setContentView(R.layout.main);
            cwv = (CordovaWebView) findViewById(R.id.tutorialView);
            cwv.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/www/index.html");
        }
   

6. Copy your application's HTML and JavaScript used to the /assets/www directory of your Android project
7. Copy cordova.xml and plugins.xml from /framework/res/xml to the /res/xml folder in your project