Overview

Cordova is an open-source mobile development framework. It allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Use Cordova if you are:

• a mobile developer and want to extend an application across more than one platform, without having to re-implement it with each platform's language and tool set.

• a web developer and want to deploy a web app that's packaged for distribution in various app store portals.

• a mobile developer interested in mixing native application components with a WebView (browser window) that can access device-level APIs, or if you want to develop a plugin interface between native and WebView components.

Basic Components

Cordova applications rely on a common config.xml file that provides information about the app and specifies parameters affecting how it works, such as whether it responds to orientation shifts. This file adheres to the W3C's Packaged Web App, or widget, specification.

The application itself is implemented as a web page, named index.html by default, that references whatever CSS, JavaScript, images, media files, or other resources are necessary for it to run. The app executes as a WebView within the native application wrapper, which you distribute to app stores. For the web app to interact with various device features the way native apps do, it must also reference a cordova.js file, which provides API bindings.

The Cordova-enabled WebView may provide the application with its entire user interface. It can also be a component within a larger, hybrid application that mixes the WebView with native application components. Cordova provides a plugin interface for these components to communicate with each other.

Development Paths

The easiest way to set up an application is to run the cordova command-line utility, also known as the command-line interface (CLI). (To install the CLI, see The Command-line Interface.) Depending on the set of platforms you wish to target, you can rely on the CLI for progressively greater shares of the development cycle:

• In the most basic scenario, you can use the CLI simply to create a new project that is populated with default configuration for you to modify.

• For many mobile platforms, you can also use the CLI to set up additional project files required to compile within each SDK. For this to work, you must install each targeted platform's SDK. (See the Platform Guides for instructions.) As indicated in the Platform Support table below, you may need to run the CLI on different operating systems depending on the targeted platform.

• For supporting platforms, the CLI can compile executible applications and run them in an SDK-based device emulator. For comprehensive testing, you can also generate application files and install them directly on a device.

At any point in the development cycle, you can also rely on platform-specific SDK tools, which may provide a richer set of options. (See the Platform Guides for details about each platform's SDK tool set.) An SDK environment is more appropriate if you want implement a hybrid app that mixes web-based and native application components. You may use the command-line utility to initially generate the app, or iteratively thereafter to feed updated code to SDK tools. You may also build the app's configuration file yourself.

Platform Support

The following shows the set of development tools and device APIs available for each mobile platform. (Column headers display the CLI's shorthand stubs.)