Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) is a mobile application development framework created by Nitobi. Adobe Systems purchased Nitobi in 2011, rebranded it as PhoneGap, and later released an open-source version of the software called Apache Cordova. Apache Cordova enables

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

programmers to build hybrid web applications for mobile devices using

CSS3 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as Scalable Vector Graphics, SVG, MathML or XHTML). CS ...

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

, and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

, instead of relying on platform-specific

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

s like those in Android,

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

, or

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...

. It enables wrapping up of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript code depending upon the platform of the device. It extends the features of HTML and JavaScript to work with the device. The resulting applications are hybrid, meaning that they are neither truly native mobile application nor purely Web-based. They are not native because all layout rendering is done via Web views instead of the platform's native UI framework. They are not Web apps because they are packaged as apps for distribution and have access to native device APIs. Mixing native and hybrid code snippets has been possible since version 1.9. The software was previously called just "PhoneGap", then "Apache Callback". PhoneGap was Adobe's commercial version of Cordova along with its associated ecosystem. Many other tools and frameworks are also built on top of Cordova, including Ionic, Monaca, VoltBuilder, TACO, Onsen UI, Visual Studio, GapDebug, App Builder, Cocoon, Framework7, Quasar Framework, Evothings Studio, NSB/AppStudio, Mobiscroll, and Telerik Platform. These tools use Cordova, and not PhoneGap for their core tools. Contributors to the Apache Cordova project include Adobe,

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy ...

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, IBM,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

, Mozilla, and others.

History

First developed at an iPhoneDevCamp event in San Francisco, PhoneGap went on to win the People's Choice Award at O'Reilly Media's 2009 Web 2.0 Conference, and the framework has been used to develop many apps. Apple Inc. has confirmed that the framework has its approval, even with the change to clause 3.3.1 of the Apple iPhone SDK developer license agreement 4.0 adopted in 2010. The PhoneGap framework is used by several mobile application platforms such as Monaca, appMobi, Convertigo, ViziApps, and Worklight as the backbone of their mobile client development engine. Adobe officially announced the acquisition of Nitobi Software (the original developer) on October 4, 2011. Coinciding with that, the PhoneGap code was contributed to the Apache Software Foundation to start a new project called Apache Cordova. The project's original name, Apache Callback, was viewed as too generic. Then, it also appears in Adobe Systems as ''Adobe PhoneGap'' and also as ''Adobe PhoneGap Build''. The Phonegap Blog shows more details, why finally the name "Cordova" was chosen. It says: "While genesis stories of PhoneGap often vary with the teller, most committers can agree the project was born at Nitobi, when the office was on Cordova Street in Vancouver." Early versions of PhoneGap required an Apple computer to create iOS apps and a Windows computer to create Windows Mobile apps. After September 2012, Adobe's PhoneGap Build service allows programmers to upload CSS, HTML, and JavaScript source code to a "cloud compiler" that generates apps for every supported platform. This service was discontinued in 2020.

Design and rationale

The core of an Apache Cordova application uses

and

for rendering and

for logic. HTML5 provides access to underlying hardware such as the accelerometer, camera, and

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

. However, browsers' support for HTML5-based device access is not consistent across mobile browsers, particularly older versions of Android. To overcome these limitations, Apache Cordova embeds the HTML5 code inside a native WebView on the device, using a

foreign function interface A foreign function interface (FFI) is a mechanism by which a program written in one programming language can call routines or make use of services written in another. Naming The term comes from the specification for Common Lisp, which explicit ...

to access the native resources of it. Apache Cordova can be extended with native plug-ins, allowing developers to add more functionalities that can be called from JavaScript, making it communicate directly between the native layer and the HTML5 page. These plugins allow access to the device's accelerometer, camera, compass, file system, microphone, and more. However, the use of Web-based technologies leads some Apache Cordova applications to run slower than native applications with similar functionality.

Supported platforms

As of version 9, Apache Cordova currently supports development for the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s Apple

, Google Android, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 ,

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

and Electron (software framework) (which in turn runs on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

). Earlier version of Apache Cordova used to support

Bada Bada (stylized as bada; Korean: ) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Samsung Electronics for devices such as mid- to high-end smartphones and tablet computers. The name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in ...

Firefox OS Firefox OS (project name: ''Boot to Gecko'', also known as ''B2G'') is a discontinued open-source operating system made for smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, and dongles designed by Mozilla and external contributors. It is based on the ...

, LG

webOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially ...

, Microsoft

(7 and 8),

, Nokia Symbian OS, Tizen (SDK 2.x), and

Ubuntu Touch Ubuntu Touch is a mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system, being developed by the UBports community. Its user interface is written in Qt, and is designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, ...

. The table below is a list of supported features for each operating system for Adobe PhoneGap/ Apache Cordova 3.

References

Bibliography

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External links