/web-app-to-stores

WIP - Just easily put your web app on the mobile stores (iOS, Android, WindowsOS, FirefoxOS)

Primary LanguageJavaScript

This repo is based on Cordova. Just run your Web App or SPA inside a Native App in one line 🎉

I'll provide PWA features later, i'm looking right now for a partner with an experience with Cordova plugins and Objective C / Java to complete this repo : https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugin-pwa.

About Stores, especially Apple

Will Apple approve the app if it just wraps a site ?

Apple guidelines : 
…
2.12 Apps that are not very useful, unique, are simply web sites bundled as Apps, or do not provide any lasting 
entertainment value may be rejected

So this rule is quite balanced if your web app just allows restricted url access and provides a really reactive and responsive app-like experience. Many companies have their app on the stores with this approach, in my case that worked.

WIP

  • Add linters
  • Add Service Workers support
  • Add Dev and Prod env variables for tests with localhost url
  • Write a better doc for a very simple deployment for !mobile developers

Main plugins used

  • Offline / Online detection
  • Webview shrinks on IOS instead of keyboard overflow
  • Autofill login credentials on your app

Configuration

Just grep yourapp and yourteam in the repo to replace the fields with your own informations (your url, your App name, your Team name)

Install ☕

install cordova-cli (tool to build cordova apps)...

npm i -g cordova

IOS : Start and Update platform + launch Xcode

./ios-build.sh

Android : Start platform with console output

cordova run android && adb logcat chromium:D SystemWebViewClient:D *:S

Little tips about Cordova file structure

1 - Cordova configurations are managed with config.xml 2 - Main files are in www/ directory. 3 - Icons files are in res/ 4 - When the app starts on your phone, index.html and js/index.js are loaded. (https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/reference/cordova-plugin-network-information/index.html)