Cordova with brunch application skeleton

This repository is a starter kit for a PhoneGap / Cordova application. It assume that you have already configured your SDKs for each platform you want to use (ios / android / blackberry).

Prerequisites

We will use Brunch, Jake, and Cordova. You need do install them globally with :

npm install -g cordova brunch jake

Setting up a new application

Once you have downloaded the repository, first create a cordova project at the root of the project :

cordova create . com.yourcompany.yourproject YourProject

This will create the cordova project structure. You project should look like this :

YourProject/
|--.cordova/
|--.gitignore
|-- configs/
|-- merges/
|-- platforms/
|-- plugins/ # if you don't have it, we will create it later
|-- src/
|-- www/
`-- Jakefile.js

Then, run the following command to initialize the project :

jake init

It will install the src/node_modules/ folder, and then move the www/config.xml and the www/res/ folder to src/app/assets/. It also create the plugins folder (depends on the platform you created the cordova project, it might not be there). And finally, it regenerate a new www/ folder based on the src/app/ folder.

Once everything is OK, you can add a platform. Cordova currently supports ios / android / blackberry (windows phone is not available with the cordova cli).

cordova platform add <platform>

It will create a new folder into platforms/<platform>. The folder contains your base sources which will be compiled on the device.

Next, you can now work on your src/ folder for the given platform.

Generate sources

The Jakefile provides 2 more commands which are able to build your sources from src/app/ to the www/ folder. If you look at the src/app/ folder, you will find another platforms directory.

This directory is where you are supposed to put your platform specific code, which will be compiled to the main app.js file. The repository provides a brunch wrapper that exclude the folders you don't want for a platform. For exemple, if you are currently working on your android platform, you don't want the src/app/platforms/ios and src/app/platforms/blackberry folders into your compiled sources.

So to use the brunch watch for a given platform, just run :

jake brunch:watch platform=<platform>

To build for a given platform, use :

jake brunch:build platform=<platform>

Note that you can also pass a e=prod parameter, it will minify sources into the compiled files.

Build & emulate

Now, you project is running with a platform aware compiler, to compile it into a native app, just use the cordova cli :

cordova build <platform>

And to emulate your project :

cordova emulate <platform>

Notes about the src folder

Actually, the repository is shipped with a src/ folder that works with a given config, see the readme file for more information.

Note that this folder can be anything you want, you can use a YUI application if you want. The only constraints are the brunch based app, and the src/app/platforms/ directory, because this is how the Jakefile.js works.

Notes about the cordova behaviors

Even if this repository provides a merge process for your app.js file, when you compile for a given platform, the cordova specific behaviors still happens. This mean the merges & plugins folders still works as described in the cordova-cli documentation.