PhoneGap Build

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Chapter 3

Configuring PhoneGap

In Chapter 1, we learned the procedure to configure PhoneGap for the Android environment. In

this chapter, we will learn to explore the rest of the mobile platforms. at is, we will learn to con-

figure PhoneGap for mobile platforms like iOS, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry, bada, and webOS.

e topics covered in this chapter include:

◾ Configuring PhoneGap for iOS

◾ Configuring PhoneGap for Windows Phone 7

◾ Configuring PhoneGap for the BlackBerry

◾ Configuring PhoneGap for bada

◾ Configuring PhoneGap for webOS

Configuring PhoneGap for iOS

iOS is an operating system that was developed by Apple and is successfully applied to the iPhone,

iPod Touch, iPad, Apple TV, and other Apple products. A few of its features are given below:

◾ Enables multitouch operation—Includes swiping, tapping, pinching, and reverse pinching.

◾ Supports iCloud—Stores music, photos, apps, mail, contacts, and documents, and can

push to all devices wirelessly. at is, our content can be pushed on the Mac, iPhone, and

iPod Touch, too.

◾ Secure—iOS secures the data by encrypting it.

◾ Supports developers—Apple provides a rich set of tools and application programming

interfaces (APIs) to create different varieties of sophisticated apps and games. It is because of

this that in addition to built-in apps, there are over 700,000 more apps and games available

in the App Store.

◾ Hardware advantage—iOS enables developers to take full advantage of the iOS device

hardware, such as the retina display, multitouch interface, sensors, front and back cameras,

microphone, and so forth.

46  ◾  PhoneGap Build

◾ Free updates—iOS updates are free. Whenever new updates are available, the device alerts

of the latest version and the upgraded version can be easily downloaded on the iPhone, iPad,

or iPod Touch wirelessly.

◾ Supports different languages—iOS supports over 30 languages and has built-in diction-

ary support for over 50 languages, making it a popular mobile platform all over the world.

◾ Supports voice recognition—Enables users to send messages, schedule meetings, and per-

form other tasks just by speaking.

To develop the PhoneGap application for iOS, we require the following things:

◾ An Intel-based computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or later.

◾ Latest version of Xcode (version 4 or above). Xcode is a developer tool that is used for iOS

development. I used Xcode 4.4.1 in this book. I assume Xcode is already installed on our

machine.

◾ Next, we need to install the Xcode Command Line Tools. So, select the Xcode

Preferences->Downloads->Components->Command Line Tools->Install

option (see Figure 3.1).

◾ Download the latest version of PhoneGap from http://phonegap.com/. e latest

version of PhoneGap at the time of this writing is 2.3.0. On unzipping the downloaded

PhoneGap file, we find numerous subfolders, each labeled with the targeted OS inside the

lib folder. For configuring PhoneGap for iOS, we will need the /lib/iOS subfolder that

contains several files, as shown in Figure 3.2.

Note: We also need to register as an Apple developer in Apple’s developer program. It is an

essential requirement to deploy any iOS applications on the devices or through Apple’s App Store.

ere is a yearly membership fee for different development programs. For more information, visit:

http://d evelop e r.ap ple.co m .

We launch Ter m in al.app by dragging the bin subfolder from the iOS folder (which was

provided in the PhoneGap package) shown in Figure 3.2 and dropping it into the Ter minal.app

Figure 3.1 Installing Command Line Tools.