Compiling as an Android App using Cordova\Phonegap

I am interested in using App Builder to developer apps for Android and other platforms. How do I go about compiling the apps that I build using Cordova\Phonegap ?

Could you explain how to do this using one of the sample apps?

John

Hello John,

App Builder's produced HTML5 applications can be deployed, out of the box, in mobile or desktop browsers. Additionally, the program help us with the right configuration file and other stuff (icons, splashscreens, batch files) in order to allow us to compile the HTML5 applications using Apache Cordova or Adobe Phonegap Build online service.

Adobe Phonegap is easy to use, but, my current recomendation is to use Apache Cordova instead for various reasons. Apache Cordova is also quite easy, but we need to prepare our computer by installing Apache Cordova and the required platform SDK's. For example, if we want to compile our apps for the Android platform we need Apache Cordova and the Android SDK.

We can found several tutorials around internet about how to install Apache Cordova. Here is the official documentation to do that:

* Apache Cordova: The command line interface

* Apache Cordova: The Android platform guide

Once we have installed and configured Apache Cordova and the Android SDK we can use the App Builder's app options dialog and the Cordova specific options to indicate we want to create a Cordova configuration file and a batch file for the Android platform. If everything is well, we can simply execute the generated batch file to get our app APK file ready to be installed in an Android device.

If we plain to use the Adobe Phonegap online service we must to indicate the creation of a Cordova configuration file, compile our application from App Builder, package the application in a zip (using the Zip tool included in App Builder) and then upload such zip file to the Adobe Phonegap builder service found in the below link:

* Adobe Phonegap Build service

Adobe Phonegap is good, but, they do not offer the same results than Apache Cordova. For example, I can't view how to specify the right user permissions for the applications and Adobe Phonegap requires lot of them. Apache Cordova is more smart in the permissions requeriments and automatically recognize if we use some stuff which requires some user permission.

So my recomendation (to get better results) is to learn how to install Apache Cordova in our computer, followed with the target platform stuff, like the Android SDK. If you have some specific problem while installing Apache Cordova or the Android SDK post here or refer to the above linked documentation. I hope this post point to you into the right direction John.

Hello John,

Take a look also at these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhv1n9nxa0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5g_yAJzpJI