Momo

Momo is a template based on Cordova/Phonegap that aims to easily design some cross-platform applications. The whole application content is described in a JSON manifest and It implements its own self-update mecanisms.

Installation

Clone the repo:

git clone ssh://git@repos.entrouvert.org/momo && cd momo/

With node installed (avoid outdated apt-get package):

sudo npm install phonegap -g

Assets Management

Momo implements a self-update mecanism based on AJAX, localStorage, cordova file transfer and chromium zip. The meta section in the manifest www/index.json allows to give some parameters to the update :

{"meta": {

    // Application Title
    "title": "Ma ville au quotidien",

    // Icon (a new build is required in oder to change the application launcher icon)
    "icon": "icon.png",

    // Footer contact
    "contact": "info@example.net",

    // Update Frequency (in seconds)
    "updateFreq": 100,                                    

    // Distant manifest url
    "updateUrl": "http://localhost/momo/index.json?0.0.1",

    // Distant assets archive
    "assetsUrl": "http://localhost/momo/assets.zip?0.0.1"

}, ...}

And here is what is supposed to be the content of assets.zip:

• index.js: Some extra script to be loaded dynamically in the application
• index.css: A css stylesheet that will be injected as well
• *.[png,woff,...]: images, fonts & other static files

In the www/index.json pages content, you must specify url to you assets using relative path prefixed with assets/, like so:

{
    "title": "Ma ville",
    "content": "<p>Bienvenue !</p><img src='assets/dijon.jpg' class='momo-image' />"
}

In stylesheets however, you should only be able to give relative references , as such:

background: img(../img/bg.png) top left repeat;

Don't forget to enable CORS on the server that will distribute the assets.

• Nginx: add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
• Apache: Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*" (.htaccess will do)

You want to make sure the server keeps a cache version of the asset according to the updateFreq value in the JSON manifest.

Work in development

The cordovas libraries wont work in development environment, so you may want to set a local path where to get the already unzipped assets. In www/js/index.js:

var DEBUG_WWW_URL = 'http://localhost/momo/www/';

In order to start a dev server, use command:

phonegap serve

Then point your browser to http://localhost:3000/. You may get a HTTP Error 500 for cordova.js and TypeError: Arguments to path.join must be strings in your console. This is due to your localmachine that doesn't expose the sensors and the software components supported by cordova. But those errors aren't blocking, you can keep doing stuff.

There is a much more convenient way to test you app which is to use the PhoneGap Developper App. With this, you'll be able to test your app directly into you device. Note that cordova's plugins and librairies are not usable using phonegap serve, so you must provide some environement hooks in your code.

Make sure you don't browse the app twice at the same time, the phonegap's autoreload mechanism uses socket.io that gets confused and keeps reloading the app. If anyhow you wish to use many browsers in parallel, you may want launch the server with the option :

phonegap serve --no-autoreload

Build Application

In order to build application for all intalled platform, use:

phonegap build

You can also build for a specific platform [ios, android, etc.]:

phongap build <platform>

To build a new "ready-to-publish" release, use the flag:

phongap build --release

Find the built releases in the platforms/ folder.