Awesome Cordova Plugins

Awesome Cordova Plugins is a curated set of wrappers for Cordova plugins that make adding any native functionality you need to your Ionic mobile app easy.

Awesome Cordova Plugins wraps plugin callbacks in a Promise or Observable, providing a common interface for all plugins and making it easy to use plugins with Angular change detection.

To learn more about the reasons why Ionic Native was renamed to Awesome Cordova Plugins, read the official Ionic blog post by Max Lyncht.

Capacitor Support

In addition to Cordova, Awesome Cordova Plugins also works with Capacitor, Ionic's official native runtime. Basic usage below. For complete details, see the Capacitor documentation.

Installation

Run following command to install Awesome Cordova Plugins in your project.

npm install @awesome-cordova-plugins/core --save

You also need to install the Awesome Cordova Plugins package for each plugin you want to add. Please see the Awesome Cordova Plugins documentation for complete instructions on how to add and use the plugins.

Documentation

For the full Awesome Cordova Plugins documentation, please visit https://ionicframework.com/docs/native/.

Basic Usage

Ionic/Angular apps (Standalone)

Angular v14+ uses standalone components by default. To use a plugin, register it as a provider in your application bootstrap and inject it using Angular's inject() function. Make sure to import the injectable class from the /ngx directory as shown in the following examples:

// main.ts
import { bootstrapApplication } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { Camera } from '@awesome-cordova-plugins/camera/ngx';
import { Geolocation } from '@awesome-cordova-plugins/geolocation/ngx';
import { AppComponent } from './app/app.component';

bootstrapApplication(AppComponent, {
  providers: [Camera, Geolocation],
});

import { Component, OnInit } from '@angular/core';
import { inject } from '@angular/core';
import { Geolocation } from '@awesome-cordova-plugins/geolocation/ngx';
import { Platform } from '@ionic/angular';

@Component({
  selector: 'app-my-component',
  standalone: true,
  template: `<p>My Component</p>`,
})
export class MyComponent implements OnInit {
  private geolocation = inject(Geolocation);
  private platform = inject(Platform);

  async ngOnInit() {
    await this.platform.ready();

    // get position
    const pos = await this.geolocation.getCurrentPosition();
    console.log(`lat: ${pos.coords.latitude}, lon: ${pos.coords.longitude}`);

    // watch position
    const watch = this.geolocation.watchPosition().subscribe((pos) => {
      console.log(`lat: ${pos.coords.latitude}, lon: ${pos.coords.longitude}`);
    });

    // to stop watching
    watch.unsubscribe();
  }
}

Ionic/React apps

React apps must use Capacitor to build native mobile apps. However, Awesome Cordova Plugins (and therefore, Cordova plugins) can still be used.

# Install Core library (once per project)
npm install @awesome-cordova-plugins/core

# Install Awesome Cordova Plugins TypeScript wrapper
npm install @awesome-cordova-plugins/barcode-scanner

# Install Cordova plugin
npm install phonegap-plugin-barcodescanner

# Update native platform project(s) to include newly added plugin
ionic cap sync

Import the plugin object then use its static methods:

import { BarcodeScanner } from '@awesome-cordova-plugins/barcode-scanner';

const Tab1: React.FC = () => {
  const openScanner = async () => {
    const data = await BarcodeScanner.scan();
    console.log(`Barcode data: ${data.text}`);
  };
  return (
    <IonPage>
      <IonHeader>
        <IonToolbar>
          <IonTitle>Tab 1</IonTitle>
        </IonToolbar>
      </IonHeader>
      <IonContent>
        <IonButton onClick={openScanner}>Scan barcode</IonButton>
      </IonContent>
    </IonPage>
  );
};

ES2015+/TypeScript (without Angular)

These modules can also be used without Angular by calling static methods directly:

import { Camera } from '@awesome-cordova-plugins/camera';

document.addEventListener('deviceready', () => {
  Camera.getPicture()
    .then((data) => console.log('Took a picture!', data))
    .catch((e) => console.log('Error occurred while taking a picture', e));
});

Mocking and Browser Development (Ionic/Angular apps only)

Awesome Cordova Plugins makes it possible to mock plugins and develop nearly the entirety of your app in the browser or in ionic serve.

To do this, you need to provide a mock implementation of the plugins you wish to use. Here's an example of mocking the Camera plugin to return a stock image while in development:

First create a mock class that extends the Camera class:

import { Camera } from '@awesome-cordova-plugins/camera/ngx';

class CameraMock extends Camera {
  getPicture(options) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      resolve('BASE_64_ENCODED_DATA_GOES_HERE');
    });
  }
}

Then override the Camera provider in your application bootstrap:

// main.ts
import { bootstrapApplication } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { Camera } from '@awesome-cordova-plugins/camera/ngx';
import { AppComponent } from './app/app.component';

class CameraMock extends Camera {
  getPicture(options) {
    return Promise.resolve('BASE_64_ENCODED_DATA_GOES_HERE');
  }
}

bootstrapApplication(AppComponent, {
  providers: [{ provide: Camera, useClass: CameraMock }],
});

Runtime Diagnostics

Spent way too long diagnosing an issue only to realize a plugin wasn't firing or installed? Awesome Cordova Plugins lets you know what the issue is and how you can resolve it.

Plugin Missing?

Let us know or submit a PR! Take a look at the Developer Guide for more on how to contribute. ❤️

Credits

Ibby Hadeed - @ihadeed

Daniel Sogl - LinkedIn

Tim Lancina - @timlancina

Mike Hartington - @mhartington

Max Lynch - @maxlynch

Rob Wormald - @robwormald