SyncScene Cordova Helpers

A collection of scripts that we use to simplify our 'bare-bones' approach to building Cordova applications.

HTML Templates

The two hook scripts (compileTemplates.js and decompileTemplates.js) enable the use of very simple (but useful) templates within a Cordova application. These templates allow us to eschew modern frameworks that waste precious resources without forcing us to build the application like we went back to 1996.

Usage

The template system expects to find HTML files inside your root www folder. Once one is found, it will look for template markers that have the following format:

<!-- {filename.html} -->

Given the above marker, the system will try to find an associated filename.html file inside the www/tpl directory and replace the marker with the contents of the file. If we assume filename.html has the following contents:

	<div>My Div!</div>

Then at compile-time the marker will be replaced with the following code:

<!-- {start-filename.html} -->
	<div>My Div!</div><!-- {end-filenamel.html} -->

Notes/Caveats

• If a template file isn't found, an error will be output but the file will not be changed, so the marker will remain as-is
• The replacement system is as simple as simple can be, so any extra/special characters you have in your files will be placed as-is
• Be very careful using these hook scripts with your Cordova config.xml, the hook events can be finnicky and unreliable for this sort of purpose (thus why we built the utilities below)

Utilities

As a result of some difficulties with the hook system in Cordova, we generated a set of tools that can be used from the root directory of your Cordova project.

Script Name	Example	Explanation
build.js	node build.js	Decompile before compiling the templates, then execute cordova run.
	node build.js android	Decompile before compiling the templates, then execute cordova run android. All arguments after build.js are passed through to the Cordova command.
	node build.js -b android	Decompile before compiling the templates, then execute cordova build android.
compile.js	node compile.js	Compiles the templates. Useful for seeing the generated output.
decompile.js	node decompile.js	Decompiles the templates. Can be run at any time to clean files.

To-Do

• Add conditionals to template system
• Add templates to JS files
• Add templates to CSS files