Book Image

Mastering PhoneGap Mobile Application Development

By : Kerri Shotts
Book Image

Mastering PhoneGap Mobile Application Development

By: Kerri Shotts

Overview of this book

PhoneGap is a useful and flexible tool that enables you to create complex hybrid applications for mobile platforms. In addition to the core technology, there is a large and vibrant community that creates third-party plugins that can take your app to the next level. This book will guide you through the process of creating a complex data-driven hybrid mobile application using PhoneGap, web technologies, and third-party plugins. A good foundation is critical, so you will learn how to create a useful workflow to make development easier. From there, the next version of JavaScript (ES6) and the CSS pre-processor SASS are introduced as a way to simplify creating the look of the mobile application. Responsive design techniques are also covered, including the flexbox layout module. As many apps are data-driven, you'll build an application throughout the course of the book that relies upon IndexedDB and SQLite. You'll also download additional content and address how to handle in-app purchases. Furthermore, you’ll build your own customized plugins for your particular use case. When the app is complete, the book will guide you through the steps necessary to submit your app to the Google Play and Apple iTunes stores.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Mastering PhoneGap Mobile Application Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Build modes


Before we go much further, we need to define some terms when it comes to building your app for deployment. There are several variations, and it is important to understand them well.

There are typically two build modes: debug and release. Depending on your needs, you may actually have more. For this chapter, we'll focus only on these two. Let's go over what they are used for and the differences between them.

A debug build is the default build generated by Cordova. It's loaded with debugging information (hence the name), which is extremely useful during the development and debugging phases. Your app might have additional debugging aids as well. For example, there might be a simple tool to query a local database. The output might be ugly, but it doesn't matter much while debugging.

A debug build is never ever meant for typical end users. This means that you should never have debug code in an app deployed to an app store (your app may be rejected because of it). As obvious as this sounds...