Change the directory to your project directory. After creating a new project, simply run cd hello to go to your project's directory. All further phonegap commands need to be run in the project's directory.

Before we can build and run our project, we have to add target platforms. The command used to add the platform is as follows:

cordova platform add <target name>

The <target name> argument is your target platform. The ability to build and run a project on your machine depends on the SDK availability for your machine. On Mac, you can run the following commands to add a specific platform:

cordova platform add ios
cordova platform add android
cordova platform add amazon-fireos
cordova platform add blackberry10
cordova platform add firefoxos

On Windows, you can add these platforms:

cordova platform add wp7
cordova platform add wp8
cordova platform add wp7
cordova platform add windows8
cordova platform add amazon-fireos
cordova platform add blackberry10
cordova platform add firefoxos

You may have noticed that we are using cordova instead of phonegap to add target platforms. I mentioned that cordova is one of the phonegap dependencies, so all cordova commands are available for the phonegap project.

Let's add the Android platform for our project by running the cordova platform. Add android. Now browse through your project using the file explorer. You will see the android directory inside the platforms/ directory. The android directory is an Android project. You can open it on IDEs such as Eclipse or IntelliJ. The same thing happens when we add the iOS platform. We will get the ios directory inside platforms along with the Xcode project files:

The native project inside the platforms/ directory

The next step is to build the project. Building the project means compiling your application into byte code for the target device. Run the following command to build your project:

phonegap build <platform>

A PhoneGap application can run on the local development server. We can save time by testing our application on the local development server instead of running on an emulator or a real device. To run an application on the local web server, run the following command:

phonegap serve

The serve command has some options:

--port, -p <n>       Port for web server. Default port is 3000
--autoreload        Enable live-reload when file changes occur. Default is true
--no-autoreload   Disable live-reload on file changes.
--localtunnel        Enabling local tunnel, will expose the local server to the your network. Default value is false

For example, to serve an application on port 1337 without auto-reload, you can run the following command:

phonegap serve -p 1337 —no-autoreload

Install the application platform by running this line:

phonegap install <platform>

The install command has some options:

—device            Force installation to device
—emulator        Force installation to emulator

By default, phonegap will check whether you have a connected device or not. If a connected device is found, your application will be installed on that device. If no device is connected or found, phonegap will install it on the emulator. You don't need to open your emulator; phonegap will run it for you:

A PhoneGap starter application installed on an iOS simulator

To run your application, you can use the following command:

   phonegap run <platform>

The run command has some options:

—device            Force application to run on device
—emulator        Force application to run on emulator

Just as with the install command, phonegap run will check whether you have a connected device or not, by default. If a connected device is found, your application will be run on that device. Otherwise, phonegap will run it on an emulator:

A PhoneGap starter application running on an iOS simulator

Log in to your PhoneGap Build account. Simply open your command line and run this command:

phonegap remote login

You will be prompted to fill in your e-mail address and password. If you see the following message, it means that you have successfully logged in:

[phonegap] logged in as <your email address>

You don't need to add any platform to your project. To build your application, you have to run this command in your project directory:

phonegap remote build <platform>

The preceding command is similar to the phonegap build <platform> command. Instead of using an SDK on your local machine, the project build takes place on the PhoneGap Build server.

You can run your application with the following command:

phonegap remote run <platform>

You will notice something different from our previous phonegap run <platform> command. The phonegap will not run your application directly, whether on your device or on an emulator. It will generate a QR code for you. You can scan the QR code with your phone, and it will download and install your application in your device.