Page History

...

Cordova Plugins

Cordova has a number of plugins you can use that do a wide variety of things. This is great when you use JavaScript to build your Cordova apps. All you need to do is go to your Cordova application directory and install the plugin, like this:

cordova plugin add cordoba-plugin-geolocation

But if you plan to use FlexJS and ActionScript, some additional steps need to be done. If you were to write the code to use the plugin, something like this in your ActionScript code:

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(onSuccess, onError);

you will get an error as the compiler does not know what navigator is. In order to use Cordova plugins, you need to create ActionScript wrappers for them in the FlexJS framework projects. There is one started for the Geolocation plugin in the Mobile framework project in flex-asjs/frameworks/projects/Mobile.

If you look into the org.apache.cordova package, you will see a sub-package for the Geolocation framework (geolocation). Inside of this package is the Geolocation ActionScript class file. The class includes an ActionScript function to call the plugin:

		/**
		 * Gets the device current location. If successful, the onSuccess function is
		 * called with position parameter (see Cordova documentation). If failure, the
		 * onError function is called with an error parameter (.code and .message members).
		 */
		public function getCurrentPosition(onSuccess:Function, onError:Function):void
		{
			COMPILE::JS {
				navigator["geolocation"].getCurrentPosition(onSuccess, onError);
			}
		}

Within the getCurrentPosition function is the JavaScript call positioned within a COMPILE::JS block. This code block is available to framework classes and causes the code within it to be inserted, as-is, in the cross-compiled JavaScript output. 

Now your ActionScript application code can make use of it:

import org.apache.cordova.geolocation.Geolocation;
...
    var geolocation:Geolocation = new Geolocation();
    geolocation.getCurrentPosition(onSuccess, onError);
...
private function onSuccess(position):void {
    trace("Lat = "+position["coords"]["latitude"]+"; Lng = "+position["coords"]["longitude"]);
}

If you want to use a Cordova plugin in your FlexJS application, you will need to extend the FlexJS framework. Once you have done that, you can submit your code to the Apache Flex project for inclusion.

Tips

If you need to change your FlexJS application code source (MXML or ActionScript files), simply re-run the ANT command with the cordova-build.xml file.

...