Integration with PhoneGap plugins

[Radoslav]

Hi guys,
First, i want to say - it's a great product :) It took me an hour to do a demo app and run it without any problems with ICENIUM.
Can't say the same, when i had to go with the Eclipse + SDK + PhoneGap + jQM stack.

But as i was thinking if it should be a good call to change the dev enviroment to ICENIUM, a question poped in my head - do you support in some ways the PhoneGap plugins  (which are native code in Java and ObjectiveC) within the IDE ?

For example, if i want to use the Android Phonegap-Facebook login (using the native app) - what am i supposed to do in ICENIUM ? (The plugin - )https://github.com/davejohnson/phonegap-plugin-facebook-connect

[Stefan Dobrev]

Hi Rado,

Thanks for your kind words. Developer productivity is something we strive for from day one. 

I have some good news for you regarding your question about Cordova plugins. We are going to announce support  for plugins really soon. As a starter we will go with the most popular one out there - ChildBrowser, which can be used for Facebook authentication for example. Our idea is to gradually add support for all mature plugins - like Barcode scanner and Facebook Connact one you have mentioned.

We would love to hear more feedback from you as you build your apps with Icenium... and stay tuned for upcoming Icenium updates later this month.

-sdobrev

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[Radoslav]

This will be great :)

The only downside to your approach is for people, who like to code their own custom plugins but i am sure you are going to solve this too in the future.

Regards

[Stefan Dobrev]

We have some plans for this as well. Let's see what the future will bring to us.

-sdobrev

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[Ron Frick]

I was truly excited with my first experience with ICENIUM. Like Radoslav we were able to quickly get a
nice working demo up and running. The concept is amazing and the thoughtfulness
is outstanding. It is a great start and I hope we will be able to eventually
use it. My project requires the use of a few custom Cordova plugins so no
support was a show stopper for us. I put my vote in and will continue to check back.

Keep up the good work and thanks,

Ron

[Stefan Dobrev]

Hello Ron,

Thanks for your kind words about Icenium. We really appreciated those and this is what motivates us to deliver this great product to customers like you.

Regarding the custom plugins can you share more details with us? Are those specific plugins developed by you or they are publicly hosted on GitHub? Our next release will include support for the most wanted plugins by our community and you can see those "In Development" on the feedback portal.

Kind regards,
Stefan Dobrev
the Icenium team

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[Jan-Dirk]

I created a feedback report for generic support for plugins here: https://feedback.telerik.com/Project/87/Feedback/Details/879-generic-phonegap-plugin-support

It currently has 48 'likes', 2nd comes a plugin for a barcode scanner with 39 likes. Way more than any other feedback issue and I have seen feedback issues with much less likes becoming reality. I understand this might not be easy to implement, but it seems the community is asking for it.

@Stefan: Can you elaborate what plugins are included in the next release and estimate when that release becomes available. Will, for example, Pushwoosh be included?

[Stefan Dobrev]

Hi JD,

The next release will include support for Barcode scanner and SQLite plugins as those are the ones most requested on the feedback portal. The release is expected in the first half of February.

Regarding your post about General plugins support - it is a great idea, but its implementation is not trivial. One of the main issues here is that Apache Cordova is still standardizing on the way plugins are going to be described, implemented and made discoverable. Our idea is to provide support for as many "mature" plugins as we can until Icenium and Cordova mutually mature.
 

All the best,
Stefan Dobrev
the Telerik team

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[Jan-Dirk]

I don't agree with your statement that the implementation of generic plugin support is not trivial. When people make comments like the ones below:

1. I would like to request that this feature is prioritised as a must for future Icenium plugin development as the ability to post messages to the device for the device to respond to is a major building block for
   Android development
2. Very important for us to complete a commercial mobile application that we are planning.
3. This is a show stopper for us if we cannot add plug in.

Maybe it is not trivial to Icenium, but like I said in my previous message, it has the highest amount of likes so it is trivial to at least 48 voters and that is almost 25% more votes than the barcode scanner plugin.

I understand it's easier to implement the 2 plugins you mention.

My 2 cents :-)

[Stefan Dobrev]

JD,

I'm sorry that I did not express my point clearer. We are well aware that we will have to support the custom plugin scenario and we see that the community is vocal about it. We also see the direction Apache Cordova is heading towards when every current core functionality will be a plugin on its own living in a separate source repository. We want to be prepared for that as well.

Can you guys share more details how do you envision the custom plugin support? Do you expect to edit the native code directly? Do you plan to make your custom plugin publicly available so that other customers can benefit?

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[Jan-Dirk]

Stefan,

I understand the problem and that it is probably not easy if you want to keep this functionality in line with what Cordova is doing.

For some plugins it might be possible to just switch them on or off (as you did with the Childbrowser plugin) because you just need to enable them. For other plugins it will be necessary to make changes in AndroidManifest.xml (for example Pushwoosh needs you to enter an application key). Finally you would need to have the possibility to put the plugin-code (.jar?) in a folder in Icenium.

I don't see that I am going to make my own custom plugins. If I did, I think the correct way would be to have them supported by Cordova and then see how Icenium could support it.

I have been working on an app that will be used within the company I work for. We want to have push notifications (pushwoosh). That means that now I almost have finalized the app, I have exported the project and import the files from this project Eclipse and Xcode.

[Ron Frick]

It would be a custom plugin that would not be publicly available.  Is the plan to only allow plugins that are publicly available?

[Ron Frick]

What I think would be cool is if you had a wizard in ICENIUM for installing a custom plugin. The wizard would just follow the steps outlined by Cordova for using a custom plugin, and put all the files in the neccessary spots in the project, modifying the manifest.

[Richardsonke]

I think that push notification support is very important and I hope that this makes it into the next release.  Thanks for all your hard work!

[Tap]

Hey Icenium, 

First off,  you guys have a very nice tool and I'm really enjoying using it.   I would just like to cast a vote for a couple plugins. If they could be included sooner then later that would be great.

1.) Power Management  - I'm building an app that does not require the user to constantly be touching / navigating the screen, so the screen often goes to black as the app is still in use.

2.) Barcode Scanner.

I look forward to watching as Icenium evolves. Again great tool.

[Anjani]

Hi,

I want to integrate a hybrid app with twitter,G+ and linkedin. Is there available plugins?
If not, how to proceed?I am new to this IDE and do not have much Idea.Please Help.

[Stefan Dobrev]

Hello Anjani,

All parties that you have mentioned have REST API and JavaScript libraries that you can use without the need to go with plugins. You can check out and clone our Facebook sample which you can use as a baseline.
 

All the best,
Stefan Dobrev
the Telerik team

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[Relez]

Hi there, I am developing a mobile application using Icenium and Kendo UI. I need to be able to make a phone call using cordova or any plugin, something like this:

<a data-role="button" href="tel:[phone]" >Call Support Center</a>

I have seen this example in multiple forums but my code is not working. Do I must add a plugin using Icenium or is there something wrong with the code?

Thanks!

[Relez]

Well, I figured out how to do this, here is the final code:

<a data-role="button" href="tel:[phone]"  data-rel="external">Call Support Center</a>

I was missing the data-rel attribute. 

Thanks a lot!

[Jay]

I need access (or a work around) to the audioencode plugin since IOS devices can currently only record audio in .wav format which is way too large to be useful since I need to be able to upload them to a server. Any plans /timeframe for this plugin? Or do you know of any workarounds to make IOS recordings a different format or much smaller?
https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-plugins/tree/master/iPhone/AudioEncode

[Ivan Ivanov]

Hi,

Unfortunately, there's no workaround for this problem.
Right now, we're working on custom plugin support, that will allow any compatible Cordova plugin to be added in Icenium.

We can't commit to a specific date when this will be available, but we are busy developing it as this is the most requested feature by our community.

Please excuse us for any inconvenience caused.

Greetings,
Ivan Ivanov
the Telerik team

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[Srinivas]

We need the printing functionality in our App and checking to see if Printing Plugin is in the works for the Telerik Icenium.

[Steve]

Hello Barathan,

Currently we do not support the PrintPlugin (and as we see it is only for iOS and Cordova 1.5). As my colleague explained in the last post, we're working on generic pluginstall Cordova plug-ins support at the moment, so you would be able to utilize any compatible plugins that offer print capabilities once we introduce this functionality (no ETA yet).

Thank you for the patience and understanding.

Greetings,
Steve
the Telerik team

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[Srinivas]

Thanks Steve!

[Abdul]

Hi icenium engineer,
 
      Masha allah, Icenium is gud product and that sounds gud wen i work on icenium product. i have doubt how we can give path if v create separate folder for audio 

for example
script file

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">

            function playAudio(src) 
            {
                if (device.platform == 'Android') 
                {
                    alert('Click to play beep sounds');
                    src = 'audio/' + src;
                }
             
                var media = new Media(src, success, error_error);
                 
                media.play();
            }
             
            function success() 
            {
            // ignore
            }
             
            function error_error(e) {
            alert('great error');
            alert(e.message);
            }
</script>

Html File

<div class="dv" ><a href="audio-html/thaa.html" onclick="playAudio('beep.mp3')" data-role="button" data-theme="a">Click</a></div>
 
thanks and regards
muthalif

[Steve]

Thanks for the nice words, Muthalif!

In case you want to play local files you should refer them with a specific Android prefix:

"/android_asset/www/audio/beep.mp3"

You can find more information about this in the following blog post: Using the Media Class in PhoneGap.

Regards,
Steve
Telerik

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[Abdul]

thanks steve . can u forward me example how we retrieve local mp3 file in icenium


thanks and regards 
muthalif

[Jan-Dirk]

You can add the mp3 as a file into your project by choosing 'add existing file' from the project explorer.

[Steve]

Hi muthalif,

There is a small correction that should be applied to my previous reply. Currently the prefixed path should be

"/android_asset/content/audio/beep.mp3"

This would however be changed to "/android_asset/www/audio/beep.mp3" in the next 1.6 version of Icenium. Everything else in Simon's blog post is valid and you can use the info there to get started.

Regards,
Steve
Telerik

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[Abdul]

thanks steve.

but in icenium we dont have built in assets file
 "/android_asset/content/audio/beep.mp3"
 how this path will work

thanks and regards
muthalif

[Steve]

Hi Muthalif,

This path would be resolved by Cordova, you need to append it manually since Cordova does not currently handle the appending for local files automatically. I've attached a modified version of our media player sample that plays a local file to show you how this works.

Regards,
Steve
Telerik

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[Abdul]

thanks steve...

[Abdul]

Hi Steve,

can u find below error.

XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://localhost:8080/rest/3.2/contactinfo/contactrest. Originhttp://app.icenium.com is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.

thanks and regards
muthalif

[Steve]

Hi Muthalif,

Javascript is limited in making ajax requests. The limit comes out when you try to make requests outside your domain. For more information refer to:

• http://stackoverflow.com/a/9311585/1854553
• http://www.icenium.com/resources/forums/icenium-mist-/jquery-zepto-$-post-does-not-seem-to-work-

Regards,
Steve
Telerik

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[Tanveer]

Hi,
I have made my Android/Phone-Gap  Application in Eclipse for Facebook authentication, this application is working properly in eclipse.
When I import that application in icenium, application is successfully added in icenium. But when i click the facebook login button Facebook login is not working in icenium, when it is working in eclipse.
Kindly support me your reply. Many Thanks

RaO TanVeeR

[Steve]

Hi Rao,

Please use the instructions and latest updated plugin provided in the following forum thread: Using FacebookConnect plugin.

Regards,
Steve
Telerik

[Sarah]

The idea to add support for barcode scanner is well implemented. Nice job!