license: Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
The plugin.xml
file is an XML document in the plugins
namespace: http://apache.org/cordova/ns/plugins/1.0
. It contains a top-level plugin
element that defines the plugin, and children that define the structure of the plugin.
A sample plugin element:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <plugin xmlns="http://apache.org/cordova/ns/plugins/1.0" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" id="com.alunny.foo" version="1.0.2">
The plugin
element is the plugin manifest's top-level element. It features the following attributes:
xmlns
(required): The plugin namespace, http://apache.org/cordova/ns/plugins/1.0
. If the document contains XML from other namespaces, such as tags to be added to the AndroidManifest.xml
file, those namespaces should also be included in the top-level element.
id
(required): A reverse-domain style identifier for the plugin, such as com.alunny.foo
version
(required): A version number for the plugin, that matches the following major-minor-patch style regular expression:
^\d+[.]\d+[.]\d+$
The child elements of the <engines>
element specify versions of Apache Cordova-based frameworks that this plugin supports. An example:
<engines> <engine name="cordova" version="1.7.0" /> <engine name="cordova" version="1.8.1" /> <engine name="worklight" version="1.0.0" platform="android" scriptSrc="worklight_version"/> </engines>
Similar to the <plugin>
element's version
attribute, the specified version string should match a major-minor-patch string conforming to the regular expression:
^\d+[.]\d+[.]\d+$
Engine elements may also specify fuzzy matches to avoid repetition, and to reduce maintenance when the underlying platform is updated. Tools should support a minimum of >
, >=
, <
and <=
, for example:
<engines> <engine name="cordova" version=">=1.7.0" /> <engine name="cordova" version="<1.8.1" /> </engines>
The <engine>
tags also has default support for all of the main platforms Cordova exists on. Specifying the cordova
engine tag means that all versions of Cordova on any platform must satisfy the engine version attribute. You may also list specific platforms and their versions in order to override the catch-all cordova
engine:
<engines> <engine name="cordova" version=">=1.7.0" /> <engine name="cordova-android" version=">=1.8.0" /> <engine name="cordova-ios" version=">=1.7.1" /> </engines>
Here's a list of the default engines that the ‘’ tag supports:
Specifying custom Apache Cordova-based frameworks should be listed under the engine tag like so:
<engines> <engine name="my_custom_framework" version="1.0.0" platform="android" scriptSrc="path_to_my_custom_framework_version"/> <engine name="another_framework" version=">0.2.0" platform="ios|android" scriptSrc="path_to_another_framework_version"/> <engine name="even_more_framework" version=">=2.2.0" platform="*" scriptSrc="path_to_even_more_framework_version"/> </engines>
A custom Apache Cordova-based framework requires that an engine element includes the following attributes: name
, version
, scriptSrc
, and platform
.
name
(required): A human-readable name for your custom framework.
version
(required): The version that your framework must have in order to install.
scriptSrc
(required): The script file that tells plugman what version of the custom framework is. Ideally, this file should be within the top level directory of your plugin directory.
platform
(required): Which platforms that your framework supports. You may use the wildcard *
to say supported for all platforms, specify multiple with a pipe character like android|ios|blackberry10
or just a single platform like android
.
plugman aborts with a non-zero code for any plugin whose target project does not meet the engine's constraints.
If no <engine>
tags are specified, plugman attempts to install into the specified cordova project directory blindly.
A human-readable name for the plugin, whose text content contains the name of the plugin. For example:
<name>Foo</name>
This element does not (yet) handle localization.
A human-readable description for the plugin. The text content of the element contains the description of the plugin. An example:
<description>Foo plugin description</description>
This element does not (yet) handle localization.
Plugin author name. The text content of the element contains the name of the plugin author. An example:
<author>Foo plugin description</author>
Plugin keywords. The text content of the element contains comma separated keywords to describe the plugin. An example:
<keywords>foo,bar</keywords>
Plugin license. The text content of the element contains the plugin license. An example:
<license>Apache 2.0 License</license>
One or more elements listing the files or directories to be copied into a Cordova app's www
directory. Examples:
<!-- a single file, to be copied in the root directory --> <asset src="www/foo.js" target="foo.js" /> <!-- a directory, also to be copied in the root directory --> <asset src="www/foo" target="foo" />
All <asset>
tags require both src
and target
attributes. Web-only plugins contains mostly <asset>
elements. Any <asset>
elements that are nested within <platform>
elements specify platform-specific web assets, as described below. Attributes include:
src
(required): Where the file or directory is located in the plugin package, relative to the plugin.xml
document. If a file does not exist at the specified src
location, plugman stops and reverses the installation process, issues a notification about the conflict, and exits with a non-zero code.
target
(required):
Where the file or directory should be located in the Cordova app, relative to the www
directory. Assets can be targeted to subdirectories, for example:
<asset src="www/new-foo.js" target="js/experimental/foo.js" />
creates the js/experimental
directory within the www
directory, unless already present, then copies the new-foo.js
file and renames it foo.js
. If a file already exists at the target location, plugman stops and reverses the installation process, issues a notification about the conflict, and exits with a non-zero code.
Most plugins include one or more JavaScript files. Each <js-module>
tag corresponds to a JavaScript file, and prevents the plugin's users from having to add a <script>
tag for each file. While <asset>
tags simply copy a file from the plugin subdirectory into www
, <js-module>
tags are much more sophisticated. They look like this:
<js-module src="socket.js" name="Socket"> <clobbers target="chrome.socket" /> </js-module>
When installing a plugin with the example above, socket.js
is copied to www/plugins/my.plugin.id/socket.js
, and added as an entry to www/cordova_plugins.js
. At load time, code in cordova.js
uses XHR to read each file and inject a <script>
tag into HTML. It adds a mapping to clobber or merge as appropriate, as described below.
Do not wrap the file with cordova.define
, as it is added automatically. The module is wrapped in a closure, with module
, exports
, and require
in scope, as is normal for AMD modules.
Details for the <js-module>
tag:
The src
references a file in the plugin directory relative to the plugin.xml
file.
The name
provides the last part of the module name. It can generally be whatever you like, and it only matters if you want to use cordova.require
to import other parts of your plugins in your JavaScript code. The module name for a <js-module>
is your plugin's id
followed by the value of name
. For the example above, with an id
of chrome.socket
, the module name is chrome.socket.Socket
.
Three tags are allowed within <js-module>
:
<clobbers target="some.value"/>
indicates that the module.exports
is inserted into the window
object as window.some.value
. You can have as many <clobbers>
as you like. Any object not available on window
is created.
<merges target="some.value"/>
indicates that the module should be merged with any existing value at window.some.value
. If any key already exists, the module's version overrides the original. You can have as many <merges>
as you like. Any object not available on window
is created.
<runs/>
means that your code should be specified with cordova.require
, but not installed on the window
object. This is useful when initializing the module, attaching event handlers or otherwise. You can only have up to one <runs/>
tag. Note that including a <runs/>
with <clobbers/>
or <merges/>
is redundant, since they also cordova.require
your module.
An empty <js-module>
still loads and can be accessed in other modules via cordova.require
.
If src
does not resolve to an existing file, plugman stops and reverses the installation, issues a notification of the problem, and exits with a non-zero code.
Nesting <js-module>
elements within <platform>
declares platform-specific JavaScript module bindings.
The <dependency>
tag allows you to specify other plugins on which the current plugin depends. While future versions will access them from plugin repositories, in the short term plugins are directly referenced as URLs by <dependency>
tags. They are formatted as follows:
<dependency id="com.plugin.id" url="https://github.com/myuser/someplugin" commit="428931ada3891801" subdir="some/path/here" />
id
: provides the ID of the plugin. It should be globally unique, and expressed in reverse-domain style. While neither of these restrictions is currently enforced, they may be in the future.
url
: A URL for the plugin. This should reference a git repository, which plugman attempts to clone.
commit
: This is any git reference understood by git checkout
: a branch or tag name (e.g., master
, 0.3.1
), or a commit hash (e.g., 975ddb228af811dd8bb37ed1dfd092a3d05295f9
).
subdir
: Specifies that the targeted plugin dependency exists as a subdirectory of the git repository. This is helpful because it allows the repository to contain several related plugins, each specified individually.
In the future, version constraints will be introduced, and a plugin repository will exist to support fetching by name instead of explicit URLs.
If you set the url
of a <dependency>
tag to "."
and provide a subdir
, the dependent plugin is installed from the same local or remote git repository as the parent plugin that specifies the <dependency>
tag.
Note that the subdir
always specifies a path relative to the root of the git repository, not the parent plugin. This is true even if you installed the plugin with a local path directly to it. Plugman finds the root of the git repository and then finds the other plugin from there.
The <platform>
tag identifies platforms that have associated native code or require modifications to their configuration files. Tools using this specification can identify supported platforms and install the code into Cordova projects.
Plugins without <platform>
tags are assumed to be JavaScript-only, and therefore installable on any and all platforms.
A sample platform tag:
<platform name="android"> <!-- android-specific elements --> </platform> <platform name="ios"> <!-- ios-specific elements --> </platform>
The required name
attribute identifies a platform as supported, associating the element's children with that platform.
Platform names should be lowercase. Platform names, as arbitrarily chosen, are listed:
The <source-file>
element identifies executable source code that should be installed into a project. Examples:
<!-- android --> <source-file src="src/android/Foo.java" target-dir="src/com/alunny/foo" /> <!-- ios --> <source-file src="src/ios/CDVFoo.m" /> <source-file src="src/ios/someLib.a" framework="true" /> <source-file src="src/ios/someLib.a" compiler-flags="-fno-objc-arc" />
It supports the following attributes:
src
(required): Location of the file relative to plugin.xml
. If the src
file can't be found, plugman stops and reverses the installation, issues a notification about the problem, and exits with a non-zero code.
target-dir
: A directory into which the files should be copied, relative to the root of the Cordova project. In practice, this is most important for Java-based platforms, where a file in the com.alunny.foo
package must be located within the com/alunny/foo
directory. For platforms where the source directory is not important, this attribute should be omitted.
As with assets, if the target
of a source-file
would overwrite an existing file, plugman stops and reverses the installation, issues a notification about the problem, and exits with a non-zero code.
framework
(iOS only): If set to true
, also adds the specified file as a framework to the project.
compiler-flags
(iOS only): If set, assigns the specified compiler flags for the particular source file.
Identifies an XML-based configuration file to be modified, where in that document the modification should take place, and what should be modified.
Two file types that have been tested for modification with this element are xml
and plist
files.
The config-file
element only allows you to append new children to an XML document tree. The children are XML literals to be inserted in the target document.
Example for XML:
<config-file target="AndroidManifest.xml" parent="/manifest/application"> <activity android:name="com.foo.Foo" android:label="@string/app_name"> <intent-filter> </intent-filter> </activity> </config-file>
Example for plist
:
<config-file target="*-Info.plist" parent="CFBundleURLTypes"> <array> <dict> <key>PackageName</key> <string>$PACKAGE_NAME</string> </dict> </array> </config-file>
It supports the following attributes:
target
:
The file to be modified, and the path relative to the root of the Cordova project.
The target can include wildcard (*
) elements. In this case, plugman recursively searches through the project directory structure and uses the first match.
On iOS, the location of configuration files relative to the project directory root is not known, so specifying a target of config.xml
resolves to cordova-ios-project/MyAppName/config.xml
.
If the specified file does not exist, the tool ignores the configuration change and continues installation.
parent
: An XPath selector referencing the parent of the elements to be added to the config file. If you use absolute selectors, you can use a wildcard (*
) to specify the root element, e.g., /*/plugins
.
For plist
files, the parent
determines under what parent key the specified XML should be inserted.
If the selector does not resolve to a child of the specified document, the tool stops and reverses the installation process, issues a warning, and exits with a non-zero code.
after
: A prioritized list of accepted siblings after which to add the XML snippet. Useful for specifying changes in files which require strict ordering of XML elements like http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/ff769509%28v=vs.105%29.aspx#BKMK_EXTENSIONSelement
The Windows platform supports two additional attributes (both optional) when affecting the meta-name package.appxmanifest
:
The device-target
attribute indicates that the should only be included when building for the specified target device type. Supported values are win
, phone
, or all
.
The versions
attribute indicates that app manifests for specific Windows versions should only be altered for versions that match the specified version string. Value can be any valid node semantic version range string.
Examples of using these Windows specific attributes:
<config-file target="package.appxmanifest" parent="/Package/Capabilities" versions="<8.1.0"> <Capability Name="picturesLibrary" /> <DeviceCapability Name="webcam" /> </config-file> <config-file target="package.appxmanifest" parent="/Package/Capabilities" versions=">=8.1.0" device-target="phone"> <DeviceCapability Name="webcam" /> </config-file>
The above example will set pre-8.1 platforms (Windows 8, specifically) to require the webcam
device capability and the picturesLibrary
general capability, and apply the webcam
device capability only to Windows 8.1 projects that build for Windows Phone. Windows desktop 8.1 systems are unmodified.
This is outdated as it only applies to cordova-ios 2.2.0 and below. Use the <config-file>
tag for newer versions of Cordova.
Example:
<config-file target="config.xml" parent="/widget/plugins"> <feature name="ChildBrowser"> <param name="ios-package" value="ChildBrowserCommand"/> </feature> </config-file>
Specifies a key and value to append to the correct AppInfo.plist
file in an iOS Cordova project. For example:
<plugins-plist key="Foo" string="CDVFoo" />
Like source files, but specifically for platforms such as iOS that distinguish between source files, headers, and resources. iOS Examples:
<resource-file src="CDVFoo.bundle" /> <resource-file src="CDVFooViewController.xib" /> <header-file src="CDVFoo.h" />
Android example:
<resource-file src="FooPluginStrings.xml" target="res/values/FooPluginStrings.xml" />
Like source, resource, and header files, but specifically for platforms such as BlackBerry 10 that use user-generated libraries. Examples:
<lib-file src="src/BlackBerry10/native/device/libfoo.so" arch="device" /> <lib-file src="src/BlackBerry10/native/simulator/libfoo.so" arch="simulator" />
Supported attributes:
src
(required): The location of the file relative to plugin.xml
. If src
can't be found, plugman stops and reverses the installation, issues a warning about the problem, and exits with a non-zero code.
arch
: The architecture for which the .so
file has been built, either device
or simulator
.
For the Windows platform, the <lib-file>
element allows the inclusion of an <SDKReference>
in the generated Windows project files.
Supported attributes:
src
(required): The name of the SDK to include (which will be used as value of the Include
attribute of the generated <SDKReference>
element).
arch
: Indicates that the <SDKReference>
should only be included when building for the specified architecture. Supported values are x86
, x64
or ARM
.
device-target
: Indicates that the <SDKReference>
should only be included when building for the specified target device type. Supported values are win
(or windows
), phone
or all
.
versions
: Indicates that the <SDKReference>
should only be included when building for versions that match the specified version string. Value can be any valid node semantic version range string.
Examples:
<lib-file src="Microsoft.WinJS.2.0, Version=1.0" arch="x86" /> <lib-file src="Microsoft.WinJS.2.0, Version=1.0" versions=">=8.1" /> <lib-file src="Microsoft.WinJS.2.0, Version=1.0" target="phone" /> <lib-file src="Microsoft.WinJS.2.0, Version=1.0" target="win" versions="8.0" arch="x86" />
Identifies a framework (usually part of the OS/platform) on which the plugin depends.
Examples:
<framework src="libsqlite3.dylib" /> <framework src="social.framework" weak="true" /> <framework src="relative/path/to/my.framework" custom="true" /> <framework src="path/to/project/LibProj.csproj" custom="true" type="projectReference"/>
The src
attribute identifies the framework, which plugman attempts to add to the Cordova project, in the correct fashion for a given platform.
The optional weak
attribute is a boolean indicating whether the framework should be weakly linked. The default is false
.
The optional custom
attribute is a boolean indicating whether the framework is one that is included as part of your plugin files (thus it is not a system framework). The default is false
. On Android it specifies how to treat src. If true
src is a relative path from the application project's directory, otherwise -- from the Android SDK directory.
The optional type
attribute is a string indicating the type of framework to add. Currently only projectReference
is supported and only for Windows. Using custom='true'
and type='projectReference'
will add a reference to the project which will be added to the compile+link steps of the cordova project. This essentially is the only way currently that a ‘custom’ framework can target multiple architectures as they are explicitly built as a dependency by the referencing cordova application.
The optional parent
attribute is currently supported only on Android. It sets the relative path to the directory containing the sub-project to which to add the reference. The default is .
, i.e. the application project. It allows to add references between sub projects like in this example:
<framework src="FeedbackLib" custom="true" /> <framework src="extras/android/support/v7/appcompat" custom="false" parent="FeedbackLib" />
The Windows platform supports three additional attributes (all optional) to refine when the framework should be included:
The arch
attribute indicates that the framework should only be included when building for the specified architecture. Supported values are x86
, x64
or ARM
.
The device-target
attribute indicates that the framework should only be included when building for the specified target device type. Supported values are win
(or windows
), phone
or all
.
The versions
attribute indicates that the framework should only be included when building for versions that match the specified version string. Value can be any valid node semantic version range string.
Examples of using these Windows specific attributes:
<framework src="src/windows/example.dll" arch="x64" /> <framework src="src/windows/example.dll" versions=">=8.0" /> <framework src="src/windows/example.vcxproj" type="projectReference" target="win" /> <framework src="src/windows/example.vcxproj" type="projectReference" target="all" versions="8.1" arch="x86" />
Additional information provided to users. This is useful when you require extra steps that can‘t be easily automated or are beyond plugman’s scope. Examples:
<info> You need to install __Google Play Services__ from the `Android Extras` section using the Android SDK manager (run `android`). You need to add the following line to the `local.properties`: android.library.reference.1=PATH_TO_ANDROID_SDK/sdk/extras/google/google_play_services/libproject/google-play-services_lib </info>
In certain cases, a plugin may need to make configuration changes dependent on the target application. For example, to register for C2DM on Android, an app whose package id is com.alunny.message
would require a permission such as:
<uses-permission android:name="com.alunny.message.permission.C2D_MESSAGE"/>
In such cases where the content inserted from the plugin.xml
file is not known ahead of time, variables can be indicated by a dollar-sign followed by a series of capital letters, digits, or underscores. For the above example, the plugin.xml
file would include this tag:
<uses-permission android:name="$PACKAGE_NAME.permission.C2D_MESSAGE"/>
plugman replaces variable references with the specified value, or the empty string if not found. The value of the variable reference may be detected (in this case, from the AndroidManifest.xml
file) or specified by the user of the tool; the exact process is dependent on the particular tool.
plugman can request users to specify a plugin's required variables. For example, API keys for C2M and Google Maps can be specified as a command-line argument:
plugman --platform android --project /path/to/project --plugin name|git-url|path --variable API_KEY=!@CFATGWE%^WGSFDGSDFW$%^#$%YTHGsdfhsfhyer56734
To make the variable mandatory, the <platform>
tag needs to contain a <preference>
tag. For example:
<preference name="API_KEY" />
plugman checks that these required preferences are passed in. If not, it should warn the user how to pass the variable in and exit with a non-zero code.
Certain variable names should be reserved, as listed below.
The reverse-domain style unique identifier for the package, corresponding to the CFBundleIdentifier
on iOS or the package
attribute of the top-level manifest
element in an AndroidManifest.xml
file.