Cordova plugin development - adding aar

SleepingMole picture SleepingMole · Jun 10, 2015 · Viewed 18.9k times · Source

I am new to the cordova plugin development stuff. I want to write a plugin which is able to open a new android activty and showing some advertisement.

So I followed a simple tutorial here. That works very well and as expected.

Next step is to include this Android Studio Gradle project to my plugin.

My first try: Adding the gradle project to a subfolder of my cordova plugin and adding the following line to the plugin.xml file:

<framework src="libs/Broper/build.gradle" custom="true" type="gradleReference" />

also I tried:

<framework src="libs/Broper/app/build.gradle" custom="true" type="gradleReference" />

doesn't work. So I can't import the classes of that android studio project to my plugin java files.

Then a better solution (I thought so) is to add an AAR instead. But there I don't even have a clue what to do to add that AAR in my cordova plugin.

So, the question is: How do I add an android studio project (or library) to my cordova plugin the right way?

Answer

Niko picture Niko · Jun 10, 2015

Here's what I've done to use a gradle reference with a Cordova plugin, I think this might help you.

Global structure :

pluginFolder/
  build-extras.gradle
  plugin.xml
  yourDirContainingYourAAR/
  src/
    android/
      yourFile.gradle
      myPlugin.java

Put your library, say foo.aar, in the yourDirContainingYourAAR directory (create it if needed)

  • In the plugin.xml file :

    <platform name="android">
        <!-- your configuration elements, references, source files, etc... -->
    
        <framework src="src/android/yourFile.gradle" custom="true" type="gradleReference" />
    
        <resource-file src="yourDirContainingYourAAR/foo.aar" target="libs/foo.aar" />
    </platform>
    
  • In the gradle file yourFile.gradle :

    repositories{    
      jcenter()
      flatDir {
          dirs 'libs'
       }
    }
    
    dependencies {
       compile(name:'foo', ext:'aar')
    }
    
    android {
      packagingOptions {
        exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE'
        exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE'
      }
    }
    
  • In the root folder of your plugin (same level as plugin.xml ) create a build-extras.gradle. If needed, add or remove minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion according to your project needs :

    android {
        defaultConfig {
            minSdkVersion 16
            targetSdkVersion 22
        }
    
       packagingOptions {
           exclude 'META-INF/NOTICE'
           exclude 'META-INF/LICENSE'
       }
    }