3 ms·

I can't believe this is coming out of my mouth/keyboard twice in one week. I do not advocate it but I will say it mostly works and that is to use Cordova. We

I can't believe this is coming out of my mouth/keyboard twice in one week. I do not advocate it but I will say it mostly works and that is to use Cordova. We have a react (w/sails) site we packed and shipped using Cordova and while I dislike it for a variety of reasons it does work. It would be a fast way to get a mobile app out but not invest the time to rebuild everything. You might have to tweak a few things but assuming you are using mainstream features it'll be fine generally. I'd always suggest building an app either with Flutter or pure Native, but for quick get it out the door when you have a working site, Cordova will do it. FWIW, I have never used Ionic, only Cordova, my one concern is Cordova is already a logistic pain (close to a nightmare) so adding more abstractions on top of it (Ionic) seems like a bad idea. But again, never used Ionic so can't really say that my concern is valid there.

soneca 7y ago
Thanks! I'll take a look on it. Any resources you could point me about the packing and tweaks necessary for getting an existent react app into Cordova?
- davismwfl 7y ago
  Honestly the best way is to follow the Cordova setup guide to get started and then test the app and see if you need to make tweaks. Make sure to test on physical devices too, not just the emulator. We saw differences in a few cases which happens even with native dev. Stuff we noticed in general is that if the site works well on (e.g. is designed for) mobile devices today it will typically do ok in Cordova, but sometimes you'll find slight variations during testing so you have to tweak a specific control or setting. If you have lots of third party plug-ins in your react code you'll need to be really thorough in testing. I found in some cases I had to move where .css files were loaded to make sure it worked in Cordova as it did on desktop (possible a webpack issue too so I can't for sure blame only Cordova for that). Other thing is make sure you watch your versions (SDK's, engines, Cordova, node etc), keep everything in line with what it says it is tested for and it makes life way easier.
  - soneca 7y ago
    Thanks a lot, very helpful!

soneca 7y ago

Thanks! I'll take a look on it. Any resources you could point me about the packing and tweaks necessary for getting an existent react app into Cordova?

davismwfl 7y ago
Honestly the best way is to follow the Cordova setup guide to get started and then test the app and see if you need to make tweaks. Make sure to test on physical devices too, not just the emulator. We saw differences in a few cases which happens even with native dev. Stuff we noticed in general is that if the site works well on (e.g. is designed for) mobile devices today it will typically do ok in Cordova, but sometimes you'll find slight variations during testing so you have to tweak a specific control or setting. If you have lots of third party plug-ins in your react code you'll need to be really thorough in testing. I found in some cases I had to move where .css files were loaded to make sure it worked in Cordova as it did on desktop (possible a webpack issue too so I can't for sure blame only Cordova for that). Other thing is make sure you watch your versions (SDK's, engines, Cordova, node etc), keep everything in line with what it says it is tested for and it makes life way easier.
- soneca 7y ago
  Thanks a lot, very helpful!