Ionic Native

Ionic Native is a curated set of wrappers for Cordova plugins that make adding any native functionality you need to your Ionic mobile app easy.

Ionic Native wraps plugin callbacks in a Promise or Observable, providing a common interface for all plugins and making it easy to use plugins with Angular change detection.

Installation

Run following command to install Ionic Native in your project.

npm install @ionic-native/core --save

You also need to install the Ionic Native package for each plugin you want to add. Please see the Ionic Native documentation for complete instructions on how to add and use the plugins.

Documentation

For the full Ionic Native documentation, please visit https://ionicframework.com/docs/native/.

Basic Usage

To use a plugin, import and add the plugin provider to your @NgModule, and then inject it where you wish to use it.

// app.module.ts
import { Camera } from '@ionic-native/camera';

...

@NgModule({
  ...

  providers: [
    ...
    Camera
    ...
  ]
  ...
})
export class AppModule { }

import { Geolocation } from '@ionic-native/geolocation';
import { Platform } from 'ionic-angular';

import { NgZone } from '@angular/core';

@Component({ ... })
export class MyComponent {

  constructor(private geolocation: Geolocation, private platform: Platform, private ngZone: NgZone) {

    platform.ready().then(() => {

      // get position
      geolocation.getCurrentPosition().then(pos => {

        console.log(`lat: ${pos.coords.latitude}, lon: ${pos.coords.longitude}`)

      });


      // watch position
      const watch = geolocation.watchPosition().subscribe(pos => {

        console.log(`lat: ${pos.coords.latitude}, lon: ${pos.coords.longitude}`)

        // Currently, observables from Ionic Native plugins
        // need to run inside of zone to trigger change detection
        ngZone.run(() => {
          this.position = pos;
        })

      });

      // to stop watching
      watch.unsubscribe();

    });

  }

}

Mocking and Browser Development

Ionic Native 3.x makes it possible to mock plugins and develop nearly the entirety of your app in the browser or in ionic serve.

To do this, you need to provide a mock implementation of the plugins you wish to use. Here's an example of mocking the Camera plugin to return a stock image while in development:

First import the Camera class in your src/app/app.module.ts file:

import { Camera } from '@ionic-native/camera';

Then create a new class that extends the Camera class with a mock implementation:

class CameraMock extends Camera {
  getPicture(options) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      resolve("BASE_64_ENCODED_DATA_GOES_HERE");
    })
  }
}

Finally, override the previous Camera class in your providers for this module:

providers: [
  { provide: Camera, useClass: CameraMock }
]

Here's the full example:

import { NgModule, ErrorHandler } from '@angular/core';
import { BrowserModule } from '@angular/platform-browser';
import { IonicApp, IonicModule, IonicErrorHandler } from 'ionic-angular';
import { MyApp } from './app.component';
import { HomePage } from '../pages/home/home';

import { Camera } from '@ionic-native/camera';

class CameraMock extends Camera {
  getPicture(options) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      resolve("BASE_64_ENCODED_DATA_GOES_HERE");
    })
  }
}

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    MyApp,
    HomePage
  ],
  imports: [
    BrowserModule,
    IonicModule.forRoot(MyApp)
  ],
  bootstrap: [IonicApp],
  entryComponents: [
    MyApp,
    HomePage
  ],
  providers: [
    {provide: ErrorHandler, useClass: IonicErrorHandler},
    { provide: Camera, useClass: CameraMock }
  ]
})
export class AppModule {}

Runtime Diagnostics

Spent way too long diagnosing an issue only to realize a plugin wasn't firing or installed? Ionic Native lets you know what the issue is and how you can resolve it.

Plugin Missing?

Let us know or submit a PR! Take a look at the Developer Guide for more on how to contribute. ❤️

Ionic v1 (AngularJS, Angular 1.x) support

For Ionic v1 (AngularJS, Angular 1.x) support, please use version 2 of Ionic Native. See the 2.x README for usage information.

Credits

Ibby Hadeed - @ihadeed

Tim Lancina - @timlancina

Mike Hartington - @mhartington

Max Lynch - @maxlynch

Rob Wormald - @robwormald