Apache Cordova API Documentation

The JavaScript API documentation for Apache Cordova.

The documentation is available at docs.cordova.io.

Documentation Format

All of the Apache Cordova documentation is written with markdown, a lightweight markup language that can be typeset to HTML. Markdown provides a simple and flexible way to document Cordova's core API and platform-specific APIs.

File Structure

docs/
docs/LANGUAGE
docs/LANGUAGE/VERSION
docs/LANGUAGE/VERSION/cordova/
docs/LANGUAGE/VERSION/cordova/PluginName/
docs/LANGUAGE/VERSION/cordova/PluginName/className.md
docs/LANGUAGE/VERSION/cordova/PluginName/className.functionName.md

Contributing to the Documentation

Report or Fix an Issue

We use Apache JIRA

By the way, you rock! Thanks for helping us improve the documentation!

Using Git

Are you new to Git or contributing on GitHub?

We have written a few Git tutorials to help you get started with contributing to the documentation.

Sending Pull Requests

Pull requests are welcome!

We appreciate the use of topic branches.

git checkout -b issue_23

# code

git commit -m "Issue 23: Fix a bad bug."

git push origin issue_23

# send pull request from branch issue_23 to cordova:master

Adding a Language

Do you want the Apache Cordova documentation in another language? We do too! With the support of Crowdin, a translation and localization management platform, translators can login to the easy-to-use tooling and provide as much or as little translation assistance as they would like. If you know another language please support Cordova and contribute. http://crowdin.net/project/cordova. For some best practices for using the Crowdin tool please see our wiki http://wiki.apache.org/cordova/CordovaTranslations.

Cordova language administrators, don't forget these steps:

1. config.json

For each language and version, there is a config.json that defines the name of the language and how to merge the files.

2. Customizing HTML template

Each language can override the default template in template/docs/LANGUAGE.

Editorial Guidelines

Please see the STYLESHEET.md file for guidelines on language and usage.

Generating Documentation with Vagrant

It can be trouble generating the documentation. Juggling Ruby environments and the dependencies can be a sensitive matter.

To make our lives easier, Vagrant support has been added to our documentation generator. It's easy to setup and works on all the major operating systems. After you've installed Vagrant and VirtualBox, you only need to run one command to download and provision a light-weight virtual machine (approx 200MB). At that point all the dependencies exist inside the virtual machine, so you don't need to install them manually on your bare metal machine.

Setup

Initialize Vagrant Box

$ cd cordova-docs/
$ vagrant up

Build the Documentation

$ vagrant ssh
$ cd /vagrant             # shared copy of this repo
$
$ ./bin/generate          # compile all docs
$ ./bin/generate en edge  # compile English Edge docs
$
$ exit                    # exit the ssh tunnel

The /vagrant directory is a shared copy of this repository. When the documentation is done generating, you will see a public/ directory on both your virtual and local machine.

Shutdown the Virtual Machine

Pick one of the following, depending on what you want to do:

$ vagrant suspend  # pause the vm and save its state
$ vagrant halt     # shutdown the vm
$ vagrant destroy  # delete the vm and all its contents

Generating Documentation Locally

Install

Clone joDoc

  git clone http://github.com/davebalmer/joDoc.git

Install markdown

curl -O http://daringfireball.net/projects/downloads/Markdown_1.0.1.zip unzip Markdown_1.0.1.zip chmod u+x Markdown_1.0.1/Markdown.pl mv Markdown_1.0.1/Markdown.pl markdown rm -r Markdown_1*
Install Ruby Dependencies

curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable rvm install 1.8.7 gem install bundler bundle install

Run the Script

Generate all versions

PATH=$PATH:$PWD/joDoc:$PWD bin/generate

Generate a specific language and version

PATH=$PATH:$PWD/joDoc:$PWD bin/generate en edge

or as a shortcut

PATH=$PATH:$PWD/joDoc:$PWD bin/generate --edge

Quick Preview

When making minor edits, it is usually safe to simply render the edited from Markdown to HTML. Many code editors have plugins to render Markdown to HTML and there are a handful of good online editors.

Currently, a Ruby script and joDoc are used to generate the HTML documentation.

Generating a Version Release

There is a Rake task to increment the version, generate the version directory, and update the edge documentation.

# generate version 1.7.0 for english.
rake version[1.7.0,en]

If while running rake you get the error

no such file to load -- spec/rake/spectask

then run

gem install rspec -v 1.3.0

FAQ

Error while running `./bin/generate`

If you get the following error:

./bin/../lib/cordova/navigation_menu.rb:14:in `read': can't convert nil into String (TypeError)
    from ./bin/../lib/cordova/navigation_menu.rb:14:in `initialize'
    from ./bin/../lib/docs_generator.rb:86:in `new'
    from ./bin/../lib/docs_generator.rb:86:in `after_jodoc'
    from ./bin/../lib/docs_generator.rb:55:in `run'
    from ./bin/../lib/docs_generator.rb:45:in `foreach'
    from ./bin/../lib/docs_generator.rb:45:in `run'
    from ./bin/../lib/docs_generator.rb:41:in `foreach'
    from ./bin/../lib/docs_generator.rb:41:in `run'
    from ./bin/generate:6

You may need to add the following line to the joDoc script:

$markdown_bin = "/path/to/Markdown.pl";

For more details, see the Issue #590.

Error with ruby and nokogiri versions