使用cordova-plugin-whitelist

Question

In my cordova hello world project, When I run:

cordova platforms add android

it automatically adds cordova-plugin-whitelist plugin.

From plugin docs it is only for android platform.

Supported Cordova Platforms

• Android 4.0.0 or above

My questions are:

• What is the use of this plugin?
• Why only android? Why not other platforms?

Answer 1

As you have mentioned, this plugin is meant only for Android as the plugin source code itself supports only Android platform.

This plugin implements a whitelist policy for navigating the application webview on Cordova 4.0 and above. The use of this plugin is that it provides better security and configurability than earlier versions of Cordova. Infact it is possible to create your own whitelist plugin but it is not recommended unless your app has very specific security policy needs.

Also what I noticed while creating a project in iOS is that it does include cordova whitelist plugin in the plugins folder as its automatically included in config.xml

But what I infer from the official documentation of iOS whitelisting is that for cordova-ios version 4.0 and above this plugin is not required but it's configuration details apply to iOS too.

You can check out this official cordova link for more detailed info on whitelisting and its application on various platforms.