phonegap development environment

Question

I'm trying to get setup to do mobile development using phonegap so i can deploy my application in android store and apple store. It's my understanding that I can simply wrap my application in phonegap so I can deploy for Android, iOs, BB, etc.

My application is an ASP.Net MVC app written with VisualStudio. All of the examples I've read through in my research tells you to use Eclipse for PhoneGap and Android, use XCode for PhoneGap and iOs. My app is ASP.Net MVC that produces Html 5. Is it possible to use PhoneGap with VisualStudio to produce Android and iOS deployable phonegap apps?

One alternative I've been thinking about is creating a simple Index.html page that uses jQuery to make a call to my ASP.Net MVC app and load the resulting HTML inside a div. Then I can simply reproduce this very lightweight Index page in Eclispe, XCOde, etc to run through Phonegap. This seems like a hack though. I've tried getting this to work but have not had any luck in the Android emulator in my windows environment.

Can someone please point me in the right direction for how to incorporate PhoneGap with my ASP.Net MVC app? Thanks.

Answer 1

ASP.NET lives on your server, so anytime you reference any ASP.NET script, you'll have to make the URL an absolute one with a hostname: http://www.example.com/my-script.aspx . Any non-dynamic files should be stored locally on the device so they will function when there is no network connection. You can then just host the dynamic files on your server and reference them whenever you need to. To keep data transfer size as small as possible, I generally pass JSON or something similar to the app. from my server-side script and then interpret the data into HTML in the JavaScript code for the app.

You should keep as many assets as you can local on the device so it doesn't require an internet connection to use the app. So don't link to a remote version of jQuery, save it as a part of the app. package you create so it's always available.

Eclipse/Xcode are nice because they help you create your app. and package it properly for submission to app. stores. They are also nice because of how easy it is to find help using Eclipse or Xcode to create apps. Xcode is actually required, Apple makes sure you have bought the latest hardware and the latest software just to be able to submit an app. to the store.