+1 cordova-js have the logic to handle this at bootstrap, it's a matter of
staring for a few minutes to see what are the entry points that Jesse
describe.
For the plug and play scenario, where you plugin something way after
deviceready/bootstrap then something dynamic to query for the capabilities
like Jesse describe
Let's keep the two use cases separate and do not cross the streams :-),
fix each use case at a time
On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 6:17 PM Jesse <purplecabb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are a couple different ways to go about this, but ultimately the
> mechanisms are already there.
>
> 1. WaitForInit
> If you look at the cordova-device plugin, it pre-populates data about the
> device it is running on, and this info is available when the deviceready
> event fires.
> Essentially the plugin creates a channel, and specifies that this channel
> must fire BEFORE the deviceready channel can fire, via the call
> channel.waitForInitialization('onCordovaInfoReady'); //[1]
>
> 2. addConstructor
> The window.cordova object defines an addConstructor method to allow a
> plugin to do some pre-deviceready work.
> All functions passed in to cordova.addConstructor will be called at the
> 'cordovaready' stage which is guaranteed to happen after 'nativeready' and
> before 'deviceready' [2]
>
> Another approach may be to add a getDeviceCapabilites async call to a
> plugin like Camera that has many varied capabilities depending on where it
> is running. We could simply instruct users to call this method ( after
> deviceready ) to know for certain what capabilities are available. The
> plugin (js) could also cache this info so later calls would not require a
> round trip. This would allow the app to be active as soon as possible, and
> place the responsibility on the app developer, especially relevant if the
> camera api is a small subset of the functionality of the app, and the
> capabilities are not essential at launch time.
>
>
> [1]
>
> https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugin-device/blob/master/www/device.js#L28
> [2] https://github.com/apache/cordova-js/blob/master/src/cordova.js#L233
>
>
>
>
> My team is hiring!
> @purplecabbage
> risingj.com
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:34 AM, Rob Paveza <rob.pav...@microsoft.com>
> wrote:
>
> > We chatted briefly about this at the hangout last week, and I wanted to
> > continue on the discussion. I gave the example that the "Quirks" section
> > of CameraOptions [1] is longer than the actual API documentation. I like
> > to pick on the Camera plugin because it's one of the most-used and is
> very
> > well-documented, so its holes are easy to understand.
> >
> > I looked at a request to, for example, support the <plugin> element
> within
> > a <platform> element in config.xml. When we drilled down into the
> request,
> > it was because the plugin wasn't well-supported on Windows, so the
> > developer wanted to be able to do feature detection and bypass using the
> > plugin there. Presently, Cordova.js doesn't support this; the proxy
> > doesn't have an opportunity to talk to native until the `deviceready`
> > event, at which point, mutating the public API surface of the proxy would
> > result in a race condition (because you're not sure who subscribed to
> > `deviceready` first).
> >
> > I think it's important to note that **how the API can support feature
> > detection should be up to the plugin author**. If the plugin is trying
> to
> > mimic a W3C standard, then it can do so; if it's just trying to fill a
> > feature gap, it can do that, too. The plugin developer can choose what
> > fits best.
> >
> > ==Proposal==
> > - I'll make a change to Cordova.js that will create a new event for
> > plugins to listen to. This will delay the invocation of `deviceready`
> > until all plugins have signaled completion (we'll avoid breaking
> > compatibility by having plugins opt-in to this behavior; if they don't
> opt
> > in, we'll treat them like they don't need to do anything). Once the
> plugin
> > initialization code has been run and the plugins have signaled readiness,
> > we'll then fire `deviceready`.
> > - I'd also like to go through the plugins at least in mobilespec and
> make
> > some targeted proposals about where we can refactor to improve
> > feature-detectability. The File Plugin is tough because it's
> > standards-based on a standard that is defunct, but the Camera plugin
> might
> > have some opportunities, as well as Vibration, etc (e.g., vibration is
> > supported on Windows mobile devices, but not on desktop PCs).
> >
> > == Guiding Principles ==
> > - Feature detection should be based on the availability of the platform
> > API, not the availability of the platform to do the work.
> > - For example, if we created a Printer plugin, and the device can
> > support printing but no printers are attached, then the print() API
> should
> > be available.
> > - In such a case, calling print() should result in a runtime error.
> The
> > plugin author should provide a way to query for attached printers.
> > - This allows for a printer to be attached at a later time.
> > - Features should be in some way able to be queried by code at runtime.
> > - Whether that's via a "foo.hasFeature(bar)" method or "if (foo.bar)"
> > truthy check, we should try our best to follow web principles in making
> > these decisions and enable it to be similar to known practices on the
> web.
> >
> > Looking forward to hearing your thoughts...
> > -Rob
> >
> > [1] https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugin-camera#cameraoptions
> >
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> >
> >
>
