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new d224e66 Added Cordova Simulate blog post (#787)
d224e66 is described below
commit d224e66db55dc83939eb67d36d3480935e590230
Author: John M. Wargo <30843404+jwa...@users.noreply.github.com>
AuthorDate: Fri Feb 2 12:06:41 2018 -0500
Added Cordova Simulate blog post (#787)
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+---
+layout: post
+author:
+ name: John M. Wargo
+ url: https://twitter.com/johnwargo
+title: "A Better Way to Exercise Cordova Plugins"
+categories: howto
+tags:
+---
+
+Cordova developers have several ways to test and debug their Cordova
applications. For functional testing, developers use emulators, simulators, and
physical devices. Devices can be on-premises, or there are many cloud offerings
available as well. There's even great tools you can use to debug your
applications such as the web app debugging capabilities of Chrome and Safari,
as well as the excellent debugging capabilities of Microsoft's Visual Studio
Code extension for Apache Cordova.
+
+For debugging plugins, or debugging applications that utilize Cordova plugins,
things aren't that bad. For most plugins, I imagine that any physical device
has whatever's needed to work with a plugin, unless the plugin requires some
external hardware device or has other requirements that aren't by every device.
For several of the core Cordova plugins, the device emulators and simulators
expose capabilities that enable testers to simulate things like the camera,
accelerometer, compass, an [...]
+
+When it comes to exercising all the capabilities of a plugin, especially
simulating error conditions so you can tell how the app responds, it gets
complicated. Developers often find themselves hacking away at plugin code,
either mocking up simulation scenarios, or manually changing the behavior of
the plugin during testing. In many cases, developers must manually force error
conditions in their plugins so they can validate error checking within their
app. I haven't written many Cordova p [...]
+
+<!--more-->
+
+Many, many years ago, a small company named Tiny Hippos created the Ripple
Emulator, a browser-based emulator for many mobile devices. Ripple was
interesting in many ways, but for the scope of this article, one of the
interesting features was its implementation of emulators for many of the core
Cordova plugins. As you ran your Cordova application in one pane, a separate
pane opened with options to control many aspects of the simulated environment
as shown in the following figure.
+
+
+
+Well, shortening a long story a bit, the folks at Research In Motion
(BlackBerry) purchased Tiny Hippos and maintained Ripple for a while before
finally contributing it to the Apache Foundation as an incubator project. Many
companies got involved, including Adobe, Microsoft, and others, but the project
never really took off, or ever became a stable product. It never actually made
it out of beta.
+
+Anyway, fast forward to today and you'll find that Microsoft took the Ripple
project and rebuilt it. We kept some of the original code (some of the plugin
simulation panels and supporting utility functions), rewrote some parts,
created some new code, then released it as an open source project called
Cordova Simulate
([https://github.com/Microsoft/cordova-simulate](https://github.com/Microsoft/cordova-simulate)).
We chose this approach, rather than investing in Ripple, because:
+
+* We had regular reports of issues with Ripple starting and Visual Studio not
being able to connect to it successfully, so we wanted a simpler architecture
for rendering the Cordova web app (a separate browser window that just hosted
the app, and nothing else).
+* Debugging Ripple was a challenge since you were effectively debugging both
the app and Ripple itself (you had to drill down into the Ripple UI's HTML to
find the hosted Cordova web app, and Ripple's JavaScript code could easily be a
part of your stack when debugging).
+* Since Ripple and the Cordova web app render in the same browser window, if
the Cordova web app froze for any reason, Ripple also froze (or, in less severe
cases, the Ripple UI could look unresponsive when the Cordova web app is busy).
+
+Cordova Simulate solves these issues:
+
+* The app window doesn't also host the simulation UI - just the app (and a
small bit of code to enable communication with the simulation UI). This solves
the first two problems identified above.
+* The simulation UI renders in a separate window, and all communication is
asynchronous, so an unresponsive app won't interfere with the simulation UI.
This solves the third problem.
+
+Another driving purpose for Cordova Simulate was that we wanted to make it
extensible; allowing plugins to define their own simulation functionality (as
you'll soon learn about).
+
+To my previous point about Ripple never making it out of beta, not only is
Cordova Simulate a complete, robust, and released solution, it's even part of
several Microsoft offerings (both commercial and open source). Its bundled into
Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (TACO -
[http://taco.visualstudio.com/](http://taco.visualstudio.com/)) in Visual
Studio 2017. It's also included as part of the Apache Cordova extension for
Visual Studio Code ([https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-cordo [...]
+
+Why is this important to you? Well, let me explain...
+
+With Cordova Simulate, you now have access to a complete solution for testing
your apps against simulated versions of the core Cordova plugins. This
eliminates the need to hack up your code to simulate plugin responses as
Cordova Simulate takes care of that for you.
+
+**Note:** If you just read the last paragraph, and said to yourself "so what?"
just hang on for a little while longer.
+
+The most important benefit for you is that you can add support for Cordova
Simulate to each of your custom plugins as well. Then, when you're exercising
your plugins during plugin development, or when your customers are using your
plugins, you have a standard way to simulate the capabilities of your plugin
(including error scenarios). When third-party providers add support for Cordova
Simulate to their plugins, suddenly developers can accurately test each aspect
of their application usin [...]
+
+Let me show you how to install and use Cordova Simulate, then I'll show you
how to add support for Cordova Simulate to your custom plugins. If you're using
someone else's plugin, and they don't have support for Cordova Simulate in the
plugin, add it yourself and submit a pull request, it's not that hard.
+
+## Installing Cordova Simulate
+
+As I mentioned before, Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova and the Cordova
extension for Visual Studio Code both include Cordova Simulate, so there's no
extra installation instructions to follow - just install the tools, and you'll
have what you need.
+
+You can also invoke Cordova Simulate from the command line, or from third
party IDEs. To install Cordova Simulate for those scenarios, open a terminal
window, and execute the following command:
+
+```
+npm install -g cordova-simulate
+```
+
+That's it, that's all there is to it. When the process completes, you'll now
have a `simulate` command at your disposal to launch Cordova Simulate.
+
+## Launching Cordova Simulate
+
+The following sections describe how to launch Cordova Simulate in different
ways.
+
+### Visual Studio
+
+If you're running an app in Visual Studio & TACO, just choose the **Simulate
in Browser** option, and the app launches Cordova Simulate. Cordova Simulate
will open the Chrome browser and run the web application part of your Cordova
app. Cordova Simulate will also open a simulator control window in Visual
Studio (using Internet Explorer, no surprise there). You'll interact with the
app in the Chrome window and simulate methods and properties in the plugins
using the simulator control wind [...]
+
+### Visual Studio Code
+
+If you're using Visual Studio Code, go to the **Debug** tab, enable **Cordova
debugging**, then execute either the **Simulate Android in browser** or
**Simulate iOS in browser** options. Cordova Simulate will open the Chrome
browser and execute the web application part of your Cordova app. Cordova
Simulate will also open a simulator control window inside Visual Studio Code.
You'll interact with the app in the Chrome window and simulate methods and
properties in the plugins using the simu [...]
+
+### Command-line
+
+To launch Cordova Simulate from the command-line, open a terminal window,
navigate to a Cordova project folder, and execute the following command:
+
+```
+simulate \[platform\]
+```
+
+Platform refers to one of the supported target platforms (for example:
`android`, `ios`, or `browser`). For example, to simulate the Android version
of your Cordova application, you would use the following:
+
+```
+simulate android
+```
+
+Cordova Simulate will open the Chrome browser with two tabs, one running the
Cordova app web app, and the other displaying the simulator control window
shown in the following figure.
+
+
+
+By default, Cordova Simulate loads a default set of plugin simulators:
+
+* Since HTML has native support for geolocation, Cordova Simulate
automatically loads the Geolocation simulator pane.
+* The event simulator pane loads automatically to enable developers to trigger
Cordova and device events as needed
+* Persisted Exec Calls pane enables basic simulator support for third-party
plugins that don't include support for Cordova Simulate.
+* The Device simulator loads automatically to enable you to change the target
device used for rendering the web app.
+
+If I'd added other Cordova core plugins to my project, Cordova Simulate would
load simulators for each, if available.
+
+At this point, you can interact with your app as needed, and switch to the
simulator control window to adjust plugin properties and method call results.
For example, if your Cordova app used the Geolocation plugin to track the
device's location, changing any of the values in the Geolocation simulator pane
would cause the app's next call to `navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition`
to receive the updated value you entered into the pane.
+
+## Adding Cordova Simulate Support to Your Plugins
+
+Alright, it's time to show you how to add Cordova Simulate support to your own
plugins. First, you must add a `simulation` folder to your plugin's `src`
folder (so `src/simulation/`). Inside that folder, you'll create one or more of
the following files based on the needs of your plugin:
+
+* `app-host-clobbers.js`
+* `app-host-handlers.js`
+* `app-host.js`
+* `sim-host-dialogs.html`
+* `sim-host-handlers.js`
+* `sim-host-panels.html`
+* `sim-host.js`
+
+For my simple example, I'm only going to need three files, but refer to the
Cordova Simulate documentation at
[https://github.com/Microsoft/cordova-simulate](https://github.com/Microsoft/cordova-simulate)
for details about each of these files.
+
+The plugin I used for my example is a simple Carrier plugin I created many
years ago for one of my Cordova books:
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/johnwargo-cordova-plugin-carrier](https://www.npmjs.com/package/johnwargo-cordova-plugin-carrier).
It exposes two methods:
+
+* `getCarrierName`: An asynchronous method that retrieves the current carrier
for the device running the application.
+* `getCountryCode`: An asynchronous method that retrieves the country code for
the device running the application
+
+When exercising this plugin, I'll need the ability to validate my app's code
against different carrier and country code values. To simulate this, I'll need
an HTML panel that offers multiple carrier and country code choices. For this,
I created a `sim-host.panels.html` file in the plugin project's
`src/simulation/` folder. The file creates a simple panel with two drop-down
lists containing some country and carrier values:
+
+```
+<cordova-panel id="johnwargo-cordova-plugin-carrier" caption="Carrier"
+ spoken-text="Carrier">
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ Select carrier and country code options from the drop-down lists below.
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-label label="Carrier Name" spoken="carrier
name"></cordova-label>
+ <cordova-combo spoken-text="Simulated value for wireless carrier"
+ id="carrier-select" style="width:auto; min-width:0;
display:inline;">
+ <option value="AT&T" selected="selected">AT&T</option>
+ <option value="Sprint">Sprint</option>
+ <option value="T-Mobile">T-Mobile</option>
+ <option value="US Cellular">US Cellular</option>
+ <option value="Verizon">Verizon</option>
+ </cordova-combo>
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-label label="Country Code" spoken="country
code"></cordova-label>
+ <cordova-combo spoken-text="Simulated value for country code"
+ id="country-code-select" style="width:auto; min-width:0;
display:inline;">
+ <option value="CA">Canada</option>
+ <option value="MX">Mexico</option>
+ <option value="US" selected="selected">United States</option>
+ </cordova-combo>
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ Enable the error checkbox to execute the error callback instead of the
success callback on plugin API calls.
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-checkbox id="is-error" spoken="">Error
condition</cordova-checkbox>
+</cordova-panel>
+```
+
+As you can see from the code, the panel makes use of special HTML element
types supported by Cordova Simulate. The simulator code for most of the core
Cordova plugins is included with the Cordova Simulate Github repository, so you
can find examples there of the available UI elements in use.
+
+Next, I added a `sim-host.js` file to the folder. This file isn't necessary,
but it provides an opportunity to initialize the simulated plugin, and I use it
to update the console whenever the user makes a change in the simulation panel.
Not critically important, but useful as I sorted out what was happening as I
built the simulation.
+
+```
+module.exports = {
+ initialize: function() {
+ //Get access to the carrier selection drop-down
+ var carrierSel = document.getElementById('carrier-select');
+ //Add a change event listener to the field
+ carrierSel.addEventListener('change', carrierChange);
+ //Get access to the country code selection drop-down
+ var ccSel = document.getElementById('country-code-select');
+ //Add a change event listener to the field
+ ccSel.addEventListener('change', ccChange);
+
+ function carrierChange() {
+ console.log("Carrier selection changed to " + this.value);
+ }
+
+ function ccChange() {
+ console.log("Country code selection changed to " + this.value);
+ }
+ }
+};
+```
+
+If you study the source code for the simulator capabilities in the core
Cordova plugins, you'll see that many of them use change events like the ones
just shown in the code to update properties for objects exposed by the plugins.
As developers change values in the simulator panel, the change events register
the change and updates a local object. Then, when a Cordova application
accesses one of those properties, the code returns the value from the local
object.
+
+Finally, I added a `sim-host-handlers.js` file to the project. The code in
this file overrides the `cordova.exec` calls from the plugin in the simulated
environment. Here, I export the native methods supported by the plugin and pull
the selected values from the simulator panel and return them to the calling
application.
+
+```
+module.exports = function(messages) {
+ return {
+ carrier: {
+ getCarrierName: function(successCallback, errorCallback) {
+ console.log("Cordova-Simulate: getCarrierName invoked");
+ //Get access to the carrier selection drop-down
+ var carrierSel = document.getElementById('carrier-select');
+ //Pull the value from the selected item
+ var selValue =
carrierSel.options[carrierSel.selectedIndex].value;
+ console.log('Simulating carrier: ' + selValue);
+ //And return it to the calling method
+ successCallback(selValue);
+ },
+ getCountryCode: function(successCallback, errorCallback) {
+ console.log("Cordova-Simulate: getCountryCode invoked");
+ //Get access to the country code selection drop-down
+ var ccSel = document.getElementById('country-code-select');
+ //Pull the value from the selected item
+ var selValue = ccSel.options[ccSel.selectedIndex].value;
+ console.log('Simulating country code: ' + selValue);
+ //And return it to the calling method
+ successCallback(selValue);
+ }
+ }
+ };
+};
+```
+
+This is a very simple example of what you can do, be sure to check out the
source code for the simulator capabilities included with core Cordova plugins
for more sophisticated examples.
+
+Now, when you create a Cordova application that uses this plugin, then execute
Cordova Simulate, you'll see the following panel exposed on the Cordova
Simulate Simulator Control window:
+
+
+
+Make the appropriate changes to the panel, then call the associated APIs from
the Cordova application to see the selected results.
+
+If you think about what we've done so far, we've only addressed success
scenarios - changing the behavior of the plugin in the simulated environment so
we can test the app with different API results. Most plugins also report error
conditions, and in order to properly exercise the plugin or an app using the
plugin, you must be able to simulate error conditions as well. Let me show you
how to do that.
+
+First, I added a new row to the `sim-host.panels.html` file:
+
+```
+<cordova-panel-row>
+ Enable the error checkbox to execute the error callback instead of the
success callback on plugin API calls.
+</cordova-panel-row>
+<cordova-checkbox id="is-error" spoken="">Error condition</cordova-checkbox>
+```
+
+This adds an Error checkbox to the panel, enabling developers to return an
error from each plugin API call. The updated `sim-host.panels.html` file looks
like this:
+
+```
+<cordova-panel id="johnwargo-cordova-plugin-carrier" caption="Carrier"
+ spoken-text="Carrier">
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ Select carrier and country code options from the drop-down lists below.
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-label label="Carrier Name" spoken="carrier
name"></cordova-label>
+ <cordova-combo spoken-text="Simulated value for wireless carrier"
+ id="carrier-select" style="width:auto; min-width:0;
display:inline;">
+ <option value="AT&T" selected="selected">AT&T</option>
+ <option value="Sprint">Sprint</option>
+ <option value="T-Mobile">T-Mobile</option>
+ <option value="US Cellular">US Cellular</option>
+ <option value="Verizon">Verizon</option>
+ </cordova-combo>
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-label label="Country Code" spoken="country
code"></cordova-label>
+ <cordova-combo spoken-text="Simulated value for country code"
+ id="country-code-select" style="width:auto; min-width:0;
display:inline;">
+ <option value="CA">Canada</option>
+ <option value="MX">Mexico</option>
+ <option value="US" selected="selected">United States</option>
+ </cordova-combo>
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-panel-row>
+ Enable the error checkbox to execute the error callback instead of the
success callback on plugin API calls.
+ </cordova-panel-row>
+ <cordova-checkbox id="is-error" spoken="">Error
condition</cordova-checkbox>
+</cordova-panel>
+```
+
+Now, in the `sim-host-handlers.js` file, I added a check for the checkbox
status in each of the methods exposed in the file. For my plugin, with the
checkbox checked, the method calls the error callback function returning a
dummy JSON object containing a simple error message and code. For your plugins,
you'll likely want to expand this so you can simulate different error
conditions.
+
+```
+module.exports = function(messages) {
+ return {
+ carrier: {
+ getCarrierName: function(successCallback,
errorCallback) {
+ console.log("Cordova-Simulate: getCarrierName
invoked");
+ if
(document.getElementById('is-error').checked) {
+ console.error("Error condition
enabled");
+ errorCallback({ code: 1, msg:
"Simulated error condition" });
+ } else {
+ //Get access to the carrier selection
drop-down
+ var carrierSel =
document.getElementById('carrier-select');
+ //Pull the value from the selected item
+ var selValue =
carrierSel.options[carrierSel.selectedIndex].value;
+ console.log('Simulating carrier: ' +
selValue);
+ //And return it to the calling method
+ successCallback(selValue);
+ }
+ },
+ getCountryCode: function(successCallback,
errorCallback) {
+ if
(document.getElementById('is-error').checked) {
+ console.error("Error condition
enabled");
+ errorCallback({ code: 2, msg:
"Simulated error condition" });
+ } else {
+ console.log("Cordova-Simulate:
getCountryCode invoked");
+ //Get access to the country code
selection drop-down
+ var ccSel =
document.getElementById('country-code-select');
+ //Pull the value from the selected item
+ var selValue =
ccSel.options[ccSel.selectedIndex].value;
+ console.log('Simulating country code: '
+ selValue);
+ //And return it to the calling method
+ successCallback(selValue);
+ }
+ }
+ }
+ };
+};
+```
+
+Now, when I execute Cordova simulate I'll see the slightly different panel
shown below.
+
+
+
+That's it, that's all there is to enable simulation in your own plugins. As
you can hopefully see, Cordova Simulate gives developers (plugin developers and
developers who use those developer's plugins in their applications) an easier
way to exercise the plugin and test applications using the plugin.
+
+Cordova Simulate is an open source project from Microsoft, but we'd love to
have your help enhancing it and fixing issues as they arise. Please follow the
project on Github and take a look at how you can help enhance this project.
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