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I'm a Worldwide Developer Evangelist for Adobe. My job basically entails me traveling the world and talking about the developer tools and technologies that Adobe has to offer or that we support. I'm also the author of Driving Technical Change. It's about convinving reluctant co-workers to adopt new tools and techniques. Terrence is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 38 posts at DZone. You can read more from them at their website. View Full User Profile

PhoneGap Build Watcher

07.04.2012
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I love PhoneGap Build.  I love not having to have anywhere from 3 to 7 different IDE/SDK rigs to get apps that run on multiple platforms. That being said, IDEs do give something that PhoneGap Build (henceforth referred to as PGB) lacks - workflow.

My current workflow with PGB goes something like this:

  • Push changes to PGB
  • Leave PGB open in browser tab
  • Get bored
  • Wander away to other browser tabs
  • Remember that I am working on a mobile app
  • Go back and check PGB
  • See that it has updated
  • Pick up device
  • Click download link
  • Reinstall

It's not the best workflow.  Yeah, I could fix it by being more disciplined. But evidence suggests that's not going to happen. I could solve my problem with technology. PGB has an API for answering questions like "Is the Android version of my app currently built?" So I put together a little mobile app to take advantage of that API. I call it PhoneGap Build Watcher. It does what you would expect:

  • You enter your PGB credentials
  • You get a list of all of your projects
  • You choose one
  • Any time that project gets updated you get sound, vibration and notification alerts.
  • From that alert you can click on the download link and install the new version of your application.

This has really helped my workflow with PGB, and I hope some of you out there can use it to do the same.

See it in action:

It's of course Open Source and hosted on GitHub.

I've put it up on Google Play, but was unable to get it into the App Store.  I should have realized it before trying but Apple doesn't like applications that prompt you to download applications. No worries. Great thing about PhoneGap apps, they're just web apps, so I have a web app version running at http://pgbwatcher.com if any iOS users want to give it a try. 

Let me know what you think.

Published at DZone with permission of Terrence Ryan, author and DZone MVB. (source)

(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)