On the Eleventh Day of PhoneGapping: Configuration Defaults

As much as we'd like to make PhoneGap 100% cross platform there are some differences between platforms that sometimes need to be smoothed over. Two items that I can think of off the top of my head are:

1) Android's persistent file system defaults to the SD Card which everyone can read from while in iOS it defaults to a directory that only the app can read.

2) In order to play a Media file the path to a file in the www directory is different for Android and iOS.

So to smooth these difference over you can create a .json file that is included in your www directory which will hold platform specific configuration details and load it via XHR. Here's how to do it:


Your .json file on Android could look like:

{ 

    "mediaPath": "/android_asset/www/"

}

and on iOS it would look like;

{ 

    "mediaPath": ""

}

So now you can replace clunky if statements like:

if (device.platform == "Android") {
    var my_media = new Media("/android_asset/www/test.mp3");
} else {
    var my_media = new Media("test.mp3");
}

with:

var my_media = new Media(Config.mediaPath + "test.mp3");

and continue to access everything in a cross platform way.