Including Plugins with Cordova Command Line Interface 5

You may have noticed that things have changed up a bit as of Cordova CLI 5.0.0 release. Specifically, we are now encouraging the the use of <plugin> tags in your config.xml file over the previously used <feature> tags.

You may be wondering why you should use the <plugin> tag. The main reason is that when you use the <plugin> tag it will fetch and install the plugin for you during the cordova prepare phase of building your project.

So if you have the following feature tags in your current config.xml:

<feature name="org.apache.cordova.file">
    <param name="id" value="org.apache.cordova.file@1.0.1"/>
</feature>
<feature name="org.apache.cordova.file-transfer">
    <param name="id" value="org.apache.cordova.file-transfer@0.4.2"/>
</feature>
<feature name="org.apache.cordova.device">
    <param name="id" value="org.apache.cordova.device@0.2.8"/>
</feature>
<feature name="com.telerik.plugins.nativepagetransitions">
    <param name="id" value="https://github.com/Telerik-Verified-Plugins/NativePageTransitions#0.2.11"/>
</feature>
<feature name="com.phonegap.plugins.pushplugin">
    <param name="id" value="https://github.com/phonegap-build/PushPlugin#1979d972b6ab37e28cf2077bc7ebfe706cc4dacd"/>
</feature>

Then you'd just replace it with:

<plugin name="cordova-plugin-file" spec="^2.0.0" />
<plugin name="cordova-plugin-file-transfer" spec="^1.0.0" />
<plugin name="cordova-plugin-device" spec="^1.0.0" />
<plugin name="com.telerik.plugins.nativepagetransitions" spec="https://github.com/Telerik-Verified-Plugins/NativePageTransitions#0.2.11" />
<plugin name="com.phonegap.plugins.pushplugin" spec="https://github.com/phonegap-build/PushPlugin#1979d972b6ab37e28cf2077bc7ebfe706cc4dacd" />

You may have noticed that the package ID for org.apache.cordova.file has changed to cordova-plugin-file. The is part of the way plugins are now hosted on npm. You'll notice that all the core plugins (org.apache.cordova) have been renamed (see table below).

For non-core plugins you can still download them from a git repository. In order to specify a specific version you use #versionNumber for example, NativePageTransistion above or to download from a specific commit use #commitHash for example, PushPlugin above.

Old ID	NPM ID
org.apache.cordova.battery-status	cordova-plugin-battery-status
org.apache.cordova.camera	cordova-plugin-camera
org.apache.cordova.contacts	cordova-plugin-contacts
org.apache.cordova.device	cordova-plugin-device
org.apache.cordova.device-motion	cordova-plugin-device-motion
org.apache.cordova.device-orientation	cordova-plugin-device-orientation
org.apache.cordova.dialogs	cordova-plugin-dialogs
org.apache.cordova.file	cordova-plugin-file
org.apache.cordova.file-transfer	cordova-plugin-file-transfer
org.apache.cordova.geolocation	cordova-plugin-geolocation
org.apache.cordova.globalization	cordova-plugin-globalization
org.apache.cordova.inappbrowser	cordova-plugin-inappbrowser
org.apache.cordova.media-capture	cordova-plugin-media-capture
org.apache.cordova.media	cordova-plugin-media
org.apache.cordova.network-information	cordova-plugin-network-information
org.apache.cordova.splashscreen	cordova-plugin-splashscreen
org.apache.cordova.statusbar	cordova-plugin-statusbar
org.apache.cordova.whitelist	cordova-plugin-whitelist
org.apache.cordova.vibration	cordova-plugin-vibration