cordova-plugin-webserver

A webserver plugin for cordova

This plugin helps you to start a full webserver in JavaScript on Android and iOS.

Current supported platforms

Android (i think all versions?! Tell me if it's not true)
iOS (8.0 or later (armv7, armv7s or arm64))

Why?

I started this project because I wanted a solution like ExpressJS but hybrid (for iOS and Android). I didn't want to build two native applications which each serve a backend (two codebases are just bah!). So this is the solution to create a Webserver which can receives HTTP Requests and responds with HTTP Responds.

Installation

Just add the cordova plugin to your project

cordova plugin add https://github.com/bykof/cordova-plugin-webserver

Use

Ok so it's pretty ez. There are 4 Methods which are available in the webserver variable:

start(port) or start()
stop()
onRequest(request)
sendResponse(responseId, responseObject, callbackSuccess, callbackError)

start(port)

port (optional): Set a port of your webserver. Default port: 8080

This method will start your webserver.

stop()

This method will stop your webserver.

onRequest(callback(request))

Ok now this is the interesting part... Everytime a request will be received by the webserver your callback function will be called. In this case you are thinking right! You have to define onRequest BEFORE your start your server. I think it would work also after the start() but I didn't tested it yet.

The params will look like this:

{
	requestId: '3jh4-ku34k-k3j4k-k3j42',
	body: '',
	headers: {
		... some headers
	},
	method: 'POST',
	path: '/hello/world',
	query: 'bla=wer&blu=2'
}

sendResponse(requestId, responseObject, callbackSuccess, callbackError)

If you received a request you will probably send a response "cough"... We need to add a requestId param to map a response to a request, because internally the webserver will wait for the response. (Yes currently the webserver will wait until there aren't computers anymore on earth).

The params have to look like this (there are not default values for the params!):

{
	status: 200,
	body: '<html>Hello ... something</html>',
	headers: {
		'Content-Type': 'text/html' <--- this is important
	}
}

sendFileResponse(responseObject, callbackSuccess, callbackError) (currently Android-only support)

This method allows sending file content in response to an http request. It is intended that this would be used in conjunction with cordova-plugin-file to locate the path of the file data to be sent.

The response object should look like this. Here, the provided path should be accessible by your cordova app and the type should be the mime type of the file. Note that the MIME type of the file can be found from the .type property of the File object.

{
	path: '/sdcard0/Downloads/whatever.txt',
	type: 'text/plain'
}

Example

webserver.onRequest(
	function(request) {
		console.log("O MA GAWD! This is the request: ", request);

		webserver.sendResponse(
			request.requestId,
			{
				status: 200,
				body: '<html>Hello World</html>',
				headers: {
					'Content-Type': 'text/html'
				}
			}
		);
	}
);

webserver.start();

//... after a long long time
// stop the server
webserver.stop();

Credits

Special thanks to:

EvilDrW / cordova-plugin-webserver